How letting agents should use Facebook

Many letting agents and property management companies use Facebook but they do not use it correctly in my opinion. In a previous blog post on how letting agents should not use Facebook I discussed this and there reach. So now lets look at how letting agents should use Facebook.

Facebook Reach

To quickly summorise what Facebook reach is ” The total number of unique people who saw your content in their News Feed, ticker or on your Page” , this is really important for your account because lets face it your posting content to be seen.

Here are 5 ways how letting agents should use Facebook

1. Engage with your tenants.

I must admit I love how the guys over at Walton Robinson engage with tenants on their Facebook page. They take a picture of new tenants who collect keys for a property with their company logo and then tag them in the image. They are actually building their audience through their new tenants by asking them to like them. Then once they are tagged their friends congratulate them on the move etc. It appears their main tenant market is students, so by the students friends viewing the image they can see that the agency are student rental friendly.

TOP MARKS

2. Engage with your landlords

There is a couple of ways to do this and there is many companies that are good at it, I haven’t come across many letting agencies that do it great. (if your agency is on Facebook why not like our page and I can check you guys out) One company which I am a fan of is The City Bin Company. They post testimonials on their website which promotes their main message as having excellent customer service. My opinion on this is that it encourages others to send similar positive messages. As more people like the posts the higher the reach of the post will become which feeds to more testimonials etc… Nice trend going 😉 Top Marks

There is also a star rating widget that Facebook allow page visitors to rank. As your page fans or customers rank you with stars you get to show off your star ranking… Aim for 5 Stars.

Testimonials left from landlords on your Facebook page for your letting agency is a great way to build your portfolio.

3. Engage through comedy

Facebook posts which hold an image is much more likely to get a thumbs up in the form of a like, a share or a comment etc and guess what this builds your reach. I must admit the guys over at The City Bin Co do this really well.

This particular post had over 100 shares and 150 likes so you could imagine what the reach is. Any coincidence they have over 7,000 fans.. I think not

4. Ask questions through postings

Rather then just posting a status update and expect a like, post a question and expect a comment. By doing this you are engaging with your fans and opening up the possibility to conversation. Remember its called social media so make sure your social. If you want to bring the possibility of engagement up further include an image and post a question, this really works well once its original. Many property companies and portals post unusual and luxury images with a question to open engagement. Below is an image from the UK’s property portal NeedAProperty facebook page, as you can see this simple question got over 200 likes, over 20 shares and multiple comments.

NB. Its very important to be creative here and looking up “luxury properties” on Google and posting them to your Facebook is not the most creative so don’t expect miracles.

TIP. I would highly recommend that once you are out taking marketing snaps of a property look for something quirky, unique or luxurious at your property. Take a picture, think of a witty comment along with a question and post it. This way you are opening engagement and listing a property.

Remember don’t just list every property you are marketing as your fans wont engage and your post reach will reduce.

5. Engage with other local businesses

If your in property your more then likely dealing with a specific locality, within this locality are a lot of other businesses. A high percentage of this population at some point will either be personally looking or have a close friend who is looking to rent or rent out a property. By engaging with other businesses in your locality your brand will start to be recognized by the community in your locality.

NB. So its quite simple the more of a contributor you are to social media the more you will get from social media.

TIP. Look for other local businesses with a Facebook page, like the page and start engaging.

PLEASE don’t spam as its the quickest way your community will hesitate in connecting with you.

Facebook and social media should be part of your overall marketing strategy. Dont expect to receive a flood of calls over night but do expect if you things correctly to do more business in the near future.

February 5, 2014

How to use Google Keyword Planner for your property management company

Google Keyword planner for your property management company

Using Google keyword planner is an excellent way to start off your SEO strategy. Google Keyword planner allows you to see what search terms are being searched for on a monthly average. You can be very specific and break this down by regions such as country and county.

Image credit Michael Wolf

Who is your target market

The very first step in your SEO or SEM plan is to understand who your target market is.

If you are like most letting agents or property managers in any town or city you are most likely struggling to find new landlords and rental properties and have ample tenants on your tenant database. So if this is the case your target market should be landlords. Your content marketing within the site should be aimed at landlords

What are the search terms that landlords use?

Put yourself in the landlord’s shoes and type into Google what you think they would search for in order to employ a letting agency or property management company. As you do this make sure to localise it to a particular market so for example use “property Management London”, this is the type of term that a landlord would normally only search for. These search terms are called long tail keywords search terms and by using these within your site you are more likely to attract your target market.

Examples of Search terms

Below is a graph which illustrates search terms.

Property = 165,000 monthly searches. High volume monthly searches which can generate non qualified visitors. While this will look good on your Google analytics it wont look good when it comes to converting traffic to customers.

Property Management = 60,500 monthly searches. The visitor should be more interested in your service but if the visitor has a property in Newcastle and you operate in London then its not so good

Property Management London = 720 monthly searches. The visitor is most likely looking for a property management company in London and if this is the area you cover your visitor can convert into a customer.

Examples of long tail keywords landlords use

Property management company in London
Management agent in London

If you wish to receive a full list of landlord search terms for your area please email andreas@rentview.com

TIP

In a previous blog post I discussed writing content for your pocket not your ego, what I mean by this is do not try to write content just because it gets 165,000 searches a month.

Google Keyword Planner

Using Google keyword planner is an excellent way to start off your SEO strategy. Google Keyword planner allows you to monthly search volume of specific search terms. You can be very specific and break this down by regions such as country city, town etc.

Multiply Keywords

A really nice feature I am very fond of using is the multiply keywords section, here you can insert multiple keywords and include multiple areas. Google will then give you a return of average monthly search history assorted by volume, by having this detail you can then plan what content your property management or letting agency website should have in order to attract your target market.

So if you are like most property management companies and letting agencies looking to make their letting agency website convert more landlords from visitors look at your long tail keywords.

January 30, 2014

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

December 12, 2013

Email marketing landlords

Email Marketing landlords

Finding it hard to find new landlords? Well you will be glad to know that you are not the only agent out there, it’s the BIGGEST challenge facing letting agents in the rental and letting industry today. If we look at the rental stats today you will see rents are rising…. Why? Simple its supply and demand.

Finding Landlords

Tenants are staying in properties longer and as a result marketing to landlords has become harder. Where can you find landlords? Where can you market to landlords? How can you find new landlords?

These are typically the questions on the edge of each letting agents tongues right now.

Repeat Business

The answer to your problems is most likely with your current database of landlords and their circles. A great way of building your portfolio is by reaching out to previous customers with a promotion and reason to do business with your agency. This can be done through email marketing landlords.

Reason’s to do business

Reasons to do business… also known as a closing tool. This is what will make your landlords & vendors commit to doing business with you. We can either add value or decrease fees. In my opinion adding value is better for your agency as your retaining high revenue and giving additional service. While reducing your fees is a great way to get business on you may end up doing twice the amount of work to get the same profit.

Examples of a closing tool for a letting agent

Increased Value – A very popular closing tool which will increase revenue in the long term is offering free property management with every letting to include rent collection*. Limit this to 4 months for example and place in your terms of engagement that this must be cancelled with 30 days notice. As you are already collecting the rent collecting your fee is simple… You get paid when the landlord does. Having a property management software which allows landlord transparency is a real great way to increase value also.

Reducing Fee’s – As discussed above you may end up doing twice the amount of work for the same revenue but some landlords are very price sensitive and without a monetary reason they will not consider you as a solution in letting, managing or selling their property. The key here is to offer such a good service that repeats business is guaranteed. An example of this would be daily deal sites where the product or service being sold is not achieving a profit but the repeat business at list price will make up for it.

How to market to repeat landlords

Email marketing landlords is a really great way to build business. I would highly recommend looking into Mailchimp as an easy solution to email marketing.

Use mailchimp when email marketing to landlords

Email Marketing landlords through Mailchimp

You can create an email marketing template through Mailchimp and upload your previous email lists easily*.

Reasons for sending email

When sending email marketing landlords its always good to have a reason for sending them an email. For example if its Christmas you could send Christmas Greetings with a gift of “Reduced Fees”or “free property management”. We use the Christmas greeting as the reason to email and the hook for your business is the closing tool.

Subject line’s

If your subject line is not appealing you wont even have your previous landlord or vendors open the email. Think of the marketing emails you receive and which ones you open… OK so I have you thinking, what subject line do you think will make your landlords and vendors open your marketing email?

Take a look at this blog from Mailchimp on What are the best subject lines

email marketing subject lines — Subject lines define what emails get open

Call to Action

Your “Call to Action” is what you want your landlords & vendors to click on. Make sure this stands out within the email as this is the whole reason you are sending this as you want to gather details of who is interested in your services. Take a look at some examples of call to actions on this blog.

Designing your email template

You can send a plain text email when email marketing landlords or a fancy email with built in images. The fancy design will most likely have you engaging the services of a designer but will work a lot better in converting client’s especially if your mail is a Christmas greeting.

landlrord email makreting template — Example of a landlord email marketing template

Conversion Ratio on email marketing landlords

Well that’s what its all about, call it your ROI (return on investment), number of clicks, enquiries etc. Typically speaking you can expect to get 1 in 4 opening your email and anywhere between 0.5% – 1.5% following through with a call to action; ie enquiring further details.

What does that mean in Revenue

Well if you are marketing to 300 landlords and your average fee is £750, you can expect 75 landlords to open your email and to get 3 new listings from this which would mean £2250 in new business.

Start email marketing landlords

Its quite simple, set up a Mailchimp account for free, import your contacts, create a template, fill in the text and send it.. Or seek the assistance of the professional team here at Rentview , info@rentview.com who can do it for you 😉

November 6, 2013

How a great Letting agency website can convert your landlord

Letting agency website design

A great letting agency website design is a must for any letting agency wishing to capture leads from landlords or vendors searching locally for the right company or individual to rent or sell their property. I would go as far as to say that this is pivotal for your letting agency because in some instances, it is the first time your potential client will have come across your services, team, testimonials, listings and story.

40% of clients accessing your letting agency website will be from a mobile.

Since the launch of the iPhone 3 in 2007, accessing the internet from a Smartphone has become more and more popular. Our mobile internet usage statistics on letting agents or estate agents state that 40% of users will access your website via a mobile or smartphone. This is a significant amount of users searching for your letting agency or landing on your website checking out your services.

Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales and mobile internet usage is predicted to overtake desktop usage by 2014 – meaning mobile searches will soon overtake desktop searches. This is why it is so important that your website is responsive and fits to every screen.

If you have a letting agency website which was designed over 3 years ago, then your website is most likely not designed for mobile access. This move to mobile has happened rapidly.

letting agency website design mobile iPhone — Letting agency website design needs to look good on mobile too!

So what is responsive website design?

Responsive web design is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices. In plain English, it makes it possible for your website to be viewed easily on any device. See the full Wiki on responsive web design here.

Since the world and its mother are now connected to their smartphones or tablets, it makes sense to design your website using a responsive design. Twitter bootstrap is a free front-end framework given to the web development community to use when developing a responsive design. See the history of twitter bootstrap here.

When developing a letting agency website it is important that you develop a responsive design to cater for access from other devices. A stat compiled by Hubspot states 46% of visitors are unlikely to return to a mobile site if it didn’t work properly during the last visit.

Google Search Engine

Google dominate the search engine market with over 60 per cent share in the market. Google states that responsive web design is its recommended mobile configuration. They unsurprisingly refer to responsive web design as industry best practice. When developing a well-structured letting agency website it is good to keep Google local search and Google Places for business in mind. For more on these see here.

Simple minimalistic design is best

Although we now have access to more information than ever before, we seem to have less time to absorb information as our lives have also become busier. It is easy to believe that our attention span is getting so short it will be like a fish soon! Current statistics state that visitors to your website will spend an average of just 1 minute scanning your web pages for content and headline text which they are looking for.

Your website should act as your spanking clean virtual office with all the relevant things in place for when a landlord or vendor walks in enquiring about your services. Imagine a landlord walking into your high street office and the floors are dirty, desk untidy with disorganised staff unable to deal with a query.

Now imagine a landlord or vendor coming into your website and getting the same impression because there is too much content to shift through, too many clicks, no specific calls to actions and no visible testimonials endorsing your service or team.

Social Proof your website – positivity is infectious!

Your website should convey a positive vibrant message throughout. The best way to convey this message is not from the agency itself, but from other Landlords and Tenants who have used your service. The new landlord/tenant will identify with these people who have endorsed your Letting Agency and will develop a confidence in your service before even using it. You can convey the positive feedback from your Landlords/Tenants by:

Displaying recent testimonials
Displaying happy tweets from happy customers
Displaying reviews on Google + from smiling landlords

Simply by showcasing your recent testimonials, reviews or tweets from landlords and vendors will influence new clients to enquire further about your services.

Localised search for local services

Since Google updated its Penguin 2.1 search algorithm they have played a heavy focus on local search. Landlords searching online will be looking locally for the right letting agency to rent or sell their property. A great way to get your website ranked locally is to add your office to google places.

Some points about visitors to your website

– Of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones in use, 1.08 billion are smartphones

– Users will scan your website for relevant content

– Average user will spend 30 seconds on a page

– Strong call to actions are required

It is clear that good letting agency website design will stand to you and your business. If you are interested in our letting agency website design, click here.

October 22, 2013

How to find landlords for your letting agency

“How to find Landlords?” is perhaps the most frequently asked question for all Letting Agents. It is such an important question because new Landlords/property listings are vital to the Letting Agent surviving in today’s competitive market as well as ensuring the business grows.

The answer to this question is not just one simple solution; there are many tools which the Letting Agent can use to find new landlords. Some of these tools have been around for many years and very popular while other tools such as SEO marketing, while in existence for some time have not been embraced by the masses yet within the lettings industry. Today’s Letting Agent needs to embrace all of the tools at his/her disposal; otherwise opportunities for new business are unnecessarily missed. Give yourself the best chance – don’t limit yourself or your business by not using the following tools:

How to find landlords using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

With the explosion of Smartphone use and better broadband connection speed over the last couple of years, we are increasingly connected to the internet. With Google being the no 1 search engine to find local based letting agents you need to be found under the keywords your landlords are typing. When thinking about how to find landlords, you must think about how landlords find you in searches.

For instance, if you were based in Manchester and looking to be found under ‘Letting agents Manchester’ you would need do some search engine optimisation on your website for this term in order to direct traffic to your site. This is a very competitive term with 720 searches per month for “Letting agents Manchester”. To put things in perspective for your business; if just 10 of these landlords found your website and only 5 of these 10 landlords signed up for your management fee this could result in over £6000+ in revenue per annum from fees. Optimising is worth the effort.

Adding your business to Google Places for business will help your search engine ranking too! To find out how, click here.

How to find landlords using pay per click advertising on Google

Google adwords allows you to advertise your Letting/ Estate Agency directly to landlords who are looking for Letting Agents using specific search terms. The reason Google is so successful for business is because the user who is typing is usually very close to the point of sale. When a landlord types in a long tail keyword term they are usually really specific about what they are looking for. An example of a long tail keyword is ‘letting agents Birmingham’.

When you are setting up your pay per click Google campaign you should research the keywords you would like to be found under. Google will request you join Google adwords which is free but you may need to sync a credit card with the account. You can then use the google keyword tool planner to see which keywords are being currently used in searches and you can then tailor your campaign around these keywords.

how to find landlords using seo — What Google keyword planner looks like

How to find landlords using Referrals

Receiving a referral from your existing landlords should be an easy process if you have proven your excellent Letting or Management Service to your Landlord. Build on this good working relationship with your landlord by picking up the phone or emailing and checking in with your landlords – don’t be afraid to ask if there are other landlords they may know who would be interested in the same service. Most landlords will know at least one landlord or friend who has a rental property; if you can secure their contact number and reference back the landlord, that’s brilliant.

Offer a deduction on future Lettings or Property Management for landlords who refer you on to other landlords, this is a great way to keep existing business with your current landlords and leverage them for a referral to your existing database. Make sure any deal is in writing and last for a specified period i.e. 1% reductions on management fees for a 12 month term.

How to find landlords using Local Free Newspapers

Local Free Newspapers have a wide readership and are a great way to reach Landlords in your chosen area. These have proven successful for local letting agents for many years but their impact may be on the wane. The Letting Agent can advertise in these papers by

Firstly paying for a banner advertisement.
Secondly the Letting Agent can list the current property listings in the newspaper, although uploading your property to property portals may have replaced this revenue stream for the local newspapers.
Finally the Letting Agent could negotiate with the local paper to do an editorial/advertising feature on the Letting Agency itself.

An editorial gives you the opportunity to showcase the services on offer and also presents the Letting Agency staff to the Landlord, which is the first step in building a relationship with potential Landlords.

How to find landlords using leaflet drop in recent or newly built development

Leaflet drops in new or recent developments can be effective in sourcing new Landlords. With new developments come new Landlords and opportunities for new business. The letting potential for new developments is normally quite good as the properties are usually high spec and will rent quickly to quality tenants. However the cost associated with the leaflet drop should be measured against the return on investment. The leaflet itself be attractive and stimulate interest in the reader. It should contain at least the following:

the company logo & contact details
a picture of the staff or letting agent
outline of services offered
Landlord testimonials
Motivation to take immediate action by highlighting limited special offers

How to find landlords using Property Exhibitions and Work Abroad Exhibitions

Property exhibitions are really relevant to Letting Agents when trying to find new Landlords as the majority of the attendees are property investors keeping up with latest legislation or networking with other property professionals. There are a couple of these show held around the UK each year and would definitely be worth visiting or exhibiting if held close to your market.

Work Abroad Exhibitions although not directly related to the property rental industry are also a good place to engage with potential landlords. With the economic downturn and migration more popular than ever, a portion of the people emigrating are property owners and will have to rent out their UK property whilst they are abroad. These new landlords will not only need a letting service but also a management service. This is another great opportunity for you, the Letting Agent to secure new letting and management clients.

September 26, 2013

Branding

What is branding or brand consolidation? Well it’s an important part of marketing your agency or business so that potential customers identify with and recognise you as a viable option when they need to use your service. Here are some key points to remember about branding your agency:

Logo and tagline

Superman made good use of his logo – make sure people think of you when they see your logo!

It is a good idea to have a solid logo and tagline or strapline, which will help to tie your brand together and tell the consumer what you do in a clear, concise manner. For example, in advertising, we use ‘Rentview- Letting Agency Software‘ because that’s who we are and what we do! Our logo is an open book because our product is all about transparency. It is definitely worth investing in a quality logo design that tells people something about your company values and what you do.

You may want to include your key mission statement or tagline within a logo… but try to keep it relevant.’Always Coca-Cola’ or ‘Share a Coke’ be a recognisable tagline for a brand, but what does it mean? They’re Coca-Cola, they’re established enough to do as they please, for your own business branding, you’re better off being specific. Your tagline needs to make sense, if you are including one. Clarity beats jargon, remember!

Beware though, taglines can sound cheesy to the modern consumer. but if you’re prepared for that and you are clever about your choice of words, they can work really well.

Trust matters

For the letting and property management industry, the core selling point of your business tends to come back to trust. Landlords need to know that you are a responsible agent and that you care about their business beyond their money.

If you can somehow leverage that into your branding, that will be very positive for your marketing in general. Every time some (including potential customers) sees your logo, they will (hopefully) think positively about it, or at least once you have brand consolidation across all advertising, media etc., they will recognise you.

Brand recognition

Brand recognition is another important part of marketing and branding any business, including property. Think about how you can make your brand stand out, do you use the same colours consistently, for example? Particularly in any industry where a service is being provided; in this case lettings and property management, word of mouth or testimonials are the #1 factor that consumers take into account when spending. Therefore, if someone is looking for a particular service and they ask around about who is best to provide it, you want yours to be the brand people recall, recognise and even more, the one they recommend.

The one way to achieve recommendations is to provide good customer service and value to your clients. If you have high standards when running your agency, ask for customer feedback and listen to suggestions, this shouldn’t be a problem.

This is why branding your agency is so important – if you are recognised, you’ll have more authority. No matter if you are an independent agent or large franchise, having a recognisable brand name and logo is key for your marketing strategy to succeed.

September 18, 2013

Your Property blog – a guide to blogging for the property industry

Property blog

BLOGGING GUIDE

For the purposes of connecting with your customers, increasing consumer trust and brand awareness, and also in order to increase your search ranking on Google and other search engines, having a property blog is important to explain about your services and industry to your customers.

How SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) works in terms of property blogging

(or any kind of blogging, for that matter!)

Google takes a variety of factors and data into account when determining how to rank your website; having fresh, good quality content that is updated regularly is one of the most important elements of this.

Some people might be sceptical about writing a property blog, however it can have many benefits for your agency, including:

connecting with your customers
making your agency brand visible
sharing your knowledge
improving your writing skills
enabling you to update clients on what you’re working on
networking with others in the industry

All of this will help you to earn money!

If your stuck on ideas of what to write about in your blog take a look at this – 10 blog topics for your letting agency.

Some tips on writing property blogs

Keep it relevant and short: Ensure you’re writing about what your customers want to know. Note that reading on a screen isn’t as enjoyable as reading on paper, so avoid really long pieces. 1,000 words is a good length to aim for; short pieces of 300 words or so would be perfectly acceptable (and achievable!)
Use bullet points: Bulleted lists are a good way to display the main points of your post.
Keep paragraphs short: due to having to scroll a lot when reading on a screen, paragraphs tend to be shorter so a whole thought can fit in a browser window.
Highlight important points: Online readers tend to skim through pieces, so use bold type for key points so that your readers can easily find the important parts.

Linking

Linking to other sites is also a feature of blogging. Blogs take advantage of the ability to link to other work, either to offer up references for example, if writing about letting agency news, there might be a relevant article on Letting Agent Today so you could embed the link either in anchor text such as ‘relevant article‘ or ‘for a relevant article, click here‘.

Alternatively, you can post the full URL (what what see in your task bar – for this post it should be https://rentview.co/blog/property-blog-guide) but this is sometimes a bit overwhelming on the eye, to use the example above that would look like this:

see this relevant article; http://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/news_features/Rightmove-and-Zoopla-gear-up-for-November-deadline-on-agents-fees

So a little overwhelming, definitely, plus it’s generally considered a little outdated to post full URLs although it can be useful if send plain-text emails for example.

Here’s a quick video guide to hyperlinking in wordpress, the principle is basically the same for all hyperlinking and icon stays the same across platforms and Microsoft Word etc.

You can have internal links , which are links to previous blog posts and external links, which are links to an outside web page. Links can also be used to continue conversations started elsewhere, such as a link to a post on another blog which you are writing a response to.

Creating content

There are many blogs on the Internet, but only a small number of them are truly active. Luckily within the property industry this means you’ll have a better shot at doing well and getting your blogs read and shared – which will be beneficial for your business ultimately. There is a great payoff for a little work. Some blogs don’t survive because people are ‘too busy’ to keep them going, they run out of things to say, or even worse, they feel like they are talking into a void.

Tips to help you maintain your property blog :

Quality content writing – Most importantly you have to write quality content. Who will read your site if you’re writing poorly, or if it’s boring? No one! No one will publish your guest posts, and no one give you backlinks. You’ll be unmotivated to write, because it will feel as though no one is reading what you write, and because you won’t be happy with the quality of the work. This is a recipe for frustration. Remember, you have the knowledge simply from working in the industry, so develop your voice.
Get your blog out there – Let people know you have a blog. Put the URL on your business cards, add it to your email signatures, put it in your profile on social networking sites, include it when you post to forums, and so on.
Schedule for posting- When you begin writing your property blog, commit to posting regularly, be it once a week, or once every two weeks, and make some time in your schedule to do that. When you start out it’s okay to have a low posting rate — if you find you have enough time to post more, it will be a pleasant surprise for your readers (as opposed to the disappointment of readers used to seeing you post every day when you start posting every two weeks).
Brainstorm post ideas – Sit down with a notebook and write out 100 (or whatever you can — but set the bar high) topics you could write about. Even better, create 100 titles of forthcoming posts. You can even go another step and write quick outlines of how the post might look. When you are stuck for something to write about, pull out your notebook and write one from your list.
Stay ahead of schedule – Build up a backlog of three or more posts by writing posts before they’re due to go out. This can be difficult if you’re stuck for time, however it will give you a cushion in case you find yourself stuck for a topic down the road, and you can also use the post scheduling feature included in WordPress.com other blogging platforms such as Blogger to set up posts for the future if you are going to take a break. In wordpress you simply select ‘schedule’ when you’re going to publish a post.
Link to other blogs – When other bloggers see you’ve linked to them, they’ll check you out — and may link back to return the favour. If they link to you, say thanks, courtesy goes a long way.
Network – Comment on other people’s blogs and be active within the blogging community in your niché. People will see your comments and clock the link to find out more about you. Plus, you’ll make friends in your area of interest.
Write a guest post: Check your favourite property-related blogs and check if there is any information about contributing — if you can’t find anything, email the blogger and ask if you can write a guest post for them. This is where networking is important and commenting on blogs matters.

Remember blogging helps people to put a human face on your company and this is important, as trust is a key factor in whether or not someone will hire you to let or manage their property. You or your company will be researched on the Web, and if the searchers don’t find your site, they’ll find what others have said about you — or nothing at all. It’s much better to have autonomy and take control of your online footprint, and a property blog is an easy and cheap way to get started.

So what’s stopping you?

Let us know how you are managing and if you have questions, ask away!