Your prospects are searching for their next home around the clock, and there’s no way you can personally catch them all. While it’d be nice if they all left a voicemail or email indicating their interest in your community, unfortunately, in today’s “gotta have it now” era, this is beyond wishful thinking–introducing automated marketing!

Marketing automation in the leasing industry can come in several forms and tools, but ultimately has one function–to enable apartment marketers the ability to capture and foster prospective tenants using much less effort and at a greater efficiency. In addition to providing the leasing team with more time to handle other important rental tasks, automated marketing can also help foster engagement in a contactless world without sacrificing that personal touch. If you are new to marketing automation, here are three tools you can use to help you save some time and improve performance throughout your apartment marketing journey.

Chatbots

Chatbots have made a huge shabang in the real estate industry over the past few years. Easily described as a 24-7 virtual leasing assistant powered by artificial intelligence, these tools are housed on your website and allow prospects the ability to communicate with your property any time of day. They are programmed to automatically respond to common questions and redirect visitors to the appropriate information on your website. Another cool feature about chatbots is that they also have the ability to record the contact information of those interested in your property in addition to many of their specific interests, such as unit type, amenities, etc. so that your leasing agents can land more seamless conversions when they reach out personally. 

Social media posting

If posting daily on your social media accounts is bogging your leasing team down, you have options. Through automated social media scheduling platforms like Hootsuite, your team can create one content calendar for the quarter and schedule your posts for extended time periods, either days or weeks in advance. Through an automated scheduling platform, you can specify which channel receives certain content at which time and even include imagery and alt text in the form of pre-scheduled posts. And because most of these tools also record specifics regarding engagement, you can better gauge if your posts are actually proving effective among your renters–all in one platform.

Google Ads

If you’ve invested in Google Ads, you can automate these puppies as well. Through the Google Ads Smart Bidding and Smart Creative tools you can automate the optimization and bidding process for your ads. Smart Bidding allows users to optimize bids in real time using machine learning to save you time and ultimately improve the performance of your ads. The smart bidding data optimizes using data from previous campaigns for greater accuracy. And through more advanced features and reporting, you can even set performance targets more catered to your property’s marketing goals.

The Smart Creatives functionality (another great automated tool in Google Ads) leverages machine learning to create the best combination of creative assets for your ads–be it responsive or search ads. You can upload your visual assets and Google Ads will automatically generate responsive display ads for show on the Google Display Network. The tool also allows you to use the content on your website to target your ads and compensate for your keyword-focused campaigns. Your headlines and landing pages for your search ads are also generated using your website content to improve relevancy and save you additional time on the backend.

Rentbot can help.

Your prospects are searching around the clock, and if you haven’t yet explored marketing automation, then you could be missing out on valuable opportunities to score conversions. You need to be ready to meet your renters where they are. This means having a responsive website, the freedom to serve up leases at any time and the ability to answer questions at a beckon and call. 

But, first things first, you’ll need to get that website in order. Your website is your virtual front door and provides the foundation for all of your marketing efforts–automation included. That’s where we come in. At Rentbot, we design websites for your multifamily properties that attract, convert, and retain tenants. Each of our websites is designed with your renters in mind–from our conversion optimized layouts right down to our real-time availability. Complement your automated marketing efforts with a Rentbot site and turn those leads into leases in no time. 

Learn more about our web features here. 

About the Author

Jonsette Calloway joined the Rentbot team in 2015. With a background in public relations, advertising and copywriting, she has helped a multitude of clients achieve their marketing and communications goals within various fields, but she particularly enjoys working with the apartment industry.