What It Takes For Property Management Companies to Crush Localized Marketing

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created challenging market conditions for property management companies with increased costs due to regional restrictions on evictions and stringent health and safety requirements. Although property management companies are facing these challenges, there's been an increase in rental demand in 2021 as work from home remains popular and people see that they have the opportunity to relocate. In this constantly evolving environment, property management companies need to understand how to stand out on local search and local social. Multifamily leaders must learn to keep pace with this shifting landscape and take advantage of opportunities to rank well for the searches that matter, publish content that engages the right target audience, and turn online searchers into qualified leads and new renters. That's where our Top Property Management Companies in Localized Marketing report comes in. This newly-released report breaks down what leaders in property management are doing to dominate local search and social efforts and ultimately win more leases. Throughout this blog, we'll break down the essential findings from the report and explain what your property management company can learn from them.

Local Social - The Metrics That Matter

As a multifamily leader, you're likely aware of the importance of local social. The population of Gen Z will grow from 8 million to 55 million in the next decade. If your property management company and portfolio companies aren't leveraging local social, you could miss out on a major audience. When it comes to local social, we'll start with where property management companies are succeeding. The Top Property Management Companies in Localized Marketing report found that leaders in the industry have a good location presence and high posting frequency. For instance, on Facebook, 62 percent of the properties examined were actively creating new social content regularly. On average, property management companies post seven times per month on Facebook, which breaks down to one or two posts per week. Leading property management companies are also leveraging Google as a social channel. Twenty-three percent of property management companies create and share Google Posts regularly, and an impressive 80 percent respond to their Google reviews. How does your property management company stack up? If you're not meeting or exceeding these averages, it's time to re-think your local social efforts. While there are many areas where property management companies are succeeding in local social, there's room for improvement. Although property management companies create and post content on both Facebook and GMB, it's not receiving the high-valued engagements (shares and comments) it deserves. A typical post gets an average of seven engagements and only 0.8 high-valued engagements. Consumers discover and transact with businesses they encounter on social media, with 78 percent reporting that social media has influenced their purchase decisions. Property management companies need a compelling localized social strategy to create engaging social content that captures the audience you want to target. Check out our Localized Social Content Guide for more insight into what it takes to develop local social content that receives more high-value engagements.

Property management companies also have room for improvement when it comes to their average review response time. While properties are responding to a substantial 80 percent of reviews received on Facebook, review response time should also be considered. For instance, on Facebook, the average review response time is 63 days, and it's only slightly shorter at 50 days on GMB. Consumers expect businesses of all kinds to respond to reviews on time, especially when it comes to negative reviews. Forty percent of consumers expect a response no more than 24 hours after the negative review is posted. If your properties aren’t responding to reviews efficiently and in a personalized manner, you could be hurting your online reputation. While monitoring and responding to reviews across your portfolio of 100s or 1,000s of properties can be challenging, SOCi is here to help. SOCi Reviews allows users to view every action taken on reviews and monitor every activity on social media. Now, your local teams and corporate leadership will always know which reviews and social engagements are addressed and which ones still require attention to ensure the prompt responses residents expect.

Local Search - What's Working, and Where There's Room For Improvement

Property management companies appear to be devoting more time and attention to local search today when compared to local social. Looking at what's working well, local listings top the list. Property management companies show strong performance in claiming their properties’ listings and pages across top local search sites like Facebook and Google. On average, property management companies have claimed 86 percent of their listings on GMB and an impressive 98 percent of their listings on Facebook. Property management companies also understand the importance of updating their properties’ local listings with the most updated and accurate business information. The top property management companies have an average of:

89 percent profile completeness on Google
92 percent profile completeness on Facebook
74 percent profile completeness on Yelp

Compared to the optimization rates on Google and Facebook, Yelp could use some extra attention. Average star ratings also have room for improvement across the board. The average star rating for a property on Google is 3.70 and on Yelp just 2.71. Facebook is higher at 4.46, but this is primarily a historical data point as newer Facebook reviews do not include star ratings, only recommendations. While you can't directly control the ratings you receive from residents, you can indirectly improve average ratings over time by responding to as many reviews as possible and examining the content of negative reviews to make meaningful improvements to your properties. Again, our previously mentioned SOCi Reviews can help your property management company ensure it responds to all reviews received promptly.

Create A Winning Localized Marketing Strategy for Your Company

So what exactly did we learn by analyzing the top property management companies? For one, we know that property management companies should place greater emphasis on maximizing their digital presence across all local search and social platforms, including Yelp. This includes focusing on core SEO tactics that will drive that visibility — like business listings management and local profile completion. Similarly, local social should be used as a tool to drive discovery. Property management companies should place a greater emphasis on creating content that connects with potential residents and creates high-valued engagement, such as comments and shares. While SOCi Reviews can help you manage your online reputation, SOCi's Social Solution is here to streamline the process of managing your local social efforts across your entire portfolio. With SOCi's Social Solution, your property management company can publish to all major networks to amplify audience engagement with localized shareable content. It also lets you discover, create, and share dynamic localized content while maintaining strong brand consistency across all business locations, ensuring meaningful engagements with potential residents.

Request a demo today for more information on how SOCi can help your property management company dominate its localized marketing efforts! From local listings to reputation management to local social and beyond, SOCi has you covered. What are you waiting for? It's time to start winning more leases today!