7 Reasons Why a Property Website is Your Best Marketing Tool
Build a digital front door to new tenants and investors!
Every property is unique. The location, amenities, style, tenant mix: every attribute comes together to make a building distinct, a complete package that invites and attracts future tenants or investors.
And that’s why a property website should be unique and distinct for every property. The website—consider it the digital front door—welcomes each prospect in with a focus on the best attributes. Today’s tenants expect an experience just like shopping on Amazon, binge-watching a new Netflix series or reading the latest news headlines. And future tenants and investors want that same ease when looking for their next property.
Here’s seven reasons why a property website will help attract tenants and investors searching online for their next property right now.
1. First impressions matter
A prospective tenant’s and investor’s first interaction with a property will be digital. Eighty percent of prospects begin their property search online—and often stay online—relying on information from listing sites, local searches and property websites to narrow down options before picking up the phone or sending an email.
A well-designed property website makes a strong impression and stands out from the competition. By carefully curating a collection of information about a property, the website becomes both a marketing hub and a useful tenant resource, a place to invite interested prospects whenever you send an email, give a business card, mention it to a well-connected colleague or offer a tour.
2. Build credibility with a second impression
What about people who have already engaged with a property offline? A website is just as beneficial for these existing relationships. After the first email or conversation, people head to the internet to research information.
What will they find? Unrelated links or dated listings from third party websites? Or a professionally crafted website showcasing a property’s best features? That’s the power of a dedicated property website. It provides a valuable form of social currency by sharing positive testimonials from current tenants.
A property website is now a critical trust-building tool, verifying facts and validating that first impression for every potential tenant or investor.
3. A marketing foundation to showcase your content
A website is the ultimate showroom for high-quality information about a specific property. Beautiful, high-end photography. A three-dimensional virtual walk through. Useful floor plans and impressive tenant logos. A bird’s-eye view using drone footage from overhead.
Now put that valuable content to good use, showing investors and tenants everything they need from anywhere in the world—and from the comfort of their desk or mobile phone.
4. Working even when you’re not
We’re only human. We all need sleep and time away from the office to spend with friends and family. But a website can put in the hours that no human can: working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, requiring no rest. It’s always out promoting a brand, providing information to prospects whenever they want it and capturing contact information for a future conversation.
Rather than waiting for a return a phone call, a prospect can learn everything they need from the website. If it’s 3:00 a.m. and they need images of the lobby, no problem. It’s Friday night, but a tenant wants to see nearby landmarks or other tenants, you’re covered. An investor working from a distant time zone wants to download floor plans, tenant amenities or view drone footage? Consider it done.
A property website is a self-serve resource for prospective tenants and investors. This empowers a customer by giving them access to information they need and want when it’s convenient for them. It also reduces the amount of time spent collecting, repackaging and sharing that same information.
5. You can’t manage what you can’t measure
Traditional methods to attract tenants and investors can be difficult to measure and determine the ROI. Printed flyers? Direct mail? A conversation over a networking lunch? Signage? Local sponsorships? It’s difficult to measure the effectiveness of the typical methods to get the word out, but a property website is different.
A property website, outfitted with analytics software, can provide data that puts the power of promotion into your hands. Traffic source, bounce rate, pages viewed and exit pages are technical terms for valuable insights about prospect behaviors. The data shows which websites and campaigns drive the most traffic to the website without you having to lift a finger. With more advanced tools, you can learn what people are most likely to click or how much time they spend on specific areas of the website. This data becomes actionable and helps guide future marketing investments based on what works.
6. A wellspring for future tenants
A property-specific website can better support targeted ads and campaigns to the right tenants, matching them with the attributes and amenities they want. This is something a general, overall CRE company website isn’t equipped to handle.
Instead of relying solely on the increasingly crowded (and often costly) LoopNet/CoStar database, a property website becomes an effective source for future tenants and investors. By optimizing a property website, it can be first to appear when prospects search online and email campaigns, social media and offline promotional campaigns can point people right to the website. Digital contact forms capture contact information for anyone that wants to schedule a consultation or tour, download a document or ask a question.
7. Why a website matters now more than ever
An individual property website is a powerful tool in a CRE arsenal. It gives potential tenants and investors access to a valuable resource 24 hours a day and showcases the best qualities of a property. Right now, having a dedicated website for each property is the best way to welcome a world of tenants and investors right to a property’s front door.