The middle point of your marketing plan is next. I spoke about your marketing plan being broken up into three distinct categories. Yesterday was all about understanding who you are speaking to so that you can craft your advertising to catch their eye and compel them to visit you. Today is all about taking those visitors and converting them into your tenants.

This of course is primarily the time during their visit to the property. Interpersonal skills are obviously key here – so I won’t be talking about those. Having fantastically pristine looking units is also a clear necessity here – so I won’t be talking about this. What I want to talk about is an often overlooked part of marketing – teaching.

This element is very simple, and it comes down to educating your potential tenants. The majority of people who go to purchase something (from leasing an apartment, to buying new shoes) are limited in their knowledge and understanding of the product/service in question. The real challenge is that people (you and me included) don’t know what they don’t know and don’t know that they don’t know it – this is just pure ignorance, and everyone suffers from it on a certain level.

The challenge with ignorance is that it is simply a lack of understanding and a lack of awareness of not having that understanding, which means the reality that people perceive is often the one they make their decisions on – regardless of how much information they may have.

Confused?

The bottom line is that your goal needs to be to open the eyes of your tenants to understand that all the important aspects that they don’t know.

What’s important to you as a property manager? You put a huge amount of effort into filling a property with good tenants, and keeping that property secure, clean, and maintained. Most people probably don’t have this on their mind when they visit – they are almost certainly just looking at the space they are going to live in, the price, and elements that are convenient/inconvenient.

Imagine you are looking at a new apartment complex – wouldn’t you like to know that each tenant the manager has leased to was very meticulously chosen from a larger pool of people and that they are likely going to be the best neighbors in the world for you? Wouldn’t you like to know the training and certification in security that your management staff has gone through to ensure the property is the safest place to live?

You go beyond just saying “we have great tenants and we are super secure” though – this is about teaching people the finer points of chosing apartments. Consider crafting a handout – “How to properly find the most ideal apartment at the lowest price” – which teaches your potential tenants the elements of apartments that they should be looking at. Ideally you hit on top of all of those points, and they feel compelled to live in your property – after all it’s highly unlikely that your competitors are doing the same thing.