Letting Agents, you don’t need us to tell you that adding new landlords to your portfolio is one of the toughest challenges in the job. But 52% of UK landlords don’t even let through an agent. Yet. There’s still plenty of opportunity out there. So other than being brilliant at what you do, having a waiting list of vetted and reliable tenants and being seen in all the right places, what else can you do to attract those invisible landlords and grow your business?
Capture potential landlords on your website
One challenge that every web-based property business faces, even Rightmove, is the invisible tourist. These are people who visit your website and do all the right things - look at available properties, your About Us page, even check out your team - but don’t do anything meaningful like sign in or register with you. Once they’ve bounced off your site and likely onto your competitor’s, they become completely invisible. Even the most advanced Google Analytics report will tell you only their location, time of visit and on what device the visit came from. Only when they sign up with your competitor do they reveal themselves to be the sneaky landlord they really are….until now.
Web Push Notifications capture the visitor’s data by attaching a cookie to their browser. This enables you to engage with them with specific messages relative to their behaviour on your website. Be they a tenant looking for a home or a landlord looking for a new agent, you can communicate with them automatically via messages directly to their browser without having to read minds or consult an oracle. Check out Monsy for quick tips on how to engage with the invisible man.
2.Unleash the power of your CRM Lead automation is the art of using trigger-points to transfer leads into sales and onto your database. Use Hubspot, Dezrez, Reapit or your preferred alternative, to interact with your customers through live chat, emails and calls by setting up automated marketing campaigns to keep your customers, warm and cold, engaged. This will remove the burden of your manual tasks and ultimately increase your stock levels.
3.Shine on your webinars One of the biggest challenges any sales enterprise faces is the utilisation of time. There are only 24 hours in a day and, unless you own your own business, you may plan to spend some of those sleeping. So, how to use time wisely? An interesting strategy to help you to generate and convert enquiries en masse is to host a webinar. Hosting a webinar doesn’t have to be anything more complex or scary than hosting a Zoom or Google Hangout, but instead of engaging with one landlord, in one strike you can impress 5, 10…unlimited numbers at a time.
Think of a theme to explore in a 10-15 minute session, like ‘Landlord Challenges in a difficult market’. Prepare quick solutions that your agency can offer to those challenges - amazing service, a suite of landlord services, your marketing partners, your list of brilliant tenants - and share them with the attendees. Create an event and promote it on LinkedIn and other social media channels. Invite non-active landlords from your database, do a door drop and even invite the NRLA or other industry bodies to co-host. At worst you’ll have a large pipeline of new potential landlords to chase, at best you’ll quickly increase your portfolio. There are plenty of easy to use platforms available. Zoom, GoToWebinar and WebinarJam are worth exploring.
4. Affiliate army, engage! It’s who you know, not what you know…right? Receiving referrals from 100 different trusted sources can ease the burden of searching for landlords. Start with all of your landlords - you know who they are and what they want and they know how good you are…so they should be willing to recommend you & the benefits of a partnership. Working with Wectory, for example (cough cough) gives your agency a brand new service - rental income in advance to your landlords. You benefit from an exclusive product for landlords who want to expand their portfolio, need urgent repair-work doing or require a quick cash injection. Rather than your landlords seeking this out elsewhere, they’ll think of you…and tell their friends. This is just one example, but we like it *wink wink*.