By now, if you've read even just a few of our blogs about content marketing, you know that property management companies need a lot of content to drive more traffic and leads — and that, if done well, content marketing gives you the best bang for your marketing bucks and sends more (and better) leads your way than other types of marketing.
So, what kind of content do you need to reach your target audience effectively? Or rather, how do you reach your audience at all?
Producing "just any and all" content won't do. In fact, simply churning out short pieces for your property management blog for the sake of "getting it done" can hurt (rather than help) your content strategy and reduce website traffic.
Today, we talk about getting your content to "your" masses, i.e., the buyers you need to become the leads and new business your company needs for growth!
Start By Defining Your Audience
Launching your content marketing plan without a clear understanding of your audience is similar to sailing into the ocean without a compass. You might eventually reach a destination, but it may not be the one you intended.
The cornerstone of a successful content strategy starts with defining your target audience, a pivotal step that directly impacts the reach and effectiveness of your property management blog and other content offerings.
The Importance of the Buyer Persona
Creating a buyer persona involves a deep-dive investigation into who your ideal property owners are.
-
Are they first-time landlords looking for comprehensive management services?
-
Or perhaps they are seasoned investors wanting only specific services like tenant screening or maintenance?
-
Who do you want to work with?
-
What's your ideal property owner look like?
Understanding their unique needs, aspirations, and pain points will help you create tailored content that strikes a chord.
Delve into Demographics
When developing your buyer persona, demographic data serves as your starting point.
For example, are your ideal clients young tech-savvy professionals, or are they older individuals who have owned properties for years?
This will influence not just the type of content you produce but also where you promote it. For instance, younger audiences might be more inclined to discover your content through social media platforms, while an older audience may prefer email newsletters.
Unlocking Psychographics
While demographics give you a surface-level understanding, psychographic attributes offer a more nuanced view. These encompass your audience's values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle.
Are your ideal property owners primarily motivated by maximizing short-term revenue, or are they more interested in long-term property value growth? Such insights are invaluable for crafting content that speaks to the intrinsic motivations of your audience.
Building a Detailed Image
Once you gather all this information, compile it into a cohesive, detailed buyer persona.
This persona represents your target audience (or one aspect of your broader audience) and should be so thorough that anyone who reads it will have a nearly complete understanding of who your target audience is, what they want, and how they behave.
Think of this persona as the North Star of your content marketing plan. When you or anyone on your team is in doubt about whether a content piece will resonate with your audience, refer back to this blueprint.
How it Impacts Content Creation
With a well-defined buyer persona, content creation becomes a more focused activity. You're not just throwing ideas into the wind and hoping someone catches them; you're crafting targeted messages meant to resonate with a specific group of people.
This increases the likelihood that your audience will engage with your content, follow through on CTAs (calls-to-action), and ultimately become leads or clients for your property management company.
Locate Your Audience
Knowing your audience is half the battle; the other half is finding where they spend their time online.
Of course, the end goal is for them to frequent 'your' website, property management blog, or social platforms, but first, you need to identify where they currently hang out. Once you have that information, you'll focus your initial promotional efforts to lead them back to your online assets.
Pinpoint Your Audience's Needs
After you've invested time and effort in defining your audience, the next step in a successful content marketing plan is pinpointing their needs, wants, and questions. This stage is critically important because the end goal of any content — be it a property management blog, a video tutorial, or an informative social media post — is to offer something of value to your audience.
By understanding what your audience is searching for, you can create content that not only attracts but also retains and converts.
Decoding the Questions They Ask
One of the most straightforward ways to identify what your audience needs is to focus on the questions they ask.
These could be questions that potential clients pose during meetings or inquiries that pop up in forums or the comment sections of your blog posts. These queries serve as direct insights into what your audience is struggling to understand or achieve.
If you're not sure of these questions beyond what you know you hear from your own clients, SEO content tools can also help you find frequently asked questions in your niche.
Identifying the Challenges in Property Management
Understanding the specific challenges that property owners face can give you a wealth of topics to write about. As an experienced property manager, you already have this unique perspective, and it must translate into your content!
Are they struggling with tenant turnover, maintenance issues, or perhaps property legalities? The better you can identify these pain points, the more relevant and practical your content will be.
For instance, if you find that a significant portion of your target audience struggles with timely rent collection, an in-depth guide on setting up automated payment systems can offer tremendous value.
Solution-Oriented Content is King
Your content should not just point out the problems; it should offer solutions. Whether it's a step-by-step guide on efficient property maintenance or tips on how to screen tenants effectively, your content should serve as a handbook for problem-solving.
This positions you as an authority in the property management industry and makes your content shareable, multiplying its reach and impact.
Moving Beyond Basic Needs to Deep Insights
Once you've covered the basics, consider going further by offering unique insights your audience may not have considered.
These could be trends in the property management industry, long-term investment strategies, or even the emotional aspects of being a property owner. By covering topics that your audience didn't even know they needed, you can set your content apart from competitors and offer an additional layer of value.
Investigate Competitor Content
Scoping out the competition is an integral part of a robust content marketing plan.
While you should never duplicate another company's work, observing what has been effective for them can inspire your strategy.
This involves looking at the topics they cover in their property management blogs and scrutinizing the keywords they use and their overall SEO content. Doing this provides useful insights into what's working for them, enabling you to strategize how to do it better.
Then, Do It Better Than Your Competition
Competition is a constant in the property management industry, and it's no different when it comes to content marketing.
When a strategy or type of content is working well for your competitors, it's a signal worth paying attention to. However, replicating their success should only be your starting point.
The real aim is to go above and beyond, delivering content that doesn't just meet the standards but sets new ones. Doing it better than your competition positions you as the go-to expert in your field, which can translate into a larger market share and more robust growth for your business.
Crafting Your Unique Voice
Your unique voice is your secret weapon in differentiating your content from competitors. In a field flooded with similar advice and services, your voice is what can make your content memorable.
Maybe it's your witty undertones, your ability to simplify complex issues, or your knack for storytelling — identify what makes you unique and weave it consistently into your content. This not only makes your material more enjoyable to read but also more likely to be remembered and shared.
Delivering Content With Resonating Value
Creating content that offers true value is the ultimate goal, but what does "value" mean?
It could be providing in-depth answers to common questions, offering actionable solutions to prevalent challenges in property management, or producing visually appealing and easily digested content.
The key is to deliver this value in a way that deeply resonates with your audience. To achieve this, always refer back to your buyer persona and the pain points you've identified. Tailoring your content to speak directly to these factors will make it more engaging and impactful.
The Consequences of Superior Content
What happens when you consistently outperform your competition in content quality? You'll likely see a bump in metrics like page views, session duration, and lead generation, but the effects go beyond that.
Superior content with excellent search engine optimization increases the likelihood of gaining backlinks from reputable sites, thereby enhancing your website traffic. It also fosters brand loyalty and turns your audience into advocates who willingly share your content and recommend your services.
Engage in Conversational Content (You Know Your Audience)
Your content should talk to your audience as though you know them, understand their pain points, and have the solutions specifically for them — because you do!
Remember: You're not a generic Q&A generator; you are an experienced property manager with solutions for property owners learning how to make more money through effectively managing their assets.
The Power of Personalization
Personalizing your content as if you are speaking directly to an individual can have a profound impact.
It's like taking a big auditorium lecture and transforming it into a private tutoring session. Conversational content often employs phrases like "you might be wondering" or "let me guide you," as if you're talking face-to-face with your reader.
This type of content aims to show you understand not just the broad issues in property management but the unique challenges each property owner might be facing.
Expertise Coupled with Empathy
You are an expert in property management, but you're also a guide who can empathize with the dilemmas and questions your audience might have.
Maybe they're overwhelmed by administrative tasks or struggling to keep their properties occupied. Your content should echo this understanding and offer tailor-made solutions to these distinct problems.
Your audience should finish reading with the thought, "They really get me," echoing in their minds.
Navigating Complexity with Clarity
Property management is fraught with complexities, from legal obligations to tenant relations to financial planning.
However, conversational content can help break down these topics into understandable, manageable bits. Use straightforward language and relatable examples to make complex ideas more accessible.
Your aim is to clarify, not to confuse.
Create a Two-Way Dialogue
Conversational content invites a two-way dialogue, not just a one-sided broadcast.
Encourage your audience to ask questions, share their own experiences, or suggest topics they would like you to cover. You can do this by incorporating calls-to-action that invite comments or questions or by using social media platforms to generate interactive discussions around your content.
Comprehensive Research is Key
Your research needs to go beyond observing competitors.
Ensure that your property management blog and other content offerings are accurate, updated, and timely. Validate your statements by citing credible sources and use an external linking strategy to further your credibility.
Then, keyword research is equally crucial. This involves identifying words and phrases that drive traffic and specifically pertain to your business, location, and services.
Plan Content That Truly Engages
Engaging content is more than a compilation of facts and advice; it's a dynamic interaction between your brand and your audience.
You're not just ticking off a checklist; you're orchestrating a meaningful experience that compels your audience to act. To achieve that, effective planning using a planning template and alignment with your business goals is crucial.
Why You Need a Content Marketing Planning Template
A content marketing planning template helps you go beyond one-off articles and social media posts. It provides a framework for a consistent and coherent content strategy.
This template outlines your publishing schedule, targeted keywords, and the themes you will focus on each month or quarter. It allows you to map out how each piece of content serves your broader business objectives and how they all connect with each other.
Aligning Content with Business Goals
Effective content isn't produced in a vacuum; it should align with your broader business goals, whether that's increasing your property management clientele, improving customer retention, or establishing your brand as a thought leader in the industry.
When you make this alignment, each blog post, social media update, or email newsletter becomes a strategic move that pushes your business closer to its objectives.
It's Okay to Be Entertaining
The ultimate goal of any content marketing strategy is not just to inform but to engage in a two-way conversation with your audience.
So, while a "how-to" on tenant screening or property listings can be an informative piece of content, if it's a dry checklist of stuff that reads like the phone book (remember those?), you'll never engage your audience.
However, if you can make learning how to screen tenants somewhat entertaining (tastefully) with compelling images, links to resources, and good storytelling techniques that don't sound like a "human" you (rather than a robot spit out a list of to-dos), you have a better chance of resonating with your human audience and improving the chances of more readers wanting more from you (including reaching out to schedule a call or download a resource from you).
Interactive elements, compelling storytelling, and clear calls to action can all help turn a passive reader into an active participant and, eventually, into a loyal customer.
How Planning Transforms Leads into Customers
When you have a well-executed plan guided by a content marketing planning template, you do more than just publish content; you create a pathway for lead transformation.
A well-defined content journey can take a property owner from a casual blog reader to someone who downloads your resources, subscribes to your newsletter, and eventually contacts you for your property management services.
Promote, Promote, Promote
Creating stellar content is only half the battle in building a successful property management blog or platform. The other half lies in effective promotion.
You could produce the most insightful, valuable, and well-crafted content, but it won't serve its purpose if it doesn't reach the eyes and ears of your target audience. Whether it's new or freshly updated content, promote it!
The Role of Audience-Specific Platforms
You've already worked to identify where your audience congregates online. Now, it's time to use that information to place your content directly in their line of sight.
These could be property management forums, real estate investment groups on social media, or even industry-specific online communities. Wherever your audience is most active, make sure your content appears there.
Leveraging Social Media
Social media isn't just for memes and holiday photos; it's a potent tool for your content marketing plan.
Sharing your content across various platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram increases its visibility exponentially. Tailor your messages to suit the ethos of each platform.
For instance, LinkedIn posts may be more formal and industry-focused, while tweets can afford to be more casual and engaging.
Email Lists: Your Direct Line to Your Audience
Never underestimate the power of a well-curated email list and an email marketing strategy!
Sending out regular newsletters or content updates directly to people who have already expressed an interest in your services is a direct and personal way to keep them engaged. It keeps your brand at the top of their minds and provides an easy pathway for them to click through to your latest content.
Participate and Engage in Online Communities
Promotion isn't just about dropping links and waiting for clicks. Effective promotion also involves engaging with your audience where they are.
Answer questions in forums, offer helpful advice in social media groups and use these opportunities to naturally introduce your content where it can provide value. It's a subtle yet powerful way to draw attention to your resources, all while building your reputation as an authority in property management.
Use a Content Marketing Template to Reach Your Audience (and Enjoy More Leads)
A well-executed content marketing plan is a cornerstone for business growth in the property management industry. With the right content and planning, property managers see more traffic and better leads to enhance their business success.
If you're ready to start a content strategy for your business or enhance what you're already doing, Geekly Media can help! Our property management insights and content marketing expertise are the ideal resources for property management companies ready to grow!
Reach out to learn more about how we help property managers with content, or get started with our free "Property Management Content Marketing Planning Template."
3 min read
