How Property Managers can easily capture more leads: What marketing channels should you use?
So you have something you want to advertise. Great! But where should you deploy it? There are so many different channels to choose from and advertising can be expensive, so where should you advertise to generate the most leads?
You may not be surprised to hear that there is no definitive answer to that question, but you can get clever with where you advertise to give your business the best possible chance of capturing leads and make your advertising campaign worth your money.
Know your audience
Who is your ideal customer? What demographic are you targeting this advertising campaign towards? You might already have a broad idea on this, but to really maximise your leads from your advertising campaign you have to get into the specifics.
A couple of years ago, a customer of ours was looking to sell and let over 80 one/two bedroom apartments in Bristol. The target age group was young adults, but that’s a pretty large net to cast. Checking the surrounding area showed that the Bristol Royal Infirmary was just down the road. The decision was made to aim the campaign at young nurses moving to the area, keen to find a contemporary apartment to buy or rent, close to their place of work. The campaign was a success and the apartments were snapped up.
Of course, not every single apartment is now occupied by nurses but you get the point. With some research, you can push your campaign on to a specific group of people who are more likely to engage with it.
Where should I advertise?
Wherever your audience is. Put yourself in a typical person’s shoes who belongs to your chosen target demographic. What websites do they visit? What social media platforms are popular with their age group? Do they go online at all?
Using Facebook’s demographic data, the Bristol apartments campaign was shown to nurses who worked in the area, and the ads were featured on Facebook pages of Bristol-based bars and clubs as well. Facebook is still widely used by young adults in their mid 20s, so it made sense to advertise through this platform.
Although if an advertising campaign was targeted to an older audience, maybe a newspaper ad or flyers would be the best option. Another example could be if students are looking for cheap housing to rent, then perhaps Instagram or Snapchat would have a larger influence.
Use analytics
It is worth monitoring national analytics for different demographics to see where your target audience is going on a day to day basis. These are easy to find online.
You can also use your own analytics from your website. By noticing trends in website traffic from your target market, you can get specific with locations and times of day that your adverts are going to be most productive. If your target audience tends to visit your website on lunchtimes on a weekday, then advertise to other people from that demographic at that time! If this is the time that these kinds of people visit your site, then see if you can capitalise on that knowledge by getting more of those people viewing your business at those times.
Word spreads
Once you start applying these methods to your advertising campaigns, then expect a snowball effect. People talk. There is a high possibility that the friends and coworkers of someone that your advertisement campaign successfully reached out to will be interested in what you have to offer. Word of mouth is the cheapest and easiest form of advertising – you don’t have to do anything! The more of your target audience that you can advertise to initially means that word will spread faster.
If you don’t have the time or expertise to delve into detailed analytics on your own for your ad campaign, we know of experts that can, so please get in touch.
Written by Kevin Williams. As one of the founders of Servon Design, Kevin has more than two decades of web and digital marketing experience in the property sector. He focuses on helping Landlords, Property Managers and Letting Agents not only generate leads through digital marketing but also helps improve their online brand and presence.
