Should I continue to dedicate budget to marketing during an economic downturn? Is it worth it when people are extra frugal right now? When will I see returns on my property management marketing spend?
This is absolutely the best time to spend on marketing.
Why? JPMorgan just announced they will only sell a house to a buyer with a 700+ credit score holding 20% for the down payment. We’re pretty certain this means a slew of people with properties on the market right now are not going to be able to sell fast or easy. A whole new group of accidental landlords are about to need help managing a property. At the same time, the population of renters continues to grow because home-ownership just moved even further out of reach for so many Americans.
So, how long will it take to see a return on your property management marketing spend? The answer right now is probably a bit faster than usual, but we still need time to see how consumer behavior is changing in this new landscape. What we do know is that people are spending more time than ever online in the wake of social distancing, and they are opening marketing emails at a higher rate than usual. Marketing is working.
That said, under normal circumstances, there are a few factors that influence how fast your inbound marketing efforts take to produce the kind of numbers you’re looking for.
If your budget is small, the amount of content your agency is going to be able to create for you will be similarly small. It takes a lot of work to create content in such a niche space as property management. Finding writers who can write on the subject matter, property managers to review it for accuracy, and a team to edit and post it using SEO best practices takes a bit more effort than you might assume.
The more (quality) content you produce, the faster inbound marketing works. With great content and a decent budget, you can expect results after around six months, which is the answer we usually give potential clients when they ask. Other factors can alter this number too.
Inbound marketing works great for property managers. SEO is a natural part of inbound marketing because these days, good SEO is strongly related to good content. Google figured out how to spot and stop black hat SEO or tricks meant to game the system and get results on SERPs without earning them by hiding lists of keywords on pages or spinning content.
Inbound marketing is focused on quality content. Readers like to stick around and read quality content, clicking through to multiple pages and sticking around. Google Ranks pages based on relevancy, so this behavior of sticking around and reading and engaging with your content tells Google precisely that.
If you can’t trust that inbound marketing will work, it probably isn’t for you. One of the things inbound relies on is consistent messaging, reading and measuring metrics, and adjusting strategy based on those metrics. When you have too many cooks in the kitchen driving your marketing efforts, you muddy the waters and make it next to impossible to tell what is causing your successes or failures. We strongly advise against this.
If you can’t wait for inbound to work, the one strategy that works WITH inbound instead of against it is to use paid ads. While paid ads are an additional expense, paid ads will drive traffic to your website. If you are using inbound marketing and creating content that readers love, the paid ads will generate a traffic draw that your inbound marketing can then sustain and convert.
Buying paid ads without a reason to stick around is the equivalent of setting money on fire. While you’ll get leads, you’ll always have to pay for ads to continue to get them. Inbound creates a self-sustaining cycle of traffic and leads that continue to grow the longer you run it.
If you’re not sure whether inbound marketing is something that would work for your business, chat with us. We have been doing this for some time now and have learned to identify the businesses that will not benefit from our marketing.
Simply put, we love to delight our clients. If we can’t delight you we will not want to start marketing for you. You can schedule a time to talk to us using this link. Then, download our free Business Development Handbook for Selling During Social Distancing.