In the digital age, marketing information revealing customer online footprint and content-consumption behaviour is paramount to the success of any marketing strategy. Letting & sales agencies are not exempt from the digital revolution. Gone are the days when flyering and direct mail alone would generate enough quality landlord valuations. Most agents employ some digital marketing tactics such as Adwords, sponsored emails and paid social media.
Those tasked with the responsibility of attracting landlords may have found themselves slightly lost when setting up online campaigns. For example, LinkedIn lets you target your messages by types of company, education, interest and many more. Prospective landlords can be in any profession and have any interest. From accidental landlords to professional landlords to corporate landlords, they don’t fit into one mould.
More than half (54%) of letting agents surveyed in the Fixflo Lettings Report put winning landlords at the top of their list of challenges. But how does one win over a landlord if one cannot pinpoint the attributes of a ‘typical landlord’?
Understanding Landlord Data
If you look hard enough, you’ll find a pattern. In an aim to uncover this pattern, we’ve tapped into Rent Round’s data captured between June 2019 and mid-February 2020. The letting agent & property manager comparison site lets landlords compare agent fees, ratings, services & locations. The data on 11,400+ unique visitors and 5,100+ landlord entries came from their Google Analytics account and their website database respectively.
Landlord Insights: Age
The design of your website, landing pages and adverts should be tailored to your target market in terms of imagery and wording. Based on the data we’ve reviewed, nearly half the landlords were aged between 35 and 54 with 55 to 64 year-olds being the next dominant age group. Only around 5% were under 24 years old - so make sure your landlord marketing messaging is more tailored to Gen-X, Gen-Y and millennials. Sorry to disappoint but you should probably save your K-Pop references for another marketing campaign.
Landlord Insights: Devices
The device your target market is using to access your letting agency or property manager website is vital to your marketing success. It goes without saying most online activity is now done on mobile phones, nearly three-quarters (73%) of landlords used a mobile device. So making sure your website is mobile-friendly is key.
This would include the avoidance of large images (to minimise site-load time), long pieces of text and difficult navigation menus.
Landlord Insights: Time and Day
As leads come through, you want to ensure the phone lines are open and emails are replied. You probably know that the shorter the response time, the more likely a sale can be made. Being aware of when landlords tend to look for letting agents is, therefore, more important than crafting a great webpage or marketing email.
The data shows a reduction in volume on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Curiously, there is a lot of activity on the weekend. A factor to consider is that your agency may not be open on Sunday. If this is the case then Monday mornings should be prioritised for follow-up calls on fresh leads. Many landlords have day jobs. So delaying follow-ups to Monday may mean the prospect isn’t actually available to discuss your services.
The time of day when landlords run searches is also important. Similarly, the data pinpoints when you should be available to talk to leads.
Of course, it’s not always that simple when you have tonnes of other appointments and valuations to juggle.
The timings peak at 3 p.m. but a key point to note is there is plenty of online activity after 5 p.m. Agents who are able to discuss services with leads during these times will, therefore, be at an advantage. Perhaps this is why more and more agents have extended office hours these days.
Landlord Insights: Preferred Tenant-Find Fee Structure
The vast majority of landlords prefer fixed fees for tenant-find services. Over half (55%) opted for a one-off fee while just under a third (30%) opted for fixed monthly fees. The least preferred option being a percentage of monthly rent, with only 15% of landlords going for it.
Understanding Your Landlords through Data
There is an abundance of data available to letting agents & property managers. And no one data source can perfectly reflect the landlords in your local regions. Collecting your own marketing insights and sales performance consistently is the first step to truly understanding your clientele. Over time, you might draw similar or completely different observations as ours above.
This is a guest article written by Rent Round’s Co-Founder, Raj Dosanjh. For more landlord marketing tips, why not download this free Attract More Landlords Using Content Marketing eBook?
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