The reason SEO is such a great marketing tactic is because any owner who has property and needs it managed will generally go to the Google search engine and type ‘property management suburb A’ (suburb A or city A being the area their property is located). They use these keyword phrases because they want Google to throw back results to them that show property management companies in that area.
New Zealand has a relatively small population size, so property management companies would want to target key phrases related to the city that they operate in. In Australia cities can be very large, and therefore they would need to target suburb areas (although eventually, when you start to get traction with rankings in the search engines, you could start to target the whole city!).
Explaining how SEO works becomes slightly more complicated than why it works, and it is far too time-consuming for business owners to do their own SEO. However, in saying that, it’s definitely not some magic art that you will never be able to understand, so before taking on a SEO company you should consider reading up on the basics so that you are not taken for a ride. Feel free to get a report I created that gives you ten questions you should ask before hiring an SEO agency:
Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay Per Click (also known as Adwords or PPC) is a great way to get to the top of the Google search engine immediately. Without having my pointer and diagram to show you, essentially PPC is when you are listed in the yellow ads at the top of Google, or down the right hand side. Go there now, type in a phrase and have a look.
PPC is a brilliant strategy to get to the top of Google immediately. You only pay when someone clicks your ad, so essentially it is cheap advertising. Property management clients of mine use this strategy to get their website ranking on page one of Google. This, combined with an SEO strategy, can give you some great prominence on the coveted first page.
You can set PPC up for yourself as long as you learn the basics; there are plenty of resources online. You just need to be careful that you are not trying to pay too much or too little for each click (when someone clicks your ad) and that you are targeting the right keywords. You could consider getting a professional to set you up to start with and show you some basic training, and then do the management yourself, or you could just totally outsource it to a professional company.
The reason I highly recommend PPC is because you can turn it on and off at will, you can set a daily budget for what you are happy to spend, and you can increase your exposure on page one of Google by having both a PPC ad and your website showing below in the organic results from doing SEO work – so therefore having two listings on page one.
Email Marketing
As a property management owner, you have plenty of owners on your books and therefore a great referral network for sending you more business. The issue is that often clients forget to recommend you. Therefore, I suggest you look to implement some sort of email marketing campaign.
You can have a list set up so that when anyone enters their name and email address to get your free download (like 10 questions to ask before hiring a property manager), they automatically get added to your email marketing software. The software will then send them the report automatically. In this way, you can build up a list of people looking for property management help, and you will have their details to follow up with or to send specials/promotions.
You can also add your clients to the email marketing software, and do an online newsletter once a month keeping them up to date with what is happening in the property management industry. This is a great way to give some value added benefits back to your user base.
