Back in 2012, when the housing marketing collapsed, the property management market was flooded with a particular client type: The Accidental Landlord. People couldn’t sell their homes, so renting their home out was the only way to stay afloat. Tens of thousands did just that and property management companies benefited in a major way.
But what is happening today?
Over last 2-3 years the hot real estate market resulted in many of these Accidental Landlords selling their rental properties and cashing in. You have probably felt the pinch in your own company.
However, what do people do with all that cash? Well, because the market is fairly volatile and cryptocurrency investing might as well be voodoo magic, more and more people will choose to park their cash in Real Estate.
Over the next couple of years the demand for property management services will shift from the Reluctant Landlord to the Intentional Investor. For many, this is happening already.
Then: Accidental Landlords | Now: Investor Clients
Back in 2012, who was your company trying to reach?
Most likely, you were trying to reach accidental landlords. These were people who inherited a property or who couldn’t sell their home, so they put that property on the rental market. They didn’t necessarily realize they needed professional property management. So, your message centered on topics that would help them be effective landlords: how to collect the best security deposits, what kind of eviction process to follow, and reasons they should give you a call.
Think about the real estate market now.
The market has been busy. Many property managers are trying to reach investor clients; people who want to buy and acquire properties. How has your website, your brand message, and your company changed in that time? If you still have content on your site that speaks to the old message, it’s time to make an update.
You need to experiment and implement new things to reach a different audience.
Shifting Market = Shifting Message
Lots of property management companies have gone through changes. They have changed their entire staff structure and they have upgraded to different business software. Yet, the website often gets overlooked.
As the entire market goes through this shift, a message and a website that’s left behind will suffer.
Think about your SEO. You want to rank for keywords that are relevant to your company. One of the best ways to do that is by using your website to build engagement. When someone searches for a property management-related term and they come to your site, you want them to spend time there. It’s important to engage them with content, videos, and articles so Google knows you’re a great fit for the keywords. Then, you rank better.
Technical Reasons to Keep Your Website Current
If you built your website between 2000 and 2014, odds are it was built in XHTML, which was the industry standard at that time. Since 2014, there have been three major updates to the industry standards for language that web designers are using to program. Search engines and web browsers adhere to the same industry standards as web programmers, so new updates to Google and Firefox are optimized for the recommended language of the moment.
On the technical side of things, older websites are not speaking the same language as your web visitors. That can affect the user experience of your visitors in a negative way.
Your website should be as dynamic as your company. If you’d like to talk about where your website is and where it can go, contact us at Fourandhalf.
