How often have you looked at your properties web page, Internet listing service or called the advertised office phone number to listen to the voice mail message?
There are a number of valuable reasons to complete these “self checks” at least monthly.
It’s important to know how easy or difficult it is to locate your internet presence. Having an internet listing buried on page three or four isn’t going to generate many leads. Updating specials and availablity is critical to the effectiveness of an Internet ad. Viewing a web page with special including an expiration date that is long past, indicates little interest on the part of the advertiser. If the special is outdated, the accuracy of all information is questionable.
Featuring different apartment styles on a rotating schedule can assist in refreshing the content on the Internet listing. This includes listing current information with social programming adds more value to the content.
Is the leasing team using a template to respond to Internet inquiries or are the responses generated individually without structure or format? How quickly are responses to Internet inquiries generated? Without testing or shopping your own property, you can’t know how your property is being presented.
Surfing Craig’s List will show how often ads are being refreshed, as well as confirming the ad is active and not a victim of ghosting.
Depending on your property location this may be the last opportunity to refresh the photos used for Internet advertising and other marketing pieces. Changing up photos from time to time can offer a fresh appearance to your property advertising.
Photos with seasonal decorations, Autumn leaves and clear blue skies will continue to offer a positive image of the property through winter months dominated by grey skies and piles of snow in northern climates.
Just as it’s important to test shop internet advertising, testing phone numbers listed for the property can prevent a huge variety of errors. Most properties advertise phone numbers for tracking services, so an error with a phone number may not be easily identified. If tracking services have changes,are all of the numbers changed in the ads? Without making a few phone calls to test the phone numbers, valuable leads could be lost. If the property is self-hosting voice mail, how well does the message sell the property? How’s the audio quality? Are you able to leave a message more than 5 seconds?
Including monitoring web listings, emails responses and the voice mail presentation every month on the marketing calendar will keep all aspects of the property advertising fresh and accurate.
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This is a really good reminder that it’s imperative to inspect all of your digital assets to make sure what you see is what you expect. This is even true if you are using tools that automate tasks such as posting to craigslist or update your ILSs. Manually spot checking is the only way to really know if your posts are getting ghosted and your ILS listings are complete. If you are using an ILS updater, keep in mind that there are limitations to this tool, and I have seen many ILS listings practically devoid of information because the feeds weren’t set up correctly. Further, the MITSs standard fields don’t include “golf course,” so it you have one, there is no way to add it to your ILS listing unless you do it manually (and make sure you do it in such a way that your feed won’t override the change!). Tools are great, but you still need to take the time to double check everything.