People spend more money in the summer—and for good reason: they’re busy. LendEDU found that common expenses include, vacation, social outings, summer camps and more. All of this makes your job harder. With potential renters busier than ever, you need to find a way to get in front of them and get tenants into your properties.
If you’re at a loss for new ways to reach these people, use these summer marketing ideas to spark some creativity this summer.
Go Offline With Local Flyers
Despite being such a digital society, we still live in a physical world—and traditional marketing, like flyers, are not obsolete. Potential tenants still frequent coffee shops, libraries and the local supermarket, all places where you can put flyers for maximum exposure.
However, if you look at any local message board, you’ll find it’s crowded with flyers. To be successful, you need to make yours stand out—and you don’t need to be a designer to do that. Just add a few key elements that will entice potential tenants to stop, look and act.
Include a clear CTA: First things first: what are you asking the reader to do? Call you? Inquire about a new rental? Get this figured out and make it clear. To be effective, you need to tell whoever sees your flyer what they should do next.
Size your images correctly: You need to include images of your property, but if they’re blurry or pixelated, your flyer loses impact. Dustin Hodgson, Lead Designer and Co-Owner of MyCreativeShop shares a simple rule of thumb in his flyer design blog post: For an 8” x 10” flyer, the pixel dimensions of your image should be at least 2400×3000.
Make it interactive: Add tear-offs at the bottom of your flyer with a phone number or email address—or make it digital, and add a QR code that takes potential renters to a listing or contact page. Most phones come with a QR code reader, so nearly anyone can scan your code. This interactive element makes it easy for a potential tenant to get in touch, reducing friction between you making an ask and them acting.
Get Active in Local Social Media Groups
Instead of simply posting on social media, reach a more targeted audience by getting active in local social media groups. Consider your target audience—a family of four versus single millennials—to determine which groups will allow you to reach those people most effectively.
For example, if you’re looking for young professionals, the San Diego Small Business Professionals group would allow you to interact as a small business owner yourself while broadening your reach to the target audience.
Conversely, a group like San Diego Home Rentals allows you to be more direct, sharing your available rentals with 7K members.
Host a Summer Open House
An open house is one of the best ways to accomplish a challenging aspect of renting your property: getting potential tenants inside to give them a feel for space. An open house makes this possible—but that’s not all. Here are a few more benefits you can’t afford to overlook:
- Meet with potential renters face-to-face to increase trust and rapport.
- Spend less time coordinating meetings with potential tenants and instead meet everyone at once.
- Drive demand. If the open house is popular, people who aren’t completely invested yet may want to put down a deposit right away.
Don’t stop your efforts once the open house is done. If you put out a sign-up sheet, now is the time to reach back out. “Even if you receive a few applications after your open house, take this as an opportunity to get even more. Send an email out to the entire sign-in sheet that lets them know that due to high interest in the unit, you will be reviewing all applications at 5pm Monday night. Setting a hard deadline will get anyone on the fence to act fast,” explains RentDirect.
Go Live
It can be hard to cut through the noise with social media. Instead of posting another rental photo, go live in your property. Instagram and Facebook live are both growing in popularity, with 80 percent of social media users preferring live video to a standard social media post. Not to mention, followers may be notified when you go live, drawing attention to your video and encouraging them to tune in.
What’s more, the live format is perfect for landlords and property managers because it allows you to show your property to more people, in real-time. You can highlight new additions to space and give potential tenants a feel for what it’s like to live there.
Sponsor a Summer Event
With longer days and warmer nights, summer is the ideal time to sponsor a community event to raise more awareness. This is ideal for a company with multiple rentals; you can feature multiple listings at your booth, allowing you to appeal to a variety of potential tenants.
Not to mention, if you sponsor the event, you’ll likely be included in marketing materials and in marketing spots, via radio and online advertisements. This expands your brand to reach exponentially, which can increase your overall ROI for the event.
Find New Renters This Summer
Use these simple and budget-friendly ideas to find more renters in your area. Step back from the usual marketing mediums and broaden your reach by engaging with the community and connecting directly with potential tenants.
About the Author: Jessica Thiefels has been writing and editing for more than 10 years and is now a professional freelancer and consultant. She's worked with a variety of real estate clients and has written for Forbes, Inman, House Hunt Network, Homes.com and more. Follow her on Twitter @Jlsander07.
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