A sure-fire way to gain a regular rental income as a landlord is to reduce your rental vacancies. Tenant turnovers can interrupt your income and cost you time and money as you get your unit ready for new occupants. This is why an effective marketing strategy is essential to making sure your rental is vacant for as short a time as possible.
But marketing a rental property can be a challenge and as a landlord, you want to avoid costly mistakes. With the tips we’ve put together in this article, you can easily sidestep common marketing mistakes and get the best return on your investment.
The Importance of Rental Property Marketing
When you invest in a rental unit, you want to concentrate on marketing your property effectively. You want more exposure to attract and engage the interest of several prospective renters. This way, it’s easier to pick a high-caliber tenant.
Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Below are some of the common rental property marketing mistakes landlords can make:
Under-Planning
For your marketing to be effective, it needs to be focused. Do you know your target market? Have you figured out the best features of your rental unit to highlight as selling points? Do you know which goals you want to achieve when planning your advertising campaign?
Proper strategies are needed to successfully market your rental space. It’s important to keep in mind that without a clear approach, a strategy isn’t likely to yield the best results. That’s why it’s best to plan and analyze your marketing techniques before starting.
Marketing to the Wrong Audience
For your marketing to be successful, you should have an idea of the right demographics to target so you can narrow down their needs and offer solutions. Just picking a general target market can make the least impact and make it challenging to deliver your marketing message.
It’s best to select a particular group to market your property towards. To make sure you’re not marketing to the wrong audience, conducting intensive market research is recommended so you know which market is suitable for your rental space. Once you have a clear idea, you can start brainstorming to attract this target group.
Using Too Many Marketing Tools
With the availability of countless marketing tools, it can become overwhelming to pick a specific one. This can cause you to utilize too many platforms, which results in over-spending.
There are sophisticated and automated tools that can yield a smooth marketing process, but they may also end up being costly in terms of time and money. We recommend choosing a tool or a few, and harnessing it to provide the best results in marketing your rental property.
Working with a Single Marketing Channel or Platform
The distribution of your marketing ad should be strategic. Sticking with only one platform or choosing to advertise entirely offline can be limiting. You want to use plenty of avenues for potential long-term tenants to find your advertised rental space.
Consider choosing a multi-channel approach to yield the most results. One channel may deliver plenty of prospects compared to another one. Your goal should be to widen your reach and attract more candidates as residents for your rental.
Displaying Low-Quality Photos
Since your goal is to advertise your property as widely as possible, you need to make sure the photos you use in marketing your rental space are appealing. You want to offer high-quality images to make a visual impact. This way, you can better appeal to your target market.
Although good marketing copy is vital, photos tend to rank higher. If they fail to elicit a response or a great impression, people can skip property descriptions and scroll to other listings. But if your photos are superior, then you can expect more inquiries and bookings of scheduled property showings.
If you can, consider hiring a professional photographer to take appealing photos of your rental space. Think of it as an investment and you can increase your chances of landing high-quality potential tenants.
Avoiding Marketing Adjustments
As you’re performing marketing, tracking is an important task. Always refer to the results and assess which marketing techniques are better every few weeks. Then carefully make some adjustments to improve your property ads.
If you just continue repeating ineffective strategies, you won’t end up with good results and you’ll score fewer property viewing requests. Marketing adjustments are required all throughout. Prepare to change tactics, drop other non-performing channels, and add new ones.
Dismissing the Data
With a good marketing strategy, you have information and data at your fingertips. Consider: which channel provides higher exposure? Did your ads effectively convert viewers as potential renters? How many reach out to inquire? Did you generate a high number of leads? How many people did your ads reach?
Which marketing strategies are promising? Which have lower results? By evaluating the data, you can use the appropriate channels, tweak your methods, and improve your advertising strategies to generate better results.
Doing Everything by Yourself
Planning and launching a marketing campaign by yourself can be a wrong move. It’s always best to work with a team of professionals, especially if you’re new to the field.
Hiring a reliable property management company can reduce your stress as a full-time landlord and provide you with better resources and necessary guidance on the appropriate marketing approach. You also gain full-time support, which makes marketing mistakes easier to avoid.
Bottom Line
Property marketing requires careful planning and consideration. For new rental owners, this can be a tough challenge. We suggest hiring an experienced professional property manager to guide you through this process.
Not only can property management companies help market your vacant rental unit, they can also help screen potential tenants, collect the rent on time, keep your property well-maintained and conduct consistent property inspections. If you’re looking for a reputable property manager, contact Prime 1 Property Management today!
