AI’s Role in Attracting Owner Leads for Property Managers

The Property Management Show

Fourandhalf’s Marie Tepman, Interviewed by Marc Cunningham on the PM Build Property Management Business Podcast

Marc Cunningham, from Grace Property Management and PM Build, invited Marie onto his podcast to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in property management marketing. Specifically, the discussion revolved around getting more owner leads for property managers.

In an environment where budgets are shrinking and a lot of property managers are still unsure about AI, this discussion provides some clarity. Here’s what was discussed.

Property Management Marketing and Gaining Owner Leads

One of the biggest challenges all property management companies deal with is bringing new owner client leads into the company. How do you drive more leads into your company? The big catchphrase now is AI. Should property management companies use AI? How can these tools be used? It’s a big umbrella in property management marketing, but first, let’s talk about the simple fact of how to get more owner leads. What’s the big picture?

Leads are online. So, property management companies need a good presence online. This starts with a website. And while some companies build business through referrals, online marketing is the next step. To really get started attracting owner leads to your property management company, you need a website and you need content.

Marc remembers saying “no thanks” to a company that tried to sell them on a website in the early 1990s. He though as long as he had his Yellow Pages ad, he’d be fine.

Things have changed.

A property management company’s website and content serve reputation.

Reputation is important because you want people to vouch for you. Before buying a product or service, consumers are going to look at reviews. They’re going to want to see how many stars are on your Google rating. If you don’t have any testimonials or reviews, people might think that’s suss (suspicious, for the over-45 crowd). If a prospective owner finds your website but no one online is talking about you, there may be hesitation. You have to show that you’re trustworthy.

After you have established your website and your reputation, you need content.

Content and Property Management Marketing for Owner Leads

The literal meaning of content is anything with words on your website.

At Fourandhalf, we’re more interested in quality content.

When someone who has just inherited a home needs help renting that home out, they’re not going to go online and search for a property management company. A lot of them might not even know that property management is a service that’s provided professionally. Instead, they’re going to go online and search how to find a tenant or how much rent to charge.

Property management content is not selling your business. It’s not telling anyone how long you’ve been in business, and it’s not bragging about how great you are. It’s showing prospective owners that you can be trusted. It’s showing value.

Any company can say they’re great. It doesn’t mean anything to your prospect. They have a problem and they want to solve it. When you’re a problem solver, you’re providing quality content.

The hero of the story is the always the customer. When you show up to offer solutions, you want to make it obvious to the owner that this is why your service can help. That allows the owner to remain the hero. As the property management expert, you’re the helper getting them what they need.

Don’t be the hero. Be the helper.

That’s a big concept that needs to be adopted when it comes to content. Serve, don’t show off.

When an owner clicks on the how-to content, they’ll find it helpful. It’s educational. So, when they get to the end of what they’ve read or watched, they’ll see who provided the content.

Trust is established.

Should You Just Use AI to Create Content?

Maybe property managers don’t have time to create content.

Is this where AI can be helpful? Can you ask AI to write a blog on how to collect rent and then throw it on your website?

You can. And this is why generative AI is so deceptively awesome.

When Marie first discovered ChatGPT and what it did, she feared the end of marketing had arrived. It seemed like original content would no longer be necessary. But, the more she dug into what this tool is, the more she realized its limitations as well as its uses.

The technology goes to its library of what’s already been written.

If you want to use content that’s completely AI-created, you’ll end up with just an okay blog.

But, we are no longer in the year 2000. Having a website is not special because everyone has one. Creating content is also not special; more and more property managers are doing it. So, if you want to put your property management company’s name on a machine-generated blog that lacks originality and authenticity, you can. But don’t expect great results.

If you want to do better than a mediocre blog that could have been written by anyone, the human touch is still required.

How to Use AI as a Marketing Tool

Use AI as a sounding board or a starting off point. In trying to write content, people fail to realize it’s not about the words on the page or how many times property management was mentioned. It’s about placing the seed of an idea in your reader.

Remember that people are looking for solutions. An AI-generated blog may provide information, but it does not provide any credibility.

You want to make an impression with quality, professional content.

When you add the personal stories and your own expertise to the writing, you gain trust and credibility. AI tools cannot give you the credibility or the authenticity. They can give you words.

AI can be used when you feel like you’ve run out of ideas or when you’re not sure how to cover a topic in a new way.

As a property manager, maybe you’ve written about rent control a hundred times and you just don’t know what a new angle might be. Put your thoughts into AI and see what you get. It won’t be a blog, but it may be a phrase or a sentence that sets something off in your mind and sends you down the path towards new content around a subject you know well.

AI can help you get to your own ideas faster.

When Marie tells the generative system that she’s looking for a fresh idea around a topic, she shares all the ideas she has. It suggests a lot of things, and 95 percent is not usable.

It’s up to her, as the human, to find that grain of inspiration. Sometimes it’s a full idea that she’s able to pull out. Sometimes it’s just a phrase.

Here’s an example Marie shared:

When she was scheduled to speak at NARPM National 2023, she wanted to talk about marketing and attracting owner leads. It’s a tried and true topic that she had discussed many times, and she didn’t want to bore an audience who had likely heard her speak about this before.

She had a post-it note on her desk that she’d had for years which reads:

It doesn’t matter how good you are, because if you don’t get discovered, no one will ever know you existed in the first place.

She put that into ChatGPT as part of a bunch of other ideas she also fed to the system. It suggested, somewhere, talking about how property managers start off invisible. Marie leaned into that, and many edits later, she had a talk that started with the phrase: “From Invisible to Irresistible.”

She didn’t let AI write her speech. And she might have come up with that title on her own eventually. But, this is a good example of how AI can be a useful tool but not an author.

Think of it as a collaborator and a companion. Think of it as a tool. Just like any tool, you have to know how to use it.

Keeping Content Personal

If you’re not doing any content creation, and you’re happy just to have a website and that’s all you want to do, then AI can create posts for your site.

But recognize that it’s not going to be the best quality. It’s not going to be personal.

Most importantly: it won’t give you the owner leads you want.

AI is not scary, and it sets a very low bar. It takes what everyone else thinks and puts it out there. Your job when marketing for owner leads is to decide how can you be different?

You can give your professional opinion in original, high-quality content. AI won’t give an opinion. It can’t because it’s not a property manager. AI cannot bring wisdom to the table. It cannot compete with professionalism or offer professional opinions.

Property managers need to remember that. Your content is your professional opinion.

Google’s Thoughts on AI and SEO

Another big question Marie gets a lot is whether using AI will provide an edge SEO-wise.

The answer is no.

Google’s algorithm updates all the time, and it basically says that their algorithm prioritizes helpful content and useful, authentic content. Their stance on AI is that they don’t care.

Let’s think of it like a cake. If you’re asked to bring a cake to a potluck, maybe you’ll spend a full day making everything from scratch. Or, maybe you’ll buy a cake from a store.

When you show up to the potluck, people will be very excited about the homemade cake. They might judge the store-bought cake. But it really comes down to taste. How does the cake taste? Google doesn’t care if it’s homemade or store-bought. They care if it tastes good.

If you’re a property manager thinking about marketing for owner leads, maybe you’ll find a middle ground. You’ll buy a cake mix from the store but then add your own flavors and personal touches to that mix, creating an original cake that tastes great.

Don’t focus on the how. Focus on the what.

Action Items for Property Managers

If you’re not doing any content, here’s what you should do tomorrow:

• Go through emails and online chats and see what owners are asking. What questions do they ask and what problems do they have? Make a list.
• With that list of topics, start thinking about whether you have personal stories and professional opinions related to these topics.
• Create content providing solutions to that list of questions and problems.

Should you make a video or write a blog?

Ideally, both. At Fourandhalf, we help property managers create content and we think video is more powerful because when people see you, there’s extra credibility. They feel like they know you. Positive associations are established.

If video is a bridge too far, start with a written blog.

When marketing and content of any kind is not for you, Fourandhalf can help. We will collaborate with you to create original, organic content. We encourage property managers to share those unique and authentic original stories with us, and we’ll get them out there.

It’s more than throwing money at a marketing budget. Some effort is required so the content is specific to your company.

You don’t have to be a content creator. You just have to be you: a professional property manager with good information to share.

Marie remembers working with one property management company that hired an actor to get their content videos out. They weren’t fooling anyone. It was clearly not a property manager, and that hurts trust. You don’t have to be perfect on video. You just have to be authentic. People will relate.

Thanks to Marc Cunningham and his engaging podcast for having Marie on to discuss owner leads and AI.

At Fourandhalf, we don’t shy away from AI. We help property managers succeed, so if you have any questions about property management marketing, content, and finding more owner leads, contact us at Fourandhalf.

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