Reaching The Tenant
In our recent survey of 1,000 people currently seeking rental housing, we discovered that not only are the great majority of potential tenants searching the Internet to find a home, but they are searching across multiple sites. While renters may be using various marketing sources to find a home, it is important to know where a majority of them are looking. With that in mind, 72% say they begin their search online. In fact, only 17% go to the newspaper, 5% look for yard signs, and another 5% rely on referrals from friends and/or family.
When asked, “On average, how many rental sites do you search to find a rental?”, an astonishing 25% selected more than ten sites. In total, 93% of respondents indicated that they search at least two sites or more when looking for a home to rent.
Additionally, a study conducted by Rent.com reports that 67% of renters think of using a search engine to locate a home, while only 21% think of using a specific site. This means that 2 out of 3 potential tenants begin their search on Google or Bing rather than going to a specific site.
What can all of this tell us about rental marketing? That consumers are becoming more and more web savvy and one source or one site is no longer enough. Creating a great rental ad is the first step, but ultimately, the most important piece is that your ad is connecting with as many potential tenants as possible.
Click here to see full results: http://rentbits.com/rb/page/industry-data.html
To learn more about how to maximize the online presence of your vacant rental listings, please give us a call at (303) 640-3160 or email us atsales@rentmarketer.com
Predicting the Future of Rental Leads
Data from the past can help us predict the future. This is exactly what the new Google Rental Index and Insights for Rental Search offer. The Google Rental Index tracks queries related to “apartments, rentals, for rent, rent”. Below is a graph of historical rental data for the last 4 years.
As you can see, every year, starting in late July and going until late December, rental traffic drops dramatically. Google takes this historical information and uses algorithms to determine the future of rental traffic. Google predicts that in July 2010, rental traffic will be 23% higher than traffic in January 2004. This will be slightly higher than July 2009 traffic.
What can rental advertisers learn from this type of data?
Rental leads drop off August – December.
What can rental advertisers do about this?
- Offer promotions and specials to attract potential tenants.
- Think about lowering your rental rates.
- Update your ads regularly.
- Ensure your ads utilize your best and most recent photos, and post the maximum number of photos allowed.
- Answer all phone and email inquiries promptly.
Place your Rental Listings on a Map for Free
Rent Marketer has partnered with PickRent to offer Rent Marketer customers the ability to put a map of their listings on their blog or website for free. Here is how it works:
- If you are a Rent Marketer customer, go to this link.
- Enter your Rent Marketer “Lead Contact Name” – i.e (Betty) or (Wendy Frenzel)
- Customize your map size
- Preview Map and Generate Code
- Copy this code and put on your website or blog
You can view a real life working example of the map from A Vantage Properties. View a video of how to use this feature.
Rent Marketer Names Craig Smith to Board of Directors
Rent Marketer, Inc, today announced that Craig Smith, CEO of Service Magic, an IAC Company, has been elected to serve on the Rent Marketer board of directors.
“As a veteran leader in the digital marketing industry, Craig Smith has helped shape the way marketers acquire customers online, as well as revolutionize the way consumers connect with service professionals,” said Dan Daugherty, chief executive officer. “Craig’s passion for online marketing, strong business acumen and knowledge of the local market will be of great benefit to Rent Marketer as we continue our rapid growth.”
Craig Smith was appointed Chief Executive Officer of ServiceMagic in January of 2008. A member of the ServiceMagic team since 2000, Craig began his career in strategic financial planning and progressed into his current role as CEO. He previously acted as the senior vice president of the consumer division where he was charged with overseeing the company’s Internet marketing strategy and customer service division. He was also responsible for consumer marketing and cultivating new strategic business partnerships.
“I’m extremely excited to lend my experience in local online marketing to the exceptional Rent Marketer team. Dan and his team have built a valuable platform for renters, property managers, investors and real estate agents and I look forward to participating in their continued success,” said Craig Smith.
About Rent Marketer
Rent Marketer, Inc is a leading rental advertising and distribution network for the rental industry. Rent Marketer works with real estate investors, property managers, and real estate agents and offers them one place to post their rental listings and distributes the information to over 100 different rental and classifieds sites. The Rent Marketer advertising network consists of over 10.2 million unique monthly visitors. Rent Marketer also runs rentBits (http://rentbits.com) and Apartment Marketer (http://www.apartmentmarketer.com).
Top 10 Best Places to Live in the US – Rentals
Each year, CNNMoney selects the best places to live in the US. This year the winners are:
Finding Rental Rates in Your City
Looking for rental rates? Have you ever wanted to know if you are getting a good deal for your rental? How do you know if it is a good deal? Well, now you can easily view rental rates for free in over 4,000 cities in the US.
Check out rentBits.com rental rates and see if you are getting a good deal on your rental.
rental rates
Rent Marketer Launches Reverse Phone Look-Up
The Problem:
Today, 50 – 70% of all rental phone leads go unanswered and many of those interested tenants don’t leave a message. This makes current rental marketing programs less efficient due to lost leads.
The Solution:
Rent Marketer has launched a reverse phone look-up service that matches the phone number calling with public records and gives the landlord the following information on the interested tenant:
The Phone Number that Called
The Name of the Individual
The Length of Call
The Type of Phone Call (Mobile, Residential, etc.)
The City of the Caller
“We are constantly working on innovative ways to help our advertisers quantify their rental advertising spend,” says Dan Daugherty, CEO of Rent Marketer, Inc.
About Rent Marketer, Inc
Rent Marketer, Inc is a rental advertising and distribution network for the single family home rental industry. Rent Marketer works with real estate investors, property managers, and real estate agents and offers them one place to post their rental listings and distributes the information to over 100 different rental and classifieds sites. The Rent Marketer advertising network consists of over 10.2 million unique monthly visitors. For more information, visit http://www.rentmarketer.com.
rentBits.com Rental Search Traffic up 300% for last 12 months
rentBits.com, a rental search engine for homes for rent and apartments for rent, and a product of Rent Marketer, Inc, has experienced an increase in unique monthly visitors by more than 300% for the last 12 months.
“Due to the increase in demand for rentals, a clean search interface and a comprehensive database of rentals, rentBits has been experiencing substantial growth within the last 12 months.” said Dan Daugherty, president of Rent Marketer, Inc.
In May, rentBits.com attracted nearly 200,000 unique visitors, according to compete.com, up from 45,000 one year earlier.
About rentBits.com
rentBits.com is a national rental search engine that actively crawls the web looking for rental listings. rentBits is a product of Rent Marketer, Inc and has over 500,000 active apartment and home listings available for rent.
About Rent Marketer, Inc
Rent Marketer, Inc is a leading rental advertising and distribution network for the single family home rental industry. Rent Marketer works with real estate investors, property managers, and real estate agents and offers them one place to post their rental listings and distributes the information to over 100 different rental and classifieds sites. The Rent Marketer advertising network consists of over 10.2 million unique monthly visitors.
How Many Rental Leads are Generated During Non-Business Hours?
At Rent Marketer, we collect a massive amount of data that helps us improve the efficiency of online rental advertising. One piece of data we recently collected was total leads that are generated after business hours? During our research, we found that 32.79% of phone and email leads come after the normal 8 – 5 business hours. The graph is below:
There is also a correlation between the amount of time it takes to get back to a potential resident and filling vacancies. In fact, a recent MIT study shows that the odds of contacting a lead in 5 minutes vs 30 minutes drops by a factor of 100.
The longer you wait to return a call or email, the less likely you are to get in contact with that potential resident.The take-aways from this data are:
- You may be missing out on as much as 32% of the leads that occur after normal businss hours
- Answering the phone and responding to leads will dramatically increase your chances of closing the deal
- The second best thing from answering your phone is to return the phone call within 5 minutes after they leave a message. This is why the 24-hour call center has been so successful.
Apartments.com Study – 90% of Renters Search Across Multiple Sites
Earlier this year, Apartments.com conducted a national survey to more than 1,600 renters on their 2009 moving plans. One of the findings of this survey showed that about 90% of renters surveyed said they will search multiple apartment websites for their next apartment.
The online rental industry will continue to become more fragmented. For advertisers, it is becoming more and more important to reach these renters that are searching across hundreds of sites. However, with more sites on the market, advertisers are starting to feel major pain.
Some of these pain points are:
- Time: (The amount of time it takes to post a listing on 2 or 3 sites is significant enough. With fragmentation, multiple that by a hundred)
- Errors: (With repetitive manual posting increases the chances of inputting the wrong data)
- Site Cost: (The more paid sites properties are on, the more the cost.)
- Company Cost: (It is expensive to pay someone to post listings and make changes across many sites)
- Updates: (Pricing for apartments units can change weekly or daily, updates are impossible if doing it manually)
- Tracking: (How many leads can a network generate)
The solution for advertisers are sites like our own Rent Marketer and Apartment Marketer. These distribution or syndication type services help solve the major pain points for advertisers looking to get more exposure and leads for their listings while decreasing cost and headaches of manually entering data.
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