Running a successful rental business requires several skills, especially marketing and sales. After all, with the advent of technology, making your business stand out from the crowd is a feat. When picking an advertising technique, landlords now have to ask questions like, do customers trust real estate SMS adverts, or do they ignore them? And how do I take the best listing photos? Well, if you’re in these shoes, stick around. This article dissects how to market a rental property successfully.
Table of Contents
How to Take the Best Listing Photos
1. Clean up the House
Cleaning up the house is one of the best tips for getting the right photos. Pictures of a cluttered and disorganized home can be off-putting to prospective tenants. After all, no one wants to picture living in a place that’s a mess. Thus, it would be wise to take the time to declutter your rental. If you have existing tenants, you can alert them before the date so that they can straighten out the place.
2. Pick the Perfect Time and Day
Contrary to what you might think, taking great photos isn’t only about having the best lens and lighting. Sometimes you must put more thought into your photo shoot for the best results. Yes, you can take a picture at any time of the day, but wouldn’t it be nice to show off the sunset view from your kitchen window? Or how bright and cozy your living room looks when the light hits the panels just right. When picking a time and date for your shoot, you should consider these points.
3. Prioritize the Lighting
You’ll be surprised how much difference the proper lighting can make to your photos.`If you’re working when the sun is up, open the curtains or blinds to let more natural light into the room. If you want to make the most of it, you can take it further by washing your windows. If you don’t have time for such chores, Bay Property Management Group Philadelphia can help handle day-to-day business tasks for your rental investment.
4. Use the Right Angles
Like humans, houses also have a good side to getting the perfect shot. Thus, it would be best to consider using the right angles when taking photos. Expert rental photographers usually recommend taking pictures at chest height. Try your best to avoid awkward angles that are too low or high. You should also limit close-up shoots and prioritize positions that showcase the whole room. For this purpose, shooting from corners would usually yield the best results.
5. Avoid Relying on Photoshop
While photoshop can be a miracle worker, it’s best not to rely on it too much. Sometimes it’s better to clean up your house than try to edit out kinks later. Since social media marketing has become more popular, the appeal of visually stunning photos is much higher. However, photoshop is not a magic spell and won’t help you fix every problem if your setting isn’t right. Thus, it would be best to consider adding more lighting and decluttering your space. It’ll also save you countless hours trying to edit out mistakes.
6. Hire a Professional
Finally, if you want professional-like shots, you should hire a professional. Outsourcing photography and video coverage to an expert is a hassle-free solution to get the best pictures. It saves you valuable time and energy while assuring you get the best visual results. Besides, you can reuse such photos if you have identical units or another vacancy.
How to Leverage Social Media to Expand Your Renter Pool
1. Pick a Niche
The best way to expand your reach is to pick a niche and stick with it. It’ll be much easier for your target market to identify and patronize you when they know exactly what you have to offer. For example, if you specialize in vacation rentals, state it explicitly and create content geared towards tourists. Clearly defining your target audience will increase your desirability to potential customers. It also goes a long way in leaving a memorable print, which visitors can come back to when they need your services.
2. Develop a Strategy
You need to develop a strategy even for something as seemingly basic as posting on social media. An outline of how you plan to move from one point to the next can prevent you from regressing and help you achieve your goals.
Thus, the first thing you need to figure out in your strategy is your business goals. Do you want to reduce your vacancies? Or establish a dominant online presence? With your goal in mind, you can choose the most effective method. Would it be better to post once or twice a week? What social media platform is the best to reach your target audience? Would it be better to use influencers or paid ads? And so on.
3. Write Amazing Copy
Good copy is inseparable from marketing. You must deliver high-quality content by leveraging written, audio, or video media. It’s not enough to post often; you must also post unique and quality content. You’ll achieve far better results with the latter. Remember to fine-tune your output based on which platform you’re using and your target audience.
4. Build an Online Presence
Many property owners make the mistake of logging on to their socials to post and leave. However, it takes more than consistent content to build an online presence. If you want your social marketing to be successful, you must go out of your way to be social. Network with other accounts by liking, commenting, and sharing posts.
Conclusion
Your ability to secure prospective tenants strongly correlates with your sales skills. However, even with little experience, you can still improve your technique with a few simple tricks. In this article, we discussed how to market a rental property successfully. Then, to recap, we outlined how cleaning up and using the correct lighting can help you take better listing photos. Finally, by leveraging social media with fantastic copy and a solid online presence, remember to cap it off.
