If you’re not 100% on board with why your property needs its own website, there are many reasons to consider.
#1 – A Website Is Your Most Important Marketing Tool
There are a multitude of ways that you can market your apartment community online and offline. And we encourage our clients to consider all options and experiment with their marketing. But the foundation of all successful marketing campaigns is a great website. It’s your “home base” where you send prospects, where you control the message, and where you have the best chance of ranking #1 in Google. Without a great website that you manage, your marketing message is left to float in the winds of the Internet, completely out of your control.
#2 – You Control The Message
It’s a fact, once your prospects discover your apartment community (whether via drive-by, Craigslist, etc) most of them will Google your property name to learn more. If you do not have your own website, your prospects will get information about your property from other websites, including bad reviews, bad pictures and potentially a bad impression.
However, with your own website, YOU control the message. Our apartment websites are search engine optimized to rank very well for the property name, usually taking the #1 ranking in Google. So when a prospect Googles your property name, you can rest assured that they will find your website, get a great first impression, and have an excellent chance of becoming a new lead.
#3 – It’s Good For Your Brand
Building a brand for your property is an important, long-term marketing objective. A great website bolsters your brand and your online image of being a well-run, professional company. A branded URL like ArborManorApartments.net is infinitely better than ArborManor.blogspot.com or telling prospects “Go to ApartmentGuide.com, search for Arbor Manor, then click on the 2nd result.”
#4 – One Place To Send Prospects & Residents
Long gone are the days of emailing photos and a copy/paste message to prospects. Simply tell them the URL of your website and they do the rest.
Your own website can also serve existing residents, too. From an online maintenance request form to actually paying rent online; from an online event calendar to starting a conversation on the website blog. There are many ways to reach and add value to your residents via a great website.
#5 – All Roads Lead To Your Website
Zillow, Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, Google… the list goes on. And it is important for your apartment community to have a presence on all of these sites. But even more importantly, your presence on each of these sites MUST send prospects to one central location where they can get the full picture and information about your property. This is your website, where you control the message without any distractions. In a sense, all roads lead to your website, where you have the best chance of converting a prospect into a lead.
#6 – Saves Time & Money
We’ve already discussed how having your own website saves time when providing more information to prospects. Depending on your website, there are many other ways that it can save your managers time and save you money.
One example is lead management. Our websites include lead management software to help your team stay on top of all leads, tracking their individual status, contact history and follow up reminders. The net result for your managers is less time spent following up with leads and more time available for the other aspects of running the property.
Another example is a fast learning curve for managing the website content in-house. Under the hood, websites are complex beasts with lots of moving parts and lots of code. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to be a coder to keep the website up to date. A great website should be easy for anyone to update. Our websites include a very simple “point and click” web-based interface for updating the content. And we also provide helpful video tutorials to train your team.
Of course, don’t overlook the fact that when a lead is generated from your website, it is completely yours. No fees per lead, no monthly marketing spend for advertising, no additional costs at all.
So, now that you see the important reasons for having a dedicated website for your property that YOU control, let’s discuss what makes a great website.