Published February 7, 2019. Updated July 13, 2023.
Real estate investors aren't the only people who own rental properties. Quite a few people unintentionally become landlords, like those who inherit properties from a loved one. So, how do you connect your message to different types of property owners to target different audiences?
Buyer personas are at the heart of an effective property management marketing plan. Without them, targeting content to the right audience at the right time becomes impossible.
However, for property management companies, creating a buyer persona can be tricky, especially given that property owners significantly differ from one to the next. Keep reading to learn tips and tricks for how a property management company can create a buyer persona to reach their target audience.
What Is a Buyer Persona?
It's a magical thing when a property management company secures a new customer. The client feels like the property management company was made just for them, and the property management company feels as if they have acquired the perfect client. However, there's a lot that goes into making this type of magic.
You not only have to market your property management services correctly, but you also have to do it at the right time via the correct methods. So, the key to getting the most out of your property management marketing efforts is to create buyer personas.
What is a buyer persona? It's a fictional representation of your most ideal customer. It dives deep into the traits of the customer, including age, hobbies, likes, dislikes, income, marital status, and more.
However, because property owners have such diverse backgrounds, property management companies need to create more than one buyer persona.
Buyer persona examples could include one named Busy Brittany. She depicts a 30-year-old female investor who specializes in real estate investments.
Then you have a persona named Frightful Fred. He represents a 55-year-old man who has inherited a rental property and is scared about being a landlord. The way you market to these two individuals will be very different regarding the strategies you use.
Your buyer personas represent different groups of customers. Of course, no two customers are the same, but they should fall into one of your persona categories. Creating personas is essential to marketing because it gives you a clear picture of who you are marketing your services toward.
What's the Point of Buyer Personas?
Creating buyer personas ensures you communicate correctly by saying the right things to the right person at the right time through your marketing messages.
You will lean on your buyer personas to frame and target your marketing messages. A persona helps you pinpoint who can benefit the most from your property management services. These are the people you want to focus your marketing efforts toward.
Creating a persona also helps you identify the goals and challenges of those you are targeting. By addressing their problems, it becomes easier to position your services in a manner that showcases how they can overcome those challenges.
A buyer persona is also crucial to your marketing efforts because it keeps you from creating generic marketing messages aimed at pleasing everyone. Instead, your marketing can nurture those who are most likely to convert.
Tips for Creating a Buyer Persona for a Property Management Company
The first step in creating target personas for your property management company is to review your past and current customers. Ask and answer the following questions to get a better understanding of who your customers are:
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Who are they?
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What are their geographical locations?
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How old are they?
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Are they married?
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How many rental properties does each customer own?
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How did each customer acquire the rental property?
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What type of income do they have?
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What does a typical day involve for your clients?
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What challenges do they face?
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How do they spend their days off?
When answering the questions outlined above, you'll quickly discover you have more than one persona.
Is that a problem? Not if you know how to use them!
A Few Personas Is Okay (We Promise)!
When creating successful personas, it's important not to try and cram characteristics that don't work well together into a signal persona.
Having different buyer personas is okay! For example, some of your ideal customers could be intentional real estate investors, while others will have inherited their properties and have no clue about anything to do with owning rental properties. These could be Accidental Investors and need a different message than a serious investor to inquire more about your services. They probably don't even realize they need you until you tell them!
How Many Is Okay?
Ideally, for successful real estate marketing, you'll have anywhere from three to five buyer personas. If you have more than five, pick the five that represent the majority of your client base, and focus your efforts on them for now.
Location is key to creating buyer personas for property management companies. In urban areas, you're more likely to have a lot of prospective clients who own multiple rental units. However, in the southern rural areas, many property owners own only a single rental unit, and many are retired. These location factors significantly influence the marketing messages you use to target them.
Next, you'll dive deeper into personalizing your personas. Give them each a name, like Busy Brittany, Frightful Fred, or Accidental Alan. You can even do a Google image search and use a stock photo to represent each persona to make them seem more real and human.
Personas Represent Prospective Customers
Remember: the right buyer personas represent actual customers you want to reach and engage as you generate property management leads.
For each persona, in addition to demographics, you'll also create a short story that gives each one a backstory. The story should outline a day in the life of the persona, their goals, the challenges the persona faces, and any long- or short-term goal to dig into the buyer's psychology as you build the sales process.
Now it's time to laser focus on the goals of each persona. Property managers must understand a persona's goals to appeal to them through marketing messages.
As an example, one of your personas intends to retire at the age of 50. Knowing this, you can create marketing messages that appeal to this goal. You'll highlight how your property management services make it possible to increase rental revenue through your marketing content, thus making it possible to retire at the early age of 50. This is marketing at its finest!
Understand the Challenges of An Ideal Buyer
After you thoroughly understand each persona's goals, it's time to take a closer look at their challenges. Every persona will have problems.
For example, perhaps Busy Brittany has recently acquired too many properties for her to handle. However, she still prefers a hands-on approach to property management with each of her properties. In your marketing message to Busy Brittany, outline how your property management company offers a full line of property management services that simplify the role of a hands-on property owner.
A marketing message like this allows Busy Brittany to rest at ease, knowing she will still be very involved in managing her properties even though she's outsourcing many property management tasks.
Content Must Connect With Each Persona
Once you have your personas created, it's then time to build your marketing content for each of them. During the creation of the personas, it is imperative that you include what modes of communication they prefer. This will impact how you deploy your marketing content.
For example, you may find it's easier to target some personas via email, while others are easily targeted through social media.
Make sure each content marketing piece you create for your personas focuses on a challenge and a goal. Your content should outline a problem and how your services can solve that challenge. More so, you'll also need to describe in the content pieces what it means to have that challenge resolved.
Excellent ways to market to your personas include:
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Blogging
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Social media
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Community events
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Direct Mail
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Paid Ads
Crafting messaging and content that speaks to each type of persona and addresses their challenges (with your solutions) are the hallmarks of a successful marketing campaign!
Create a Buyer Persona with Expert Help
It's okay to start with just one buyer persona, then add more as you discover more types of potential customers your property management business is ideal for! If you need help getting started or working through additional personas, Geekly Media can help.
We specialize in property management marketing and can help your team build a marketing persona (or several) to help you generate more leads. We're here to help property management business owners and real estate professionals learn more tips and tricks on creating a buyer persona and how it can help generate leads and increase conversions. Reach out soon to learn more about how we can help!
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