The Secret to Making Your Online Rental Listings Pop

Securing a tenant for your rental property is crucial because, for many landlords, the property they’re renting out might be costing them money each month. Therefore, having empty rentals for longer than a month or so can prove difficult for landlords financially.

That’s why it’s imperative to get your online marketing right for rental properties so that the ideal tenant can be secured as quickly as possible. Preferably, having tenants making offers is the ideal solution.

However, the rental market has become a highly competitive one, which is why you should be looking at how effective your previous rental listings have been. There’s always room for improvement, so let’s take a look at the secrets you’ll need to make your rental listings pop online.

1. Crafting Compelling Listings

There are some core components of rental listings that should be used to optimize the listing and sell your rental to the right tenants.

Firstly, you want a catchy headline that’s going to grip and engage with the prospective renters from the moment they lock their eyes on your listing. Once they click through to the listing, you’ll want to take a look at the listing’s description. Have you listed everything in detail and in a way that’s compelling?

Rather than just listing the basics of your rental, try to consider the language you use and how you use it to entice your viewers. It won’t hurt to review a few blogs about writing a listing before you write your own.

When describing your property, a good marketing technique is to tell it through the story. Storytelling is a much more engaging and compelling way of drawing interest. Get creative with your description and appeal to the target tenants directly.

2. Utilizing High-Quality Photography and Virtual Tours

Professional photography is a great way to enhance listings and attract more inquiries. If you’re just sticking a picture of the property from the outside and a somewhat blurry image of one room in the property, then you probably won’t get much interest.

Prospective tenants are going to want to see as much of the property before they actually visit it. That’s why you want to pick out a professional photographer to do it all for you, ideally someone who specializes in rental photography.

If you’re taking the photos yourself, then there are some basic tips that will help you get the best photos possible. These include finding the right angles, looking at the lighting in the room, and enhancing the space by how you dress it with furniture and furnishings.

Virtual tours have become a lot more popular in recent years, especially as it helps renters understand the layout of the property before viewing it. It’s a realistic viewpoint of the property and a feature of your listing that will only make it stand out more in comparison to other listings.

3. Leveraging Online Platforms and Social Media

Social media and the online world is a great promotional tool to utilize. As such, you should be looking at ways to help get your listing out to the masses.

For example, you might want to look at listings on multiple sites. There are some great benefits of posting on various rental platforms in order to increase visibility. For some tenants, seeing your property listed on multiple sites is going to make it appear more legitimate and trusting.

Social media has become very effective for realtors to sell property and to list properties for rent too. Consider what platforms might work best for you, whether that be platforms like Facebook for local groups, to Instagram, where if your post hits the right feeds of those interested, you may end up finding your next tenants through the platform.

With social media, you help to reach a broader audience and that can be helpful if you have a listing that’s a bit more niche or a harder sell for tenants. With the amount of time users spend on social media being over 150 minutes per day, you’re likely to catch the attention of one or two people interested in the rental.

4. Optimizing for Search Engines (SEO)

Search engine optimization is a great method to follow when you’re trying to get web pages ranked on search engines. If you’re looking to drive more traffic and interest to your listings, then optimizing it for search engines is a must.

There are a number of SEO best practices to consider when leveraging it for your rental listing. These include keyword research, meta tags, and optimizing the property description itself for search engines.

Simpler measures, like claiming your Google My Business listing, using social media to boost your listing’s visibility, and using local keywords, can help with more basic attempts to reach a wider audience.

If you have several listings and a website, you’ll want to do some research online if you’re new to SEO, but don’t underestimate how effective it can be for your listing. With keyword research, enhanced positioning for targeted keywords can help lead to better search engine rankings and increased traffic from those desired tenants of yours.

Master the art of rental listings online 

When it comes to getting your rental snapped up quickly by tenants, make sure to optimize your listing using these tips. From taking professional photos and incorporating a virtual tour to making use of SEO practices and promotion on social media. 

All of the above will help you as a landlord or manager of a property, to secure a tenant. It helps to reduce vacancy times, which keeps money in the bank for those who own the property.