Your Property Management Brand

Have you ever considered what your property management firm’s brand is? What do you think your tenants, landlords, and client property owners think and feel about your company?

Your company’s brand image is why prospects become customers. Without a good brand, high quality customers may not take your business seriously.  It’s not deals, price reductions, specific service features, or other things they’re responding to.

It’s your overall value proposition, or promise to your customer that creates trust and interest. Your quality of work, technology, and transparency are key items today.

What Clients See is Your Brand

Sometimes when customers, prospective tenants or landlord walk away from your business, it’s the overall message of value they don’t believe. Good branding then is about getting your value proposition across. That image of value is communicated many different ways from your website to your staff to your customer service to your online reviews.

Let’s explore branding, which isn’t that difficult to understand if you break it down to its elements.

You Can Learn from the Big Brands

Brand image is everything for the big corporations. From Ikea to National Rent a Car to Apple, their brand dictates their future. When a company focuses their branding, they not only get their best asset seen, the audience begins to see all the other great stuff about their company.

You Can do Branding

If you’re just starting a property management business, you’ll want to get branding right from the start. And if you’re targeting large corporate property investors, you need your branding to speak specifically to their needs for trust, expertise, and efficient management. The bigger your prospective client the more your brand has to reassure them.

Your Company is Misunderstood

Have you had conversations with customers where they ask you a question and you responded, «oh no, we don’t do that.»  Their question shows how the market misunderstands what you offer and why you’re valuable. A laser focused brand gets rid of the confusion.

Many landlords and tenants have poor impressions of property managers. They might think property managers just want money and don’t fulfill service expectations. Or they think you’re old fashioned and juggle paperwork all day?

Maybe they manage their own properties and feel you don’t have much to offer them. These are just a few of the notions your branding has to overcome.

Using a high tech, cloud based, all in one property management solution gets a good message across when they’re searching for a property management company.

See the benefits of an all-in-one property management solution

In the Long Run, The Best Brand Will Win

Of all the property management businesses available in your city, customers will choose the one they feel has the best, most relevant brand to them. The firm with the best brand gives them confidence, esteem, and assures them they are getting the property management services they need. That saves them time and money.

You don’t have to be a branding guru to understand how you can keep customers happy and generate more landlord, property owner and tenant leads to your business. All you need is a purpose or an intent to improve. You’ll find your way to building the best property management brand in your market. Read our blog and you’ll discover plenty of ways.

That’s a nice goal to have and will propel you to more profitability and customer retention. The payoff is tenants who stay, landlords who will want to work with you, and property owners who believe you are the only one who will help them earn more and increase their asset values.

If your brand is excellent, you’ll differentiate your business really well, and you won’t have to compete so hard.

What is Your Brand Image Right Now?

To understand your brand image, consider all of your competitors. Look at their physical place of business, their website, their service array, vehicles, location, owner’s expertise, and their marketing messages. What have customers said about them? How would you rate each of them? What’s their weakness and credibility? Why is one better than the others?

Your brand is a promise of value to customers. That promise is contained in everything you are, do and communicate. It’s a feeling, or broad estimate they have of you, your staff and your style of doing business.

Your brand needs to be what your customers want and respect.

What customers think of your company and services depends on many things:

1. trust, transparency and reputation
2. credibility, experience, authority
3. likability
4. relevance and the type of properties you manage
5. responsiveness, professionalism, management style
6. use of technology and personal compatibility

Your company logo and slogans aren’t your brand image. They can certainly support the above elements. Whether customers like your business brand depends on whether it matches what they need, trust you, believe what you say, and like your service and people.

Here’s 3 Property Management Company logos.

Which do you like and trust?

Your brand’s impression on new website visitors versus what your current customers believe your business is about is often very different. New prospects don’t know you or trust you. Current customers know you, trust you, and know your product/service is relevant to them.

Can you build a powerful brand overnight? That’s not likely. There’s a lot you don’t know about your market and what they’ll respond to. It’s best to keep your mind open and learn — a priority of continuous improvement.

See this post on how Landlords find and select a property management company.

How to Get Your Branding Right

So let’s talk about some ways you can build, improve and communicate your property management brand really well. The end result will be a sharper picture of your business and who your best prospects are. And getting laser sharp about the messages you’re sending out about your company is important. Branding is all about clarity.

Here’s a Simple 5 Step Process to Build a Great Brand:

1. Know Your Market – what property opportunities are present and what’s the forecast for years to come? Do customers want modern, digital services? Are they lifestyle or renter by necessity type? What are their top pain points?
2. Create a Niche — Establish who you are and what you do specifically well. How are you able to serve customers better in a way they can relate to. Is it multifamily, single detached management, finance, maintenance and repair, landscaping, low cost large portfolios, new lifestyle developments with tech amenities, or can you help find and keep tenants longer?
3. Build a Marketing Strategy — To help reach and communicate your brand promise, you’ll need a marketing strategy that uses all appropriate channels to reach customers. Is your physical business location highly visible?
4. Does your logo and slogan get your real value across? Does your Website explain your value proposition well? Are you advertising on the right type of property management websites? Does your website support your brand positioning well? Does it tell them what you do best, and how you’re the only one for them?
5. Build Your Reputation – Ensure you and your staff understand your brand and act accordingly when working with customers.

When you blog or engage in social media, post material that gets some aspect of your brand value across. Invite people to revisit your site or subscribe to your newsletter. Make an offer that lets them try out your services such as a property review/analysis.

It’s not always what you say in your marketing, but rather what you talk about that tells them whether you’re right for them. Of course, any time you get to show your expertise, wisdom, and professional skills, it brings you closer to a new customer.

Some brands are worth Billions of dollars, and any company that’s going somewhere will be smart about creating a brand their customers love.

Bookmark this post or use material from it to blog to your staff and customers.

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