Follow along and read what the Geeks are reading!

How to Get New Property Management Clients

Written by Heather Park | 2:00 PM on March 3, 2020

If you aren't adding clients on a regular basis, your property management business is going to suffer due to the inevitable churn of real estate investors. We all know this: owners sell, move back in, die, they even change companies. Growing your property management company means knowing how to find clients for property management. 

Whether you are a new property management company or an established and growing company, there are a few options out there that will help you find property management clients. In this blog, we'll discuss paid leads providers, inbound marketing, outbound marketing, and more.

Paid Property Management Lead Providers

There are a few providers of paid leads in the industry. How does it work?

  • A paid leads provider will do the legwork to find you property owners who are willing to talk to a property management company.
  • These companies use a mixture of paid ads, cold calling, machine learning, and more to gather property owner data and set the leads up for the sale.
  • Generally, these leads have already been vetted by someone and therefore have a pretty good closing ratio for outbound sales.

Of course, your outbound lead generation is only as good as your sales team, so don't neglect regular training for your sales team!

Outbound Marketing For Property Management 

Outbound marketing includes mailers, print ads, radio ads, cold calling, and often paid ads. Outbound marketing is what most people used to think all marketing was because, in the days before the internet became a household tool, it was your best bet for marketingalong with an ad in the phonebook. 

Outbound marketing is based on the interrupt: you interrupt someone's music with radio ads or interrupt their show with commercials. The point is that you take your marketing efforts to the people you want to be your client. 

The downside is you generally have to cast a really big net because with many outbound efforts, you can't target as specifically as you can with other marketing efforts. Many people will hear the radio ad who don't invest in real estate, or an old address list may have you mailing flyers to owners that have since moved on.


Outbound marketing strategies include:

  • Radio ads
  • Newspaper ads or paid online banners
  • Phone calls to owners on a list
  • Commercials.

Inbound Marketing For Property Management 

Inbound marketing is the opposite of outbound marketing. If you're asking "how to find clients for property management", inbound marketing should be 80% of your answer.

  • Inbound marketing draws clients to you by providing useful and timely information.
  • Unlike outbound marketing, inbound brings in leads that are more likely to close because they found you through research.
  • Additionally, these leads chose to give you their contact information. 

This hand-raise is what we call a qualified lead, and when you can categorize your leads as marketing qualified or sales qualified, you are going to set your sales team up for success.

Inbound marketing includes:

  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Blog posts
  • A strong online presence
  • Social media marketing
  • A great website
  • Informative content.

Networking

Networking digitally is less effective than the other options, but it's also generally less expensive than putting in the legwork and going to events. However, it's worth visiting events to meet real estate investors and also spend some time speaking with local realtors. While referrals probably aren't going to bring in enough business alone, we do see our property managers gaining 5-10 clients a year when they have a good realtor network and a savvy referral plan.

Networking includes:

What Is the Best Property Management Client Strategy?

When trying to attract property owners, you should employ a healthy mix of multiple marketing methods. As with most things in life, you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket. Keeping a diverse marketing mix means you can capitalize on all traffic sources. 

What percentage of your marketing efforts should be devoted to each type of marketing depends on variables specific to your location. Inbound marketing works for property management, so we suggest that the largest slice of your marketing pie is devoted to it. If you can afford them, paid lead services and outbound marketing can help fill in the gaps while your inbound strategy matures and turns into the lead generating machine your property management business needs.

All effective inbound marketing plans start with a great property management website! If it has been a few years since you updated your website, you might want to consider giving it a facelift and bringing it into the 2020s. If you've been wondering how to find clients for property management, your website might be the reason. Updates give your leads a professional, modern website to land on when learning about you!

Geekly Media builds expert property manager websites: schedule a time to talk with us about your inbound marketing and website development needs. We would be happy to look at your website and give you a FREE website audit about your problem areas that you face when it comes to presentation, appeal, and utility.