ILS Remarketing? Yes, You Can With RentPress Leads

by Jun 23, 20150 comments

Regardless of your personal opinion of Brad Bellflower or JB Smoove or ironic direct mail, apartment marketers can’t disregard the fact that there is an arms race among the major Internet Listing Sites (ILSs) to reach more renters, and they’re succeeding.

print-is-dead

“Print Is Dead,” a collage by BSitko.

Ignore that at your own peril.

ILSs are becoming a one-stop-shop for renters, offering the most inventory, rich multimedia, and access to other resources for apartment hunters.

They also benefit from major investments in accumulated SEO and traffic from smart paid search campaigns. (Apartments.com repeatedly touts the fact that they’re spending more with Google than anyone else in the industry.)

In other words, it doesn’t take much for them to outrank you. Especially for broad, unbranded searches near the beginning of the prospect’s customer journey.

But even as more renters are turning to these sites throughout their apartment search, ILSs are also a channel that apartment marketers love to hate.

  • It’s hard to set your property apart. You’re limited to providing basic community and amenity information (often with standardized language), a few photos and maybe a video.
  • Information isn’t always accurate. If you’ve ever had a listing with dated photos (where did they even get those?) or old pricing, you’ve felt this pain before.
  • Quality of leads. Because ILSs reach so many customers in the early and middle stages of their search, it’s likely that the first contact from these prospects may come before they’re fully qualified … and before they’ve narrowed down their options. As a result, these “unqualified” leads end up creating more work for your leasing staff (and pulling their attention away from more promising prospects).
  • Lead attribution can be difficult. In many cases, you can’t even link to your property website, so even if an ILS is a source that assists in delivering a lease, you may not be able to see how much your ad spend there is really helping you.

So what can marketers do to stand out from the crowd?

Win at follow-up.

And I’m not just talking about a prompt email reply from a leasing agent. You need to keep your prospects’ attention, and you need to use every tool available to seal the deal.

Instead of thinking of ILSs solely as sterile marketplaces for advertising your listing, think of them as gateways to the more effective channels you really want to use —email, your website, and even social media— where you have more control over the story you want to share.

But there isn’t a good way to connect your ILS leads to all of those other channels. Rather, there wasn’t until today.

Introducing RentPress Leads

Accelerate your leads through the leasing process
Meet RentPress Leads by 30 Lines, the simple tool that accelerates your leads through their apartment hunt, from initial contact on an ILS, through to your property website and ultimately into your leasing office.

If you have experience with remarketing to people who have visited your website, you already know how RentPress Leads works. Remarketing to prospects who have already shown interest can be an effective way to keep your message top of mind.

30 Lines is giving you that same power to remarket to prospects who have contacted your community through an ILS … giving you the opportunity to promote your brand and share your story through targeted emails, Facebook posts and Twitter ads. All before they ever see your website.

Get Ready for Launch

Stop limiting yourself to the bland listing options on the ILSs. Tell the story you really want to share. Reinforce your ILS listings with targeted follow-up messages. And do it in the channels your prospects use most— all in a solution that doesn’t change how your leasing team currently handles leads.

With RentPress Leads, you can:

  • Direct ILS leads to your website, social profiles, reviews and more.
  • Build your brand in the channels prospects use most.
  • Identify and nurture your most promising leads.

We’ve tested this. We know it works. That’s why we’re offering a 90-day money-back guarantee for new RentPress Leads subscribers. Ready to launch? Get a personal tour of RentPress Leads.

Learn more about RentPress Leads