Property Management and Platypuses. (An SEO Case Study)

The connection began with a cold call. I'd always been terrified of cold calling, but that day my business coach had pushed me hard. 

"You're not trying to sell anything yet. You're just finding out what property managers' needs are. Where the pain points lie."

I had begun with the idea that I'd offer newsletter services. I'm a career journalist and copywriter, after all--and also an experienced real estate investor managing my own properties. I figured I could combine the two "unfair advantages" and boom! I'd be up and running with a lovely subscriber-based business.  I was tired of one-off copywriting jobs that didn't allow me to develop long-lasting relationships with clients. I wanted to move into new territory and really make a difference. I wanted to be able to offer something that actually improved my clients' lives.  

But first the cold calling. 

"What are your biggest challenges?" I asked David, the owner of one of the largest property management firms in my area when I got him on the phone. 

He didn't hesitate to list them. Oh, there were so many--from utility companies that lagged in switching over accounts, to online reputation disasters when slacker tenants didn't get their security deposits back and took out their anger on the PM.

But, not too surprisingly, he kept coming back to one giant challenge. (And it wasn't the lack of a newsletter.) 

It was leads. He just needed MORE of them. And the ones he was getting all came through the website. So, if he could just boost his traffic and then get those visitors to call for his free rental market analysis....

(Which analysis, by the way, reflected 30 years of managing properties in the D.C. metro area. Not too shabby.) 

David's story was nearly identical to that of every other property manager I talked with that day. (And my coach had told me I couldn't get off the phone until I'd interviewed 10 of 'em. So I got an earful.) Leads through a national lead-gen website were getting too expensive. Good-quality clients were getting harder to find. And, with the economy still sort of groaning and creaking along, even the good landlords often struggled to make the repairs that would keep tenants happy. 

Plus, property managers, I learned, are like the duck-billed platypus of real estate professionals. They don't fall easily into any category. Some traits of a residential broker, some of a facilities manager--with purposes not quite aligned with the average sales agent. (Not to mention the giant trust hurdles that must be overcome before an agent will recommend a professional property management firm to a homeowner client. (If they're on the fence, will the property manager sell them on unrealistic rent prices and thus lose them a sale they might have had? Will the firm snake my listing when it does come time to sell the place after renting it out a couple of years? Will my client get gauged on fees and jacked-up repair costs--and then hate me forever for making the referral?)

The more I learned, the more I realized property managers inhabit a rather lonely little island in the world of real estate. I was intrigued by the idea of how to help--at least on the website and search engine side of things. The firm offered a much-needed service (particularly for Washington-area diplomats and foreign service employees who couldn't easily manage rental properties from overseas. Plus, their prices were in line with the market. 

But I had no idea whether I'd get that opportunity. First, I had to put my offer together....I'd get more training. I'd put a decent-looking website up. I'd...

But before I could do that fully, I heard back from David. "I enjoyed our conversation," he said. "Could you come to my office and talk with me about how to use your content skills to get more people coming to my website?"

Well, then again, maybe sometimes the best thing is to jump in before you're 100 percent ready. 

By the end of the meeting, we'd worked out a plan and a service contract. It included a variety of different tactics--starting with conducting an audit, to see what was optimized and what wasn't. (And to create a  benchmark from which to measure progress.) 

From there we'd set to work building up local citations (i.e., directories like Yelp and SuperPages),  reverse-engineering what competitors were doing, creating a blogging plan based on keywords that his competitors seemed to be ignoring, and reaching out to influencers to build up the website's link profile. 

It was going to be an fascinating adventure, taking this well established firm and finding new ways to make it visible and connected to both owners and agents. The big challenge, I realized, would involve a whole lot more than just boosting his rankings. It'd be convincing real estate agents they ought to get on his email list and start referring listings clients who were about to cross over into Landlord Land.

Our first big effort to do that would be a contest. After all, who doesn't like a great giveaway, right? What fun! 

Uhhh, sort of. 

Little did I realize how difficult it would be to get realtors to enter a giveaway. Even with a one-year subscription to MRIS as the grand prize. More on that in the next post.... :-)