So whats the deal with mobile marketing? I’m not going to spend the whole article listing statistics for you – data never convinces people anyways. The long and short of it is that a huge amount of people use the mobile internet every day, and the amount of smartphones and tablets being sold is quickly outpacing that of desktop computers. The fact of the matter is that your tenants, and your potential tenants (and probably you I would wager), are living a large portion of their lives on mobile devices.

As a property manager, your primary responsibility is managing people – so that means you need to interact with your tenants (and potential tenants) on all levels, including mobile.

Let’s take a quick look at the website. Your website is the first place you can address your mobile strategy. How does your website look on a smartphone? If it looks the same on the phone as it does on a desktop/laptop, you need to think about changing things. I’m sure you have visited a standard website on your phone, and been frustrated by having to pinch, zoom, and navigate tiny links on a small screen to find the information you need.

If you run a wordpress website, you may be tempted to use one of any mobile converting wordpress plugins. Most wordpress mobile plugins will provide an excellent mobile version for a blog. This is fine for the blog section of your website, but the problem is that most people on their phones are likely not looking for your blog. They are either looking for a specific property, or your management business.

The key here is to put yourself in the shoes of your tenants or prospective tenants and think – what is it that they truly desire?

As a prospective tenant looking around at available rental properties, I’m interested to know where you are located, what property is available, the amenities, and who I need to contact to check out the property/unit. This makes it pretty simple – what you need to do is provide a mobile version of your website which provides this information upfront. You could provide this information for all of your properties in a centralized location (such as a website that you may have for your management business), or perhaps for each property.

As a current tenant, if I’m on the website for the property I live in, I’m likely looking for things such as office hours, contact info, handling maintenance issues, paying rent, etc

So for each of your properties, you have two entirely separate needs for mobile, but only one interface. If you use a program like propertyware, you can take advantage of the mobile Tenant portal (http://www.propertyware.com/mobile-solutions). Then your mobile website version can simply include an easy link for current tenants that takes them to the portal – or if you aren’t using a web based solution like Propertyware, you can still provide a separate section for tenants with the information they desire.

The point here is that you should develop a mobile version of your website, in addition to your current website, such that when people visit you on their phones, they get the information they are looking for up front without having to dig for it.