When you think of property management advertising, what crosses your mind? Do you still use “For Rent” signs, classified ads in the local newspaper, or nothing at all? What kind of response rates do you get and how do you manage all of the phone calls requesting more information and property showings? If this sounds like the typical time-consuming and expensive way that your property management advertising has been done in the past, we have some great news for you! We’ve recently started offering a new feature that will allow easy advertising of your rental properties across many of the most popular rental listing websites on the Internet.

Just how does this work?

It’s simple! With only one button click from your E-Rental Tools account, our “Advertise” feature pushes your property information to over 10 websites such as apartments.com, zillow.com, padmapper.com, and others where they will be featured in searches when potential renters are looking for properties on the Internet. Property information including your amenities, photos, availability dates, a more will be sent overnight to these websites and your ads will be up and running within a day. If a renter likes your property, they can easily contact you through a contact form and you will get an email with their information. At your leisure, you can determine if they are a good fit for your rental.

What are the costs and how long does my advertisement run for?

For each unit that you advertise, the listing will be shown for 30 days at a time and can be turned off with one click whenever you choose, for example if you rent your property or will be out of the office. Our listing costs are very competitive and are just a fraction of what you would pay to advertise on each of these websites individually. You won’t have to worry about looking for your credit card each time you want to advertise since we automatically charge your credit card on file for each 30-day period that you choose to advertise for. Sounds easy enough, right? Rental advertising has never been so simple, just click a button on your E-Rental Tools website and let the renters find your property listing with ease.

Contact us today to take advantage of this new feature and to learn more about how you can simplify your property management advertising efforts. We are sure you will see better property management advertising results with less time and effort than how you have advertised in the past. What are you waiting for, take advantage of this great new feature today and see just how easy it can be to advertise your properties across the Internet.

So you are using rental property management software to run your business and list your properties. You’re able to find qualified renters, but the process is taking more time and effort than you would like. You believe there might be a problem with your online property listings, but you aren’t quite sure how to make them better. If that scenario has crossed your mind, there are a few simple steps you can take to improve the quality of your listings and make them much more appealing. How can I easily do this you might be asking, well read on!

Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

As you’ve heard many times before. a picture is truly worth a thousand words. The first thing a renter typically looks at are pictures of the property to determine if they are interested. It’s definitely worth the time and effort to take at least three or more great pictures to post to your website and also include a video walkthrough. While you can use your cell phone for this, typically the quality is not good enough to really create professional looking photography. We suggest investing in a good digital camera that takes excellent pictures and can also record video that you can post to YouTube if your rental property management software supports this.

Create a Description That Sells

Does your description really sell the property? Does it make a prospective tenant get that warm, fuzzy feeling that this property speaks to them and could be their next home? If not, it may be time to rethink how you’re writing property descriptions. We suggest using an upbeat and friendly tone that generates excitement and has a great call to action to create urgency to come see the property. Also, make sure you accurately list all of the amenities in your rental property management software so that renters get the full picture and you don’t end up attracting someone who has a pet but you forgot to check the “No Pets” box.

Don’t Forget Social Media

When you list a property for rent, does it just sit on your website or do you actively post a link to Facebook and Twitter to advertise that a new listing is available? It only takes a few clicks on Facebook to post a link and is very easy to sow the virtual seeds for your property listings. We strongly suggest using Facebook since it supports pictures and can be easily passed on from one person to another or through “Liking” your property listing. If you aren’t taking advantage of these tools, we highly suggest that you try it out and invest the time to learn how they work with your rental property management software to more easily advertise your properties.

Why is the rental process so painful for many property managers? Writing up “For Rent” advertisements, posting online and print ads and signs, and controlling costs are no easy task. If these advertisements are not reaching the right renters, it may feel like the whole process is just a lot of wasted time. We feel that there is a way to make the process easier by taking the time to identify the tenants who would react best to your advertising and marketing, and that apartment management software can help to streamline the rental process and take much of the burden off of property managers. In this post we will discuss what you can do to identify and advertise to the tenant who would most likely want to rent your property.

Step #1: Identify Your Ideal Tenant

The first step in the process is to understand what we call the “ideal tenant” for your rental and segment them into groups so that you can advertise to them most effectively. What do they do with their time? Where do they hang out? What newspapers and websites do they use? Going through a brainstorming process to identify these traits can help so that you better spend your time on reaching tenants where they are most likely to be. For example, if you manage rentals in a college town your ideal tenant would probably be college students, 18-25 years old, attending the university, that read the college newspaper and website. You can get as detailed as you want to help target these renters as precisely as possible.

Step #2: Advertise Where They Hang Out

Now that you have identified your ideal tenant, ask yourself where they are most likely going to see your rental advertisement. In the example in step #1, we identified that they read the college newspaper and website so this would be a great place for you to advertise your rentals. Also, be sure to keep in mind how can you adjust the wording of your advertisement to appeal to them. Your apartment management software may allow you to advertise only to certain websites, for example to Craigslist.com which can also help to target your demographic. If you are in a high foot traffic area maybe a “For Rent” sign would be a candidate. Or, if your ideal renter only reads the newspaper then that would be the way to go.

Step #3: Use Metrics to Track Progress

What good is a strategy if you can’t determine if it’s effective or not? Keeping good metrics is important to understand how well your advertising campaign is working and is important to make sure you aren’t wasting time and money in the wrong places. If you use online contact forms on your website, a great way to keep track of how your tenants found your rental is to include a field on the page to ask how they found your site when they fill out the form. Your apartment management software may also be able to track keywords to your website so that you can get a better understanding of what search terms are being used to find your website through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

These three steps should lay a good foundation for you to begin to get a better understanding of who your renters are and how to best reach them for the least amount of cost and also determine how effective your efforts are. How do you plan to better understand and target new renters?

Much can be said for having a good looking website and its ability to attract the right renters for your business.  How much thought have you given to branding, advertising and marketing, and the overall look and feel of your company to create the right impression you want to present to the world?  In this post we will discuss website design and help you understand the importance of advertising, marketing, and branding to better see how they work hand-in-hand to affect your business.

Reason #1: Creates a Great First Impression

More than ever, renters are beginning their search for apartments on the internet.  If you don’t have a web presence yet or your website was designed years ago and is looking stale, you are probably missing out on a large pool of technology-savvy renters that are influenced by how your website looks.   As an example of how look and feel plays an important role, think of how Apple Computer has risen to dominance by building great looking and easy to use products.  You may be thinking, “I’m just a property management company, not Apple!”, but in many cases your website is the first impression your renters have of your business.  If they see an old, out of date, and unmaintained website the high-quality renters you want may look to your competitor who has that snazzy new website.  When it comes to technology, it only takes 2-3 years for a product to become obsolete so staying up to date and making use of new technology is important.

Take-away: Great property management website design plays a key role in convincing these renters to look at your company instead of your competitors. 

Reason #2:  Improves Advertising and Marketing Reach

Imagine this scenario: one of your apartments becomes available for rent, you post that is vacant to your social media enabled website, and you almost immediately have potential renters contacting you about showings.  Does this sound far-fetched?  With the increase in use of social media and the connectedness of the internet, we’ve seen many forward-thinking property managers use this strategy and rent their properties much more easily with a lot less cost.  New advertising and marketing tools like QR codes, Facebook and Twitter, and text messaging all help to spread the word about your business much faster than was possible even a few years ago.  You may have tried some of these tools or just don’t see the benefit, but believe us when we say that it is there for property managers who can use it effectively.

Take-away: Using new social media tools helps to advertise your business and market your properties much more easily that was possible before and for a lot less cost.

Reason #3: Builds Your Brand

While you may have not given much thought to developing your brand and what it stands for, branding is as important to attracting renters.   Taking the time to build your brand so that renters can relate to you and want to rent your properties is worth the effort.  To further explain why, think of a brand you admire.  What does using this brand mean to you?  How does it make you feel?  Would you recommend it to others and what would you say about it?  Think about how these questions you asked yourself relate to your business and use them to mold your brand's image.  

Take-away: Branding is important to develop the right image that you want renters to see of your company and plays a role in generating new business and referrals.

These three reasons we’ve discussed just touch on the subject of how property management website design plays a role to create the right impression of your business that impacts your advertising and marketing and helps to build your brand image.  How much though have you given to the importance of having great property management website design for your business?

Just how easy is it for a renter to find my properties on the Internet?  This is a question we have been asked many times from our clients as they look to understand how well their paid and non-paid property advertising efforts are working for them.  As anyone who has done any internet advertising knows, these costs are both expensive and time consuming - and money doesn’t grow on trees.  So just how can a property manager find out if their advertising is working for them?

Fortunately, our diverse customer base allows us to speak with many property managers to understand and develop best practices for advertising online.   To help answer this question for our clients, we have been working to develop a method to help our property managers best allocate their advertising dollars.  We’ve coined this term “Propability”, and define it as: the ability of a property to be easily found on the internet and to attract well-qualified renters.   Propability should be an important consideration to take into account for any property advertising and marketing that you plan to do.

What Determines Propability?

• Ad Content - Does your ad’s content sound professional and does it entice the renter to continue reading to learn more about your rental?  The better the content, the more engaged your ad reader will be.   This also includes correcting spelling and grammar errors that can make your business look unprofessional.

• Photos, Video, and Floor plans - These are probably the most important, since as the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words.  Do you take professional looking pictures of your properties?  Do you have 360 degree views, great lighting, high quality video walkthroughs, and include floorplans?

• Keyword Tagging - Property listing websites and search engines rely on specific search terms that help renters to find properties that interest them.  Are you using the right terms to find a great match for your property?

• Web Search - Rentals typically aren’t listed long enough to be indexed by Google and Bing, but the website that you list your properties on is very important.   Listings on high-quality websites are going to have a higher number of renters and will drive more traffic to view your rental.  Also, don’t forget about using niche websites if you have unique properties such as luxury apartments or vacation rentals.

• Social Media - The use of social media websites and tools such as Facebook, twitter, and Google+ are great ways for your rental to quickly and easily spread among groups.  For example, a Facebook “like” of your rental can quickly lead to hundreds or even thousands of people seeing your property.  This also helps to build brand recognition for your business.  We believe social media will continue to become more important over time as an advertising mechanism.

• Linkability - An important tie-in to social media is how linkable your property is so that a renter can save it for later or send to another person.  Do you offer social media buttons, emailing of property listings, and the ability for a renter to print or save properties for later without having to do a new search?

In the coming months, we will be publishing more information on propability and how it can help your business, and also discuss how we plan to integrate propability into the E-Rental Tools property management software package.

Any others we’re missing that are important to your property advertising?