8 Cost-Effective Vacation Property Management Marketing Ideas
You can provide a fantastic property management service with regular repeat bookings, but without any marketing in place, your business will plateau.
Yes, occupancy rates are crucial, but to maximize rental vacation income, you also have to grow your property portfolio.
But starting up a marketing campaign to attract more owners sounds expensive and time-consuming—with no guarantee of success.
Fortunately, though, there are lots of cost-effective property management marketing ideas you can put into place. These strategies offer high ROI, and they don’t even have to take up a huge amount of your time.
So if you’d like to be proactive about marketing your property management services, read on.
How do you market a property management company?
A successful marketing strategy will help make your short-term rental management business:
- Discoverable
- Credible, and
- Competitive
But before leaping into a brand-new marketing campaign, you first have to understand your target audience.
So who are the property owners you want to attract? Where can you find them? And how can they find you? Answering these questions is an important step to making yourself discoverable—but when you meet with a host, how can you be sure they’ll trust you?
To help owners believe in your professionalism, you have to tap into their needs and concerns. So, think about why they’d want to hire your services, and how you can demonstrate your ability to solve the issues they’re facing.
Finally, what can you provide that other vacation rental managers can’t? If you can offer a property owner something special or unique, they’ll be convinced of your value.
For example, if you’re competing with major property management companies in your local area, can you spin that disadvantage in your favor by offering a more personalized service centered on local expertise?
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
With an approach to marketing that’s focused on your audience’s needs, you can use regular strategic content to promote your business, along with other cost-effective strategies and channels to connect with local property owners and help your brand stand out.
Take steps to start growing your property portfolio and have a look at the property management marketing strategies below.
8 vacation rental property management marketing ideas to boost owner acquisition in 2022
1. Use Google My Business to improve your local SEO
Source: Google My Business
You may have an all-singing, all-dancing website for your business, but will property owners find it? Will they trust what they see there? To be sure they do, you need online presence and credibility.
Investing in pay-per-click campaigns is one option, but results aren’t guaranteed and costs can quickly spiral, so instead, your first port-of-call should be to create a Google My Business account.
With Google My Business you can set up a free business profile so you appear in Google’s results pages and maps, along with the contact details and business information that you choose to provide.
This helps to legitimize your business in the eyes of a property owner, gives you the chance to post updates about expanded services (which we discuss below), share photos of the properties you manage, and respond to customer reviews.
You can also use your business profile to create answers for frequently asked questions, which is a great way to demonstrate to a potential customer you’re a reputable, proactive professional.
Also, having an up-to-date business profile with Google can be an important factor for local search engine optimization (SEO), allowing your business to move up Google’s rankings whenever a property owner makes a relevant Google search in your geographic area.
Your business profile becomes especially important to local SEO when combined with other strategies, such as building local business partnerships, developing referral programs, and content marketing—which we discuss next.
2. Create a content marketing plan
Content marketing doesn’t have to be a laborious, costly enterprise, and it can be enjoyable to learn about owners and think up creative ways to resonate with them.
With a good content plan that’s well executed, you can help owners find you on Google and establish yourself as a local authority in your industry.
Here are some of the key steps involved in developing a content marketing plan:
- Establish your goals
Your goal might be to develop your brand and professional credibility with regular, useful content for property owners. - Decide what’s achievable with the resources you have available
A realistic level of output might be one new blog for your website every week or month—or maybe it’s a weekly blog, a monthly newsletter, and a podcast. - Brainstorm content ideas
There are some useful websites and tools available to help with content planning, such as this handy title generator by Impact. - Create a content calendar
You can plan your blogs months ahead so you’re never stuck for ideas, but whether it’s a weekly or monthly post, be consistent—so same day, same time. - Create and deliver your content
Keep your content honest and professional, include photos and other imagery, and always make sure it’s relevant to the property owners you’d like to attract.
For most growing businesses, it’s not realistic to invest huge sums of money and hours in content marketing, so it’s important to establish early on what’s achievable. Here are some kinds of blog content that property owners might be impressed to find on your website:
- How-to blogs
- Checklist posts
- Reviews
- Common problems solved
- Recommendations for vacation rental tools
- Day-in-the-life blogs
3. Encourage owners to leave reviews
One of the best ways to give owners confidence that you’re a property manager they can trust is through online reviews—they’ll want to see high ratings and positive feedback on your quality of service and reliability.
But how to get those great reviews?
Fantastic communication with your guests and hosts is essential as you aim to create a virtuous cycle of happy customers, leading to great reviews, leading to more happy customers.
A guest communication tool for vacation rentals like RueBaRue can be instrumental to positive relationship-building with guests and owners, with features like:
Source: RueBaRue
Use RueBaRue to set up an automated friendly reminder (with a useful link) for guests and owners to leave their reviews on your Google or Facebook business pages.
But don’t stop there—be sure to be responsive and grateful for their great feedback. And, should you receive a negative response, express disappointment without being defensive, and attempt to address the issue constructively.
4. Launch a referral program
A highly cost-effective way to generate trust and grow your brand is through referrals, which can be in the form of a word-of-mouth recommendation, or an online form, where the referrer submits their information along with the rental host’s details.
Here’s a simple example of a referral form that you could have on your website:
Referral Form: Receive a cash reward for a successful referral!
As with Google and Facebook reviews, the most important factor in attaining referrals is offering a great service with excellent communication and customer relationship-building. Assuming you have those in place, you’ll also need to provide attractive incentives for providing a referral who signs up with you.
Ideas for referral incentives include:
- Cash rewards
- Online gift vouchers
- Discounted management fees for current property owners
- A set period free of management fees for current owners
- 0% commission on the new host’s first booking
You can dedicate a page on your website to information about your referral program—if you do so, you can link to it from all your blogs and newsletters (which adds extra value to your content marketing efforts).
Here’s an example of what you could say to introduce your referral program:
Do you know someone who’d like a professional property manager for their vacation rentals? Invite a friend and receive a cash reward as part of our referral program!
Again, remember to be responsive to referrers—not all their contacts will become clients, but if you express gratitude and develop a positive relationship with them, they’ll be more likely to make other referrals in the future.
5. Partner with local businesses
You can also generate word-of-mouth referrals by developing relationships and partnering with local businesses.
Local real estate agents, accountants, financial advisors, and professional cleaning services are in constant contact with property owners, so by making them aware of your services and collaborating, you can quickly build a strong local presence.
Again, this is something you can combine with your content marketing strategy. You could write the occasional blog for a local business’s website, or you could promote them in your own blogs, emails, and newsletters.
Connecting with local businesses can get you one step away from a huge pool of potential clients, so get networking.
6. Liaise with vacation rental hosts online and offline
Use local STR meetings, your social media networks, and local business contacts to meet with property owners, exchange experiences, and offer advice.
As well as this being a practical way to learn about your local vacation property owners and their concerns, you may find that some hosts will eventually decide to give up managing their properties, opting instead to outsource those responsibilities to a professional.
Owners are especially likely to consider this course of action if you’ve demonstrated a level of professionalism they simply can’t match—through your regular content marketing and use of advanced technology, which we talk about next.
7. Offer extra services to owners
As you’ll know, nothing makes you stand out from the competition more than your standard of service, and a great way to distinguish yourself from other property managers’ service levels is with the technology you use.
Also, hosts with multiple properties will instantly recognize they simply can’t compete with your level of organization and customer service when they see the professional tools you use on a daily basis—so make sure you show these on your website, social media, blogs, and newsletters.
So, if you use a guest communication tool like RueBaRue, make sure owners see that you’re using it and what the benefits are, for example:
- Automated, customized messaging
- Great for relationship-building with guests
- Up-to-date information
- Local area guides
- Facilitates repeat bookings and extended stays
- Boosts occupancy rates
- Helps get great property reviews
8. Start a podcast
As much as a cool intro, theme music, and a cutting-edge editing suite would be nice, you really don’t need anything other than a quiet place and a good mic to start a podcast.
A regular 30-minute podcast is a fantastic excuse to speak to people in the short-term rental industry and network with local businesses. Connect with people through your social media channels and invite them for an informal interview about their expertise.
Over a short period of time, you’ll learn a huge amount about your specialist area, and you’ll have lots of original content to post on your website, YouTube, and social media channels.
Property management marketing ideas with high ROI
Starting a marketing campaign for your property management business might seem like a daunting prospect, but all you need is an understanding of your target audience, and a little space in your schedule to put some of these inexpensive marketing strategies into practice:
- Create a Google Business Profile
- Develop a content marketing plan with regular blogs and newsletters
- Use automated messaging to encourage customer and client reviews
- Put an incentivized referral program into action
- Network with local businesses
- Connect with hosts via local meetings and social media
- Leverage your use of tech and smart solutions to stand out and impress
- Start a podcast to promote your brand and meet with industry experts
Offering a great, stand-out service is the most effective, sustainable way to manage your business, and a guest communication tool like RueBaRue will help you do this. But why stop there?
The smart tools you use to manage properties and develop great relationships with your guests and hosts allow you to do this at scale, so start using these marketing ideas to grow your property portfolio and discover the true potential of your business.
FAQs
What is property management marketing?
Property management marketing refers to the strategies and activities you perform to promote your property management business and attract property owners as you grow your STR management portfolio.
How do I market myself as a property manager?
You can market yourself as a property manager by tapping into your target audience’s pain points with regular blogs on your website, interactions with industry professionals and potential clients on social media, and local business networking.
What are some effective marketing ideas for vacation rental property management services?
Some cost-effective marketing strategies with high ROI for vacation rental property management services include:
- Creating a Google Business Profile with key information about your services
- Writing a monthly blog for your website with tips for hosts, technology comparison pieces, and reviews of related services
- Developing a referral program that you can promote on your site and in newsletters
- Partnering local businesses for mutual promotion and recommendations
- Using a guest communication tool like RueBaRue to encourage online reviews by guests and hosts
- Starting a podcast to speak with other people in the industry or local community to prove your credibility
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