Key Takeaways
- Rental marketing is an incredibly important step to maintaining the success of your rental.
- Marketing mistakes are common, but they can cost a landlord a lot.
- Partnering with a professional property management company can ease the stress of mastering property marketing.
Mistakes are commonplace when marketing a rental property, especially for those who are new to the industry. Luckily for you, today’s guide has you covered! We’ll walk you through some common rental property marketing mistakes and provide you with solutions on how to avoid them.
Why is Rental Marketing Important?
As a landlord, property marketing is one of the most crucial steps to your success. Being left with a vacant property doesn’t only mean a lack of monthly rental income, but the property will actively cost you money in maintenance and security costs. Additionally, a vacant property can be prone to other risks, like damage, theft, and vandalism, while left unattended.
This is what makes rental marketing so important. To minimize these risks, it’s in every landlord’s best interest to get their property occupied as soon as possible. Unfortunately, however, it’s not uncommon for avoidable mistakes to unnecessarily lengthen this process.
Top Rental Marketing Mistakes that Landlords Make
When marketing your rental property, there are certain things that should be avoided to maximize success. They include the following.
Starting out Without a Strategy in Mind
To ensure success in your marketing endeavors, you’ll need to be intentional with every action you take. Acting without a proper plan will just end up wasting your time, money, and effort.
Always begin your rental marketing strategy with a plan in mind. Including:
- The kind of tenant you’re looking for.
- What rental listing platforms you’ll use to advertise to prospective tenants.
- What information you’ll include in the rental ad.
- Whether you’ll require the help of a professional property manager.
Without a solid strategy in mind, chances are that your marketing campaign will yield suboptimal results. If you’re a beginner landlord, consider hiring a professional to help guide you through the entire process.
Not Broadening Your Reach
Don’t make the mistake of dumping all of your time, money, and energy on only one marketing channel. The goal of any serious marketing campaign is to ensure the message gets seen by as many relevant people as possible. The more of the target audience is able to see the ad, the higher the chances of landing the right tenant will be.
For maximum exposure, you’ll want to use a combination of both online and offline marketing strategies, including yard signs, local dailies, social media, community bulletin boards, and rental listing sites. Doing this can increase your potential tenant pool, which also improves your chances of finding the perfect tenant for your rental.
Using a Generic and Broad Marketing Approach
For any marketing campaign to work, you’ll need to have a target audience in mind. This will help you create an effective marketing campaign that speaks directly to that target audience.
Without experience, many landlords end up creating campaigns that are generic and broad. While it may seem more appealing to appeal to the widest tenant pool possible, a bland and generic rental ad will end up being less effective than a more targeted one.
Before you begin advertising your vacant rental property, have an audience in mind, whether that would be single professionals, families with children, college students, or any other demographic. Next, do some due diligence to find out what strategies you could use to reach them. Ensure every step of the way that your marketing strategy is adhering to Fair Housing laws.
Using Bad Photos
This is another common mistake among first-time landlords. Those looking for housing often respond much better to ads with high-quality images than those with poor photos or just text. In fact, it’s common for tenants to spend most of their time browsing photos in a rental ad rather than doing anything else.
So, if the photos in your rental listing are poorly lit, low-quality, or too few, chances are that prospective tenants will skip your listing. To avoid that happening, always ensure that you use high-quality photos in your rental listing.
Luckily for you, you won’t have to spend an arm and a leg acquiring quality gear. Most smartphones will often get the job done. Alternatively, you could go with a professional photographer to ensure you take crisp and clear photos to attract long-term tenants.
Not Writing Original Copy
Another common pitfall for landlords is using the same common phrases that everyone else is using for their rentals. Certain language is extremely common in rental ads, making them less appealing to read.
Using such generic copies won’t help your rental ad stand out from the competition. Instead, create an original and captivating headline for your listing to help attract more views. Use unique language, highlight your property’s key features, and inject some personality!
Additionally, make sure the headline includes certain key elements, such as the property’s location, number of bathrooms and bedrooms, rental price, and at least one desirable feature.
Not Including a Call to Action (CTA)
You may have the most amazing rental property on the block. You may also do a good job getting the word out. However, if you don’t tell your audience what action to take after viewing it, all your marketing efforts may be futile.
Most people will only take action after being prompted. As such, make sure to call prospective tenants into action. Let them know where to direct their attention if they’re interested.
Conclusion
Marketing is a difficult challenge, and nobody’s perfect. However, we hope that this guide can help you avoid some common mistakes and improve your rental property marketing strategy.
For expert help in managing your Philadelphia rental property, look no further than TrustArt Realty. We use proven, professional, and innovative techniques to grow landlords’ ROI. Get in touch to learn more!
