The first step to getting someone in your vacant property is attracting qualified leads. However, getting leads is not as easy as it sounds. You’ll want to have good rental property marketing strategies that secure quality tenant leads quickly and efficiently. It’ll be hard to organically find occupants for your rentals if you don’t work hard to attract potential tenants. Let’s take a look at some top rental property marketing strategies to earn better leads.
How Can You Get Qualified Property Leads?
Generating leads is one of the most crucial parts of rental property marketing. Rental property lead generation is the process of attracting potential tenants and increasing their interest in your rental. The end goal is for them to choose your property for their next home.
When someone comes across your property in an online ad or newspaper, you want them to be excited and engaged. Ultimately, you want them to think, “Wow, I would love to live there!”. But, it takes strategy and skill to earn a customer’s attention.
How can you get qualified property leads? One of the best ways to find tenants is using top-notch rental property marketing strategies. If you’re not sure what that means, don’t worry. Next, we’ll discuss some industry tactics for finding the best tenants.
Rental Property Marketing Strategies
The only way for a property manager in Philadelphia to succeed is to secure quality tenants. After all, a landlord could have a perfect rental property, but if nobody knows that it’s vacant, it may never get occupied. This is where good rental property marketing strategies come into play. Here are some of the best ways to secure qualified leads.
- Identify Your Target Audience
- Create Dynamic Property Ads
- Use Social Media
- Prompt Leads With Welcoming Surveys
- Don’t Give Up On Leads
Identify Your Target Audience
Before you can market your properties efficiently, you must know to whom you will market them. For this, you’ll need to identify your target audience. That said, it’s essential to try not to sell to everybody. If you try to get everyone’s attention, you’ll end up with nobody’s attention.
Seek out quality features and amenities that current prospective tenants are looking for. Be specific to your neighborhood trends and community while trying to reach groups interested in your property—for example, market to specific demographics such as age, income levels, and employment factors.
Create Dynamic Property Ads
Once you have identified your target audience, it’s important to keep them engaged. Property listings are not as appealing if you don’t use good photos and well-written descriptions. To make your content more engaging for prospective tenants, take high-quality pictures of your vacant properties. That said, if the photos are taken while another tenant’s clutter is strewn about, it’ll be harder to find someone willing to live there.
Additionally, it’s crucial to showcase every part of your property. Take photos of everything, including:
- The living room
- Bathrooms
- Hallways
- The kitchen
- Outdoor spaces
- Common areas
- All bedrooms
- Laundry room
- Home entrance
- The basement
- The attic
- Nearby community attractions
Once you have great photos of your property, you need to attach them to good descriptions that adequately illustrate the home. For this portion, you’ll want to give details about the home’s bedrooms, bathrooms, and square footage.
Additionally, it’s essential to highlight the desirable amenities of your property, like on-site laundry, pet policies, and included utilities. Finally, don’t forget to leave your contact information so that prospective tenants can contact you if they are interested in the home.
Use Social Media
If you don’t already use social platforms for advertising your properties, now’s the time to start. Social media has been a considerable part of marketing success over the past ten or more years. After all, most people use the internet to find new clothes, cars, and even homes. That said, landlords and property managers need to budget time and money for social media marketing.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Zillow, and other property listing sites are great resources to find prospective renters. Similarly, most social media sites allow you to be creative with finding leads. For example, you can create campaigns, experiment with ads, and communicate with potential renters via social platforms.
Prompt Leads With Surveys
One way to build an immediate connection with renters is by prompting them with a survey when they show interest in your property. This information will give you a good sense of what type of home they’re looking for and how they came across your property. For example, you can ask questions such as:
- Why are you looking to move?
- How did you come across this property?
- What are you looking for in a rental home?
Similarly, you can give old tenants or lost leads a survey to determine what went wrong with your marketing strategy. To learn new ways to improve, you can ask existing tenants or lost leads questions like:
- Why did you decide to look for a new living arrangement?
- How was your experience at your current rental?
- What can we improve on to provide a better experience?
While these seem like ordinary questions, they can provide you with vital information. In turn, you can adjust your rental property marketing strategies to improve customer retention and satisfaction.
Don’t Give Up on Leads
Finally, it’s important to continue following up with leads once they show interest in your property. The typical “one and done” approach to follow-ups do not get landlords very far in securing new tenants. After all, it’s not about the number of leads you get. It’s more about the legitimacy of your existing leads.
That said, many leasing agencies follow up with leads 3 to 5 times before an applicant makes a solid decision. Additionally, it’s crucial to understand your prospect’s interest level immediately. If they are simply browsing at homes and not very serious about moving, it’s okay to send a few follow-ups, but know they are likely not interested. On the other hand, if they are actively looking for a rental home, be diligent with your follow-ups–don’t let the lead slip away.
What’s the Next Step Once You’ve Generated Solid Leads?
Once you’ve got some good leads, you might be wondering–what’s the next step? First of all, it’s essential not to lose your current leads. Secondly, you want your prospective tenants to have a good experience from day one. So, here are some tips to consider once you’ve generated some solid leads for your rental properties.
Follow Up With Prospects
As stated above, it’s crucial to follow up with prospective tenants once they’ve shown interest in your rental property. Following up more than once may seem like a hassle, but it’s worth the effort. After all, around 40% of people give up on a lead after one follow-up. So, part of good rental property marketing strategies is to follow up with leads until they make a solid decision.
Pre-Screen Tenants
Next, if you have a solid lead on board for your rental, it’s a good idea to pre-screen them to make sure they are a good fit. Pre-screening tenants before they get too far in the process is a good way to reduce vacancies and keep occupancies moving. During this pre-screen interview, you can ask questions such as:
- Do you have any pets? If so, how many?
- How many occupants will be living on the property?
- When do you plan on moving in?
- Have you been evicted from past rentals? If so, why?
- Are you willing to do a background check?
When you take the time to ask these questions before moving forward with a tenant, you can better understand what type of occupant they will be. Similarly, you can weed out tenants who aren’t serious or the right fit for the property.
Focus on Customer Service
Excellent customer service is a great way to keep your current tenants happy and leave a good impression on prospective renters. All it takes is checking in a few times to see how things are going, asking what can be better, and taking tenant complaints respectfully. That said, showing mutual respect with your tenants is also essential.
Even if you receive a complaint about the property, handle it with grace and try not to worsen the situation. Similarly, if you find yourself dealing with a pesky tenant, remain in good spirits and calm throughout the situation. All tenants will remember how well they were treated during their occupancy once they move out.
Choosing a Good Property Management Company
When you need help with rental property marketing strategies for your rental business, turn to qualified professionals. A good rental property management company can help you market your property, generate leads, and secure quality tenants.
Luckily, Bay Property Management Group has what it takes to give you the greatest return on your investment. Not only do we aggressively market rental properties, but we also screen tenants, collect rent payments, perform maintenance, and much more.
