Almost every small business now has an online presence, and for property managers it should be no different.
The past 10 or so years have seen a massive shift in the way consumers shop and interact with local businesses. Market share has gone to those who have adapted quickly and businesses have had to follow the trends or miss out.
In order for your property management company to grow and prosper, using the right content marketing strategies shouldn’t be ignored, even if you are getting a late start in the game, or just now starting a property management business.
With all the information they need at the click of a mouse, property owners can easily research, compare services, and make decisions all online. The businesses with the best content strategies are often the ones that get found and win the prize – new clients!
Websites are like a digital shopfront where property owners will go to research their choices before they make a decision to hire a property manager. Therefore, it makes sense to have a solid content marketing plan in place – among other lead generation ideas like the ones listed here – so that your customers can see what you have to offer, research your services, and make decisions based on the information you provide.
Here is how you can attract more clients and grow your business using content the right way:
- Understand the Purpose of a Content Strategy and Set Goals
The purpose of content is to inform, persuade and educate a specific group of people. This means that you need to understand who you are trying to reach (property owners and tenants in your local market). Your goal is to persuade them to take action and to choose your business rather than a competitor’s. To achieve this, you need to have a content strategy in place that provides them with value and guides them through the process of making decisions and taking action.
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When you know who your audience is, you need to identify your marketing goals. This is an important step because unless you know what your goals are, your content will miss the target. Your goals will be specific to your business but could include such things as using content marketing to grow your email list, provide value to your existing customers, or reach out to potential new customers.
You will have potential clients in different parts of the marketing funnel at any given time, and each of them will be looking for different types of content that you should create to reel them in, such as:
- The initial research stages: Property owners or investors are looking for answers to questions about what a property manager does, and other questions about specific services and details. You can attract these searchers by creating content with answers to common questions like tenant screening, evictions, and other services you offer.
- The decision stage: Property owners who are ready to hire a company and are now looking into comparing company pricing, online reviews, and what services are including in your property management plans. You can attract these property owners by creating in-depth information about property management in your city, building out detailed pricing and service plan pages, showcasing your positive reviews online, etc.
- Provide Real Value In Your Content
Good content always provides value to the end user. Unique content that meets a need, answers questions or provides direction helps to establish your property management business as a trustworthy and credible source of information in the local market. This is the first step in building a relationship that may lead to a future client. If your business is the go-to place when someone wants information, they are more likely to choose you as the go-to place when they are ready to sign up for rental management services.
You should plan to create quality content on a regular basis. Post it regularly but without doing it so often that it becomes annoying. You will turn your customers away if you are posting too frequently. Also, if you need to choose between posting sub-par content more often or posting better content less often, choose the latter.
- Solid Local SEO Strategies
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been a hot topic for a long time as businesses try to keep pace with changes in the industry and search engines. But a solid local SEO strategy is an honest one with no gimmicks, tricks, or ways to beat the system. Providing good quality content with specific keywords that match your business is still the best long-term strategy. How you use your keywords is important too, as search engines will penalize you if you use them too frequently or in an abnormal way within your content.
Don’t forget about the end user in your quest for a great SEO outcome. Your content should still be user-friendly and offer value to your audience. A good strategy is to first create content that is relevant and useful and provides a call to action. You can optimize it for specific keywords later.
You should also make sure to increase your business exposure locally by creating business profiles and listings on popular places like Google My Business, Yelp, Bing, and then work to optimize your listings over time.
- Get on Social Media Channels
Social media plays a huge role in a content strategy – but not every channel is equal. Some will suit your business better than others. It also depends where your target property owners or investors hang out – there is no point using Snapchat if your audience is more professional and prefers LinkedIn, for example. Try a few different platforms and see what works best. You will soon get a feel for where you should be spending most of your social media time and focus.
- Email Marketing
Email marketing is a long-term proposition, as it takes time to gain your customers’ confidence and build a list. But as every marketer will tell you, it is worth the time and effort. Your email list will be your most valuable customers. They already bought into your message and trust your business, for one reason or another. Now, you just have to persuade them to take the next step. You can use an email list to provide value in the form of a newsletter, share your content, or keep in touch about upcoming promotions or trends in the local rental market.
- Evaluate Your Success and Metrics
It sounds like basic advice, but it’s easy to put a lot of thought into creating content without checking in on how it’s performing over time. An easy way to do this is to perform the same check at the same time each week or month so that you get a reliable picture of what is happening.
By connecting your website to tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, you will be able to monitor the most important statistics like search rankings, search views, clicks, and website visit durations so you can understand what is working and what isn’t. This will help you adjust your focus and spend more time on the type of content that is working, or even enhance the best content that is performing well.
If you pay attention to these strategies for content marketing and implement them to your best ability, you will be able to use them for growing your business and see results that will be worth the effort it takes.
