Property Management Blogs

Successful Property Management Blogs

So your looking to build more traffic to your property management website and you want to show your knowledge in property management industry. The best way to do this is through property management blogging in my opinion.

Let me tell you a little story

I recently started to work with a couple of clients who are doing a really great job in putting out some good property management blogs. The topics are relevant for landlords and the blog titles get decent monthly searches so as a result they are starting to build new traffic to the site. Great they thought…

Fast forward three months

So lets now fast forward a few months.. The property management blogs have attracted over 1400 unique visitors to the sites in three months and from looking at the Google Analytics everything looks great. However none of the blog visitors have converted from being a visitor to being a customer.

Now I know it takes time to build your audience and trust within a blog before you have conversions i.e a website visitor turning into a customer. But that’s not the problem here the problem is the blog titles and content. You see there is two types of blog posts, one designed to get lots of traffic which is not targeted and then there is the targeted blog posts which deliver qualified traffic.

Two types of blogs in my opinion

High volume blog titles which are designed to land you lots of traffic.

While it sounds like a great idea searching Google keyword planner for long tail keywords with high monthly volume its normally not going to put leads in your inbox. Some property management companies and letting agents make mistakes in writing property management blogs with titles such as “Renting yields”

While it gets a high volume of 1400 monthly searches what’s the likelihood of these visitors being in your market, and what I mean by that is having a rental property in your market. It is fine for a nationwide agency, service provider or software company as they are not looking for a client in a particular area.

Image credit VCU UNS

Targeted Blog titles which send you qualified visitors

Now I know writing blogs can be time consuming and once written you want to see lots of traffic but ask yourself a simple question “are you writing a blog for your ego or for your pocket”?

And if your reading this blog post your most likely looking to write a blog post for your pocket.

So lets say I am a Letting agency in London by looking at a blog title such as “Renting yields” and localising it to my location “Renting yields in london” I can then write a blog post which increases the chance of being read by my target market which is a property investor or landlord looking at rental yields in London.

It only gets 50 searches a month which is just over 3% of the first blog title but these are targeted blog titles for the property management industry in a particular location which should result in leads.

We all suffer from writers block and creativity problems but once you convert your first customer through a blog it becomes all worth it.

Here are some ideas for blogging for your agency and here is 10 blog topics for your letting agency.

Image credit Nina Matthews

Writing content to convert traffic

So once you have started to write specific content in your property management blogs which will land you qualified traffic your next step is to convert them. The best way to convert your traffic is to use easy CTA’s (Call to actions) within each page of your website. If you dont have these you should look at our property management website design which now includes a blog.

Trust me I know what I am saying as I had to start writing before I started to see the real benefits / customers. If you are looking at other ways of increasing your inbound traffic to your website check out this post on property management marketing.

January 23, 2014

Landlord Marketing

Landlord Marketing with email drip campaigns

What percentage of your landlord website visitors today will contact you asking for information on your services? If you are not sure about a % I will make it simple how many landlords contact you daily looking for advice or inquiring about your services?

If the answer is 0% or more like 1 enquiry every couple of weeks you need to continue reading.

In my previous blog post on property management marketing trends I discussed how by blogging and educating your target market you can increase traffic to your site.

I discussed two types of visitors, landlords who want to educated themselves and landlords who want to employ your service.

Thanks for the image ell-r-brown

The first landlord is the researcher

The majority of these visitors want education they are not YET looking to employ your services. In order to capture there contact information we need to give them something and as they are currently educating themselves the best thing I have learnt to give them so far is more educational resources. Much like you are on my blog now educating yourself on landlord marketing, landlords will hopefully be on your site educating themselves on the rental property industry.

The Second landlord is the employer

The other visitors to your website are most likely either researching companies to use now or in the future to let and or manage their property. You should already have call to actions within the site to capture there contact details. However some landlords may just browse now and come back later when they are ready to employ your services. This is a problem as in an ideal world you do not want to let any landlord leave without getting there details. So once again as above lets give them some free education on the property industry to confirm you are the agent to use and allowing you capture there contact details to market to them.

Email Drip Campaigns

Unsure what an email drip campaign is? Well you most likely have read it here first, drip email campaigns are a fabulous way to build trust with you or your agency. Drip marketing is a communication strategy that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time.

If you look to the bottom right hand side of this page you will see my own email drip campaign which gathers 6% of all my website visitors. If you want to see what happens once you sign up put in your email address 😉

Go on I guarantee you will be happy with what you get.

Your Website Stats

Look at your website stats and calculate if you converted 6% of your website visitors how many new landlords would that be weekly?

Lets say you get 100 landlords visiting your website weekly and you got 6% of them. That is 300 new landlords contact details in your landlord marketing funnel annually. If you only got 20% of them into a customer that’s 60 new properties on per year.

More Landlords = More Revenue

100 visitors a week -> 6% Sign up to Campaign -> x 52 weeks -> 312 New landlords in your marketing funnel -> Convert 20% as a customer ->62 new units -> Average fee £500 -> £31,000 New annual Revenue.

Benefits of Drip Campaigns

Marketing to landlords is a very targeted market and it’s difficult at times to market directly to them.

There is all the standard ways to conduct landlord marketing through direct marketing, cold calling landlords, email marketing to landlords, leaflet drops, landlord shows, property exhibitions, property auctions etc.

So are you still thinking of where to market to landlords?

If I can help in any way on setting up your landlord marketing email drip campaign please let me know as this is a service we provide.

January 10, 2014

Property Management Marketing Trends for 2014

Property management Marketing Trends

If your like most property management companies your most likely strategising on how you can reach the targets you have set your property management company this year.

If you are not and your looking to increase your profit on last year you should start to put targets in place now. The best way to increase your property management companies profits is through marketing.

Here is my 4 property management marketing trends that will help you increase your profit in 2014.

1. Content Marketing

Your website visitors

This is the number one way potential landlords can find your property management business. There are two types of visitors you can attract to your website. The first is a customer who knows they want to employ your services to either let or manage their property. They normally enter search such as “ Property Management company in Dublin”. You should have your website already optimised for keywords in order to have some of these searches land on your website. If not learn more about letting agency SEO here. This type of search short tail keywords

Your second visitor is somebody who is looking to research a topic in order to get help. They are typically looking for an expert who can help them with a problem they have. In order to reach these potential customers you need to understand their problems, their pain points and write articles on how to best deal with these problems. Really what you are looking to show here is your domain knowledge and show them that they are better off employing you to resolve their issues. A typical search term may be “ finding tenants in Dublin”. The type of search term here is called a long tail Keyword.

What content to write about?

A really good starting point for understanding pain points being searched is by using Google Tools such as keyword planner. Here you can research how many times a month a short tail keyword or long tail keywords are being searched for. In order to write about this content and deliver it on your property management website you should install a blog. But do not get frightened by the thought, you have the knowledge in your head you just need to put in writing, Check out this guide to writing a property blog

2. Google Apps

Last year I talked and blogged about this quiet frequently but I see that using Google tools will help your website visitors grow hugely this year. If your not using Google apps yet start immediately as I see these being key in property management marketing trends in 2014.

Google Places

If you don’t have your Letting agency on Google Places put it on there right away, its quick and easy and you can have it up live in a couple of minutes. Here is a post on set up your Property management company on Google Places

Google Local

Google places is the Yellow Pages of the internet. Once a visitor to Google searches a term such as “letting agent” and their IP is visible Google will automatically return local companies to the search. This is only possible by activating Google Places. Below is a typical local search return result

Google Reviews

Once you have listed Google places I would highly recommend asking customers to leave a brief review of your services. To see how to do this you can look at this post “Requesting a Google review”.

By requesting and building your reviews it will really help build the trust you will receive from new visitors to your site. I spoke about showing your domain knowledge with reviews you reinforce this knowledge. So now when you create content your visitors will see you know what you are talking about. Here is a previous blog post I wrote on Building Landlords trust

Google Authorship

Ever wonder when you do a search on Google why certain search returns show thumbnail images to the left? These images are avatars of the author of the article, by setting up Google Authorship on your content you are verifying with Google who the author is and that it is not spam. Google will show your posts higher within a search result once Google Authorship is set up. By including the image more visitors will be drawn into clicking on your webpage as it will stand out from that of other search results.

3. Video

This should also appear under the Google Apps if you are going to use YouTube which is owned by Google, you will automatically use the same login for your apps as you will for YouTube.

Video Content Management

Video is fast becoming a major marketing force and if you are not going to use video you are going to get left behind. As above when I discussed becoming a domain expert video is the best way to come across as this expert.

If you have a Google account you can then set up your channel and link it through to your website. This is important in all of the Google apps and doesn’t change here. You are effectively telling Google that you are using this app for your website and in turn Google will improve your search ranking.

If you haven’t set up your channel yet see how to do it here Setting up your property management YouTube Station.

Property Marketing Video

Depending on your strategy in marketing properties you may want to look at video tours. Promoting a property through video is a great way to rank high for certain search terms for properties. And similar to above using video for certain keywords will return a video play screen within Google search results, this is the top way in getting instant clicks. Here you can see how to edit a property marketing video.

4. Call to Actions

Include steps 1 – 3 on to your website and I guarantee you will see a huge spike in your website traffic. The last piece in property management marketing trends is having an effective call to action.

The content on your property management website needs to confirm your domain knowledge as an industry expert in the property management field. Now that you have them on your site having reviews linked in as discussed will build trust so now you just need these landlords to contact you. All you need is their contact details to make a website visitor a high end lead.

You can take a look this blog on letting agency website design for more ideas

Entry Forms

A simple and easy contact form which only requires name, email and phone number works best. Take a look at competitors sites and your own and if you have anything more than the above I am sure you are losing possible customers. You want to create as least friction as possible in order to get the landlords details. Expecting a potential landlord to copy and paste an email address into his email is not acceptable and only showing a landline number is the same. I personally am not a fan of Captcha as so many people get them wrong and end up leaving in frustration. As the KISS acronym states Keep it Simple Stupid.

Analysis

Implement these property management marketing trends into your business today. The team at Rentview are happy to help and you can find more information on some of its property management software services here

January 8, 2014

Tenants Fees in Ireland

Tenants Fees

Do you charge your tenants fees or administration fees? That is the question I asked letting agents across Ireland over the last couple of weeks.

So why did I ask it?

With the rental industry seeing huge demand at the moment most letting agents cannot get enough properties to let out. Most letting agents I’m speaking with on a daily basis are seeing increased costs in running their letting agency both legally and professionally. So with a reduced amount of vacant rental stock to let and increased overheads some letting agents are starting to struggle financially.

Letting Agents Survey Results-

Is it Legal to charge tenants fees in Ireland?

Well if you look at Section 90 of the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 it is not-
90.—(1) Subject to subsection (2), any provision (whether express
or implied) in an agreement in respect of the sale or letting of land
whereby the purchaser or tenant, as the case may be, is required to
pay or otherwise bear the cost of the licensee’s fees or expenses in
respect of the sale or letting, as the case may be, shall be void, and
any moneys paid pursuant to such a provision shall be recoverable
as a simple contract debt in a court of competent jurisdiction.

(2) Nothing in subsection (1) shall affect the liability of a person
to pay fees or expenses to a licensee in respect of the acquisition of
any land where the licensee has been retained by the person to
acquire such land and does not also act, in respect of such acquisition,
on behalf of the person from whom the land is acquired.

So from reading the relevant sections in the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 charging a tenant an administration fee would be illegal.

Prospects not Tenants

It however does not state if charging a potential tenant would be illegal i.e a person who views a property but fails to proceed into a lease.

A PSR representative quotes “As you may know, the interpretation of the law is a matter for the Courts. I am not aware of any Court action in relation to alleged contraventions of section 90 of the Act so cannot give you references to same. Section 90 refers to tenants (not prospective tenants) and it would be a matter for the Courts to interpret if prospective tenants should have the same rights.”

Charging tenants to view a property

You currently show potential tenants a lot of property with only a small percentage converting into becoming a tenant. Depending on your location some tenants may only view one property with you, so why would a tenant pay to view a property? Unless they are desperate I cannot see this ever happening and would see it as a disastrous business decision.

Receiving an Offer

This is an area where I personally feel along with other agents that there is the ability to charge an administration fee. This is how it works in other markets such as in the UK. If at any stage the tenant pulls out or has given misleading or false information about his/her references that the administration fee is charged. However if the tenant proceeds to sign a lease the fee be refunded in full.

Agent’s comments on this

“I think the fee could be refunded to the tenant if he/she takes a property from the agent. If however he/she is looking through various apartments with several agents then the fee should be retained for administration charges”

“In some respects it is a business crime not to charge tenants fees, especially if they walk away for he deal before signing, as can happen. Absolutely the norm in the UK for the tenants to be charged admin/credit check fees. Also very interesting that many tenants coming into Dublin from overseas expect they will be charged? I’m asked the question regularly! Would love to see it become standard industry practice.”

Charging Prospects

There is also the argument that by charging a tenant you are double charging the landlord.

Agent’s comments on this

“The landlord is king and pays a fee to find a tenant, charging a tenant could be the difference between an empty property or an occupied property as some tenant may avoid the agency solely because of this if I was the paying landlord I would not be happy and would seek another agency.”

“I feel that we get our fees from the Landlord so there is no reason to charge tenants as well. There are enough charges without adding“

Mid lease expenses

When managing some properties having fees in place will help with the overall costs associated with managing the property. These fees can be avoided however for example where a tenant consistently lodges rent in cash into an office or bank then a charge is incurred. Most banks charge approx .5% on all cash deposits so for the average agent this is 10% of your fee gone on bank charges.

Agent’s comments on this

“The reason we started was because Bank Charges are crazy and tenants even though they are asked to never transfer the funds but bring in the deposits/rents into office. This is causing higher bank charges and we have passed it on as we cannot afford to carry this cost. It is a small cost €30 for them to bare and to this date we have never received a negative comment.”

Check out these blogs on rent collection “costs of lodging rents” & “How to collect rent”

“I do have in my lease a 300.00 charge held from the deposit should the tenant break their lease which is very effective. It covers re letting costs as well as PRTB charge etc.”

Membership Fees

Even though the wording of the act states that you cannot pass on any fees to tenants some agencies charge fees. These agents call these fees “membership fees”

Agents Comments on this

“We charge this for each tenancy and at the renewal stages also now. It is an administration charge or a membership charge as such. This is only charged to residential tenants. These charges pay for reference checks, changing utilities, bank fees etc all the way to providing a character reference at the end of the tenancy.”

The Results

Well its clear to see there is a huge appetite from agents to start to charge tenants fees. 69% of letting agents who answered this survey are either planning to or willing to if other agents start to charge.

Analysis

So by charging prospective tenants at any point prior to them actually becoming a tenant is from my understanding the only way to work inside the act. Charging tenants for optional expenses incurred though out the lease term once highlighted within the lease may be the only other option as highlighted with banking fees above.

I am only opening the debate on whether letting agents should charge a fee or not, I am not in a position to legally advise any letting agent. If you are looking to increase your revenue but not looking to charge tenants fees here is a list of 30 free ways to market to landlords

Your Thoughts

What is your thoughts on tenants fees in Ireland. Are you a letting agent, landlord or a tenant who would like to share your opinion and open a discussion on this important subject.