Stop Ignoring One Of Your Most Effective Marketing Strategies

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You may be ignoring one of your most important marketing strategies. 

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It’s not only one of the most effective marketing strategies in the property management industry, but it’s also the one that, when neglected, has a severe negative impact on your growth. 

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But it’s often overlooked or left up to chance.

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It affects your website’s SEO.

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It affects the way your leads think about your company. 

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It either pulls people into your sales funnel or pushes them away.

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But it doesn’t have to be this way.

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It’s free.

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It's simple.

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It’s effective. 

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It takes little to no time to execute on.

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So what’s the trick?

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Ask your clients for reviews at the exact point when they will be most likely to leave you a positive review.

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What is your online reputation looking like?

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In today’s digital age, if you are not managing your property management company’s online reputation actively and aggressively, you’re letting leads walk away without ever even talking to them.

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People nowadays often check peer reviews when researching a product or company to work with. We all do it. How much more when they are looking for a property manager to manage their biggest investment, their rental properties? If you have mostly negative reviews, your leads will walk away.

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Additionally, the Google algorithm gives higher preference to companies with a large quantity of four and five star reviews, especially when those reviews are left recently and often. 

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The ratio of positive to negative reviews is also important. It can take four or more positive reviews to balance out one negative review in a consumer's mind, even while people are more likely to speak up about a bad experience than a great one. 

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You can’t always avoid a negative review, nor can you protect against a phony review (made by someone who is not actually a client), but you can mitigate their effect by responding to them professionally. 

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(Depending on the reason for the review, sometimes negative reviews from tenants will actually boost your reputation with investors looking for a management company who will be fair but also look out for the investor’s interests.)

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Don’t forget to provide an experience people will rave about

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The first step to improving your online reputation is to ensure that you are actually providing service worthy of a great review. 

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Admitting where you can improve is the first step to improving. Even if you believe you are already providing a great experience 90% of the time, there are still opportunities to improve it.

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Go through your current reviews and look for patterns. Investors and tenants will have different priorities and will highlight different things, but you’ll also notice some overlap. (You’ll also notice that tenants are more likely to leave reviews than investors).

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The most common things both investors and tenant complain about in a property management company are:

❌ Lack of communication

❌ Customer Service

❌ Maintenance

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Other common issues include: 

❌ Long vacancy times

❌ Accounting errors

❌ Fees they weren’t aware of / extra costs

❌ Speed in processing applications

❌ The condition of the property

❌ Security deposit disputes

❌ Rent collection

❌ Tenant screening

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Seeing common themes? Let those inform the changes you’ll make. 

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You may need to make some structural, cultural, and organizational changes. Do you need to restructure your team to take the pressure off some individuals? Do you need to split out some responsibilities into departments so they can specialize? Do you need to improve the communication between departments so everyone is on the same page? Do you need to separate client facing communication from operational tasks to give each their due attention? 

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Take a look at your core processes and procedures - do they need to be better documented? Better tracked for accountability? Automated to send communications and start processes automatically to save time and improve your communication? Rebuild your operations management to better support your team, save time, and create an experience tenants and owners will stay for. 

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(Utilize LeadSimple Operations to build out all your operational processes and give your team one place to work - workflows, documentation, tasks, communication tracking, and more!)

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Some things to focus on in your processes to improve your owner experience:

✅ Shortening your vacancy times

✅ Improving your applicant screening process to place better tenants

✅ Increasing your proactive communication to owners (depending on the preferences of your client base - some owners prefer more communication, some prefer less), removing the need wherever possible for them to reach out to you

✅ Improving the auditing of your owner disbursement & ensure no errors slip through

✅ Building an automated late rent collection process to ensure rent is paid on time with minimal effort of your part

✅ Increase the number of leases that are renewed as opposed to move outs (lowers your number of vacancies and the likelihood of owners churning - owners churn when the property is vacant.) 

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Some things to focus on for the tenant experience:

✅ Speeding up your application screening process & adding automated first responses

✅ Improving your inspection process

✅ Providing all the information new tenants need up front

✅ Being proactive with communication around applications, move ins, move outs, lease renewals, and maintenance requests, and build that communication into your processes

✅ Removing friction in the maintenance request process

✅ Enabling your staff to respond to customer service requests in a knowledgeable, and timely manner. Give them what they need to see exactly where a process or work order is at. 

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Now it's time to ask for reviews

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Once you’ve built out your processes and have the infrastructure needed to consistently create great customer experiences, now’s the time to begin asking for reviews at strategic points in your processes. 

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Don’t just ask for reviews willy-nilly though. 

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Consider the points in the property or client lifecycle where your owners or tenants will be most likely to leave a positive review. Also consider the possible conditions that could be present that might mean you shouldn’t ask for a review at that time.

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Here are some places where you should definitely be asking for reviews in your processes:

💙 Ask an owner for a review after the unit has been leased, if it was leased quickly

💙 Ask an owner for a review after their first rent payment

💙 Ask an owner for a review after a successful lease renewal/rent increase

💙 Ask an owner for a review after a late payment has been collected

💙 Ask a tenant for a review after move in, if all went smoothly

💙 Ask a tenant for a review after a maintenance request was completed satisfactorily

💙 Ask a tenant for a review after a successful lease renewal

💙 Ask a tenant for a review after move out, especially if the security deposit was returned in full

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Be sure to include a convenient link to the review site and a quick note about what you’re looking for in a review. “Have a great move out with ABC Property Management? Leave us a review here and let others know. We appreciate you!”

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Build these in as steps into your processes at the perfect point. Make it an automated text or email, and make the step conditional on whether the process went smoothly. If not, skip the review request this time.

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To ask for reviews at the perfect time, get on LeadSimple Operations and build out all your operational processes and workflows. It does far more than streamline your review process; organize all your hundreds of tasks into simple, documented, and automated workflows that integrate directly with your property accounting software. Give your team one place to work and manage more with less!

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Want to learn about other marketing strategies for property management companies? Check out Peter Lohmann's blog here!