As you probably know, Winter isn't the hottest season for multifamily property owners in terms of new customers. We're not going to analyze this in depth here, but let's just say people don't like moving when it's cold out, and school already started.
With the Covid pandemic severely limiting social activities, we thought we'd find a silver lining in this downtime, and find opportunities to invest minimal resources into future prosperity. Time is precious in the rental/multifamily industry, so we'd like ot help you make the most of it.
We’ve put together and would like to share with you our year's end Marketing Checklist for owners of apartments and multifamily properties. Complete each of these tasks while you’ve got the extra time, and you’ll have a great head start in the coming year:
1. Reevaluate Your Marketing Channels
You now have access to more channels than ever before to reach your potential clients and tenants. With so many different options, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You want to make sure you spend your time and money on the most impactful channels and tactics. What’s important isn’t focusing on every new channel. It’s focusing on the right channels to maximize the growth of your business.
• Social media: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
• Print marketing: ads, magazines, brochures, etc.
• Email marketing: email signatures, banners, newsletters, etc.
• Websites: Your own website
• Referral channels: Directories, websites that reference your page/company, etc.
• SEO: Appropriate title tags, meta descriptions, keywords, etc.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing
Take the time to trace back where your past leads came from, prioritize the channels that delivered the most leases, and eliminate the channels that didn’t.
2. Analyze This Year's Web Traffic
Google Analytics is a free industry standard and very useful tool for tracking numbers and sources of visitors to your website. If you haven't yet, setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console are a fundamental step in your marketing strategy as they are the basis for tracking your future progress.
Review the reports and see the months you had spikes in web visitors, and which months were slower, – this will help you determine your busy and slow seasons, and adjust strategies accordingly.
3. Prepare a Marketing Budget
To find a new tenant for the property, prospective tenants need to know that your unit is available. It means that you must advertise your vacancy. Digital advertising and marketing requires investment, and a good strategy is to establish a general budget for the year ahead. When doing so, refer to the information you've gathered from Google Analytics and dynamically adjust the budget for each month, investing more in marketing during periods when you’ll need more demand (slow season), and lowering spending during the busy season.
4. Test Your Website
All of your marketing efforts and digital advertising strategies most likely drive people to one place - your website. You can have the most effective marketing in the world, but if it drives customers to a website that not up to par with industry standards, – it can be a waste of time and money.
Your website is the most important and influential marketing tool for gaining leads and leases. Test your website’s performance with the following free tools:
• Google's PageSpeed Insights
• Pingdom Tools Test
• RentVision's SiteScore is aimed specifically at websites for rental properties and may give you the most valuable insight
5. Media Library
Prospective tenants love visuals - it's difficult to overestimate the importance of good quality pictures that paint the complete picture of your property's feel and vibe in the mind of someone who's never been there in person.
You can do it yourself if you have the skills, or hire a professional team. Depending on your marketing budget, you can start with a basic package that includes clean, crisp, and well lit scenes from the property. This should be affordable for anyone, and there is no reason to not have those up on your website. Able to spend more? Hire a media professional to shoot a video from a drone, and put together a virtual reality 3D walkthrough tour. Now that people are forced to make decisions often without actually ever stepping onto the property due to public health restrictions, these interactive bells and whistles that once may have seemed redundant are gaining legitimacy and usefulness.
6. Be Prepared for a Potential Vacancy Crisis
What month this past year did you sign the most leases? Circle it on the calendar for the upcoming year. Make preparations now for that time period when they’ll expire so you can address a potential vacancy crisis, preferably in advance.
7. Year-End Survey
A tenant survey is a great way to show that you care, but also to solicit valuable information from an inherently reliable source. But don’t ask too many questions, or you just might scare and deter people from answering. In fact, we came up with a few sample tenant questions to get you started. You’ll want a mix of yes/no, short answer and rating (e.g., on a scale from 1 to 10) questions. Mixing up the types of questions will make the survey more interesting and hopefully increase the number of responses.
• How did you find us?
• What attracted you to the property or community?
• How would you rate (insert a specific part or aspect, these can be anything from locks and windows to parking and common areas)?
• Is there a feature or amenity that would be worth a small increase in rent?
• Are maintenance requests handled well by the management?
• Is the tenant portal easy to navigate?
You can offer incentives for tenants who fill out and return the surveys, such as gift cards, small bluetooth speakers, earbuds, etc.
8. Think About and Chisel Out Your Marketing Message
Take everything that you've learned from the above steps, and with that in mind re-read your community's current pitch. Does it make sense? Does it reach and resonate with the target demographic?
You can find an internet forum, or a social media group, where you can solicit opinions and criticism from marketers and advertisers often for free. Post your current slogan and let people who don't know you tell you honestly if it works for them. You will likely get valuable advice on how to adjust it if it's not perfect.
9. Digital Leasing Experience
As people look to their smartphones and tablets to access information in real time, it’s no surprise that digital leases are replacing paper documents as the new normal. A digital signature offers a quicker, more convenient way to get the keys to a new rental, but it sometimes leaves property owners hanging with an unread document … and an uninformed tenant.
More renters feel comfortable with self-guided, virtual tours, and electronic signings in their leasing process. Do you have these options available? If so, you need to get the word out about how you’ve made renting an apartment easier.
10. Maintain Retention Rates
Plan ahead a series of engaging community events for your residents, as well as outreach opportunities for potential residents. Make your current residents feel appreciated and comfortable - this can go a long way in terms of any potential issue resolutions, but also it's great for word of mouth marketing.
Promoting a welcoming culture impacts your retention rates and reputation way beyond your current tenants. In general, someone who's renting from you now telling their friends or acquaintances about how convenient and pleasant their experience is - is the most effective marketing, that is also virtually free.
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Let Mega Supply Pro handle your construction purchasing and deliveries. At no extra cost. Contact us to discuss your project or to get a quote.