Ep16: Social media can grow your rent roll — with Ellen Bathgate

Join Kate Sunol and Ellen Bathgate in this PropertyMe podcast episode as they dive into the transformative world of content marketing for property management, sharing expert strategies to grow rent rolls and build trust on social media.

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Connect with Ellen Bathgate — Content Collab
Connect with host Kate Sunol — PropertyMe

Transcript

Kate: Hi and welcome to Property Management and Me, a series from PropertyMe bringing quick tips and insights to support your everyday practice. I'm your host, Kate Sunol, and today I'm joined by Ellen Bathgate from Content Collab. Welcome, Ellen. 

Ellen: Thank you so much for having me, Kate. 

Kate: It's great to have you here. For those who don't know Ellen, she works with Property Managers and business owners to help grow their rent rolls on social media, which as a marketer, I find a really exciting topic. I'm really looking forward to our chat this morning and to see what your thoughts are, Ellen, on what you've been doing in this space. 

Ellen: Yeah, so thank you so much. It is a really exciting topic and it's ever changing, but it's also kind of staying the same as well. It's something that I think that if we all had an extra day in our week, we would love to spend more time on our content marketing.

Unfortunately, in property management, we don't have an extra day in the week. So we just have to find little ways of sneaking in some content marketing into our strategy. 

Kate: So just back to basics on that one. When we talk about content marketing for someone who doesn't really know what that looks like or could look like for their business, what are you referring to there? 

Ellen: I'm referring to creating information and value for people who are not your clients yet, but might like to become your clients or you might like them to become your clients soon. It's just a really lovely way of allowing people to get to know you, your business, your brand, your service, and your expertise and build some credibility and some brownie points with people who are following you perhaps on social media or watching your website or on your email database. It's allowing them to get to know you and build some trust with you before they actually bring their property across to be managed by you. So I think it is one of the nicest ways to market for new business because you're building credibility and trust before they even sign a management agreement with you.

Kate: Absolutely. I like how you've put that there. It's information and adding value. What that looks like is going to vary from person to person and expertise to expertise. But one of the things to remember is that humor is value-adding. So lighthearted and entertaining and relatable content is value-adding for your users. This is social media, we want it to be engaging and we want it to be fun. So don't feel like it has to be a super serious download of information. You can do it in a really friendly way.

Ellen: Exactly. And it's such a beautiful way of allowing people to get to know you. And I think so many of us, and certainly when I had a rent role and I think about the landlord clients who chose to work with my agency, when I think about how they choose a Property Manager, so much of choosing a Property Manager is, do I feel like I know them? Do I like them? And can I trust them? And sure, there are going to be other things like, Do you service the area? Do you take on this type of property? Are your fees within my budget or at least are your fees reflective of the value that you provide in terms of rental returns over the course of a year? But so much of our decision is, do I like this Property Manager or this BDM that I'm signing up with? And that's where content marketing allows us to let our potential clients get to know us. And as you said, deliver value. And sometimes that is education and information and talking about legislation. But sometimes it's also just entertaining your audience and letting them get to know you more. 

Kate: It can be easy to sort of sit back and think, well, what's the point of posting this video, particularly if it's funny or lighthearted? Am I going to get leads from it? Why am I wasting my time? But if we think about building an audience and we think about the marketing funnel and extending our reach beyond who we've already got captured, it really is, like you've said, helping people to get to know you and building that rapport. So content marketing is a huge piece of what sits within that scope. So how does social marketing sort of fit into this mix from your perspective? Because I understand you can use it quite high level of the funnel where you really are just getting those brand messages and brand awareness out there. Or you can try and use it as a paid lead gen converting piece where you've got those really strong call to actions and those really strong messages for people to action. Where do you sort of see content marketing sitting in that? 

Ellen: Yeah, so I think the best strategy with your content marketing and your social media is to do a little bit of both. So you're wanting to create some brand awareness. And so that's where consistency in your content is really important. And that means consistency just in your branding. So that might be your office branding, your agency branding, or it might be consistency in your personal brand if you're publishing content perhaps with a personal brand. So it can be that, but it's also about consistency in that your audience can expect to see you showing up in their feed on a regular basis. That doesn't necessarily mean posting every single day, but it might mean posting three or four days a week, every single week reliably. So there's an element of making sure that you're consistent with your brand feel and your consistency with your frequency of posting.

And that helps with your brand awareness. It helps create some familiarity for your followers. But then you also want some conversion in there. And I think you need to think about conversion in two ways, as in conversion in terms of asking your followers to take some action after they've consumed your content. And so that might mean hit the like button. It might mean send me a message. It might mean comment something below, it might mean click the link to read the full article. And you can consider that a conversion in sorts because you've taken someone from being a follower to actually taking an action. But also I think in property management and rent roll growth, when we think about conversion, we think about assigned management agreement. And we think that's a conversion. And I always think that conversions happen in conversations. So when you're creating content and putting content out there, what you're doing is you're building some credibility, you're building some relationship, you're building some connection to invite conversation. So I never ever encourage someone to create content on social media that drives people to a form that they fill in to sign up their management with your office straight away, that’s too big a leap. What we're trying to do is have these little mini conversions along the way. We would get them to like our stuff, we get them to comment. We might ultimately get them to send us a DM or click the link and join our email database or something like that. So we're having these little micro conversions, but then your ultimate conversion, you're taking them from contact to client happens in the conversation. So what we're doing is, we publish content to create these little micro conversions so that people interact with us. And then we're drawing them in to have actual conversations with us so that we can convert them to become clients. 

Kate: That's such a great way to put it with the micro conversions. And I think if you're looking at starting this mapping out that journey of what you want it to look like and where you want to direct your viewers and your audience is really important. So if you think about it from the top level of the funnel, this content is to build an audience and to build rapport. We then want to convert that passive audience through that funnel to turn into conversations, which then turn into the invitations to present or to list the property because at the end of the day, that's the overall goal with growing the rent. So if we take it right back to the start and we map it out, we can make sure that that content is always prompting our viewers through the funnel and we can make sure that it's directing our audience in the right direction. So if I'm putting this time into the video, what's the next micro -conversion or what's the next action that I want an audience to take because we don't want to miss opportunities to link them along that journey. 

One of the things we've just started doing with our social engagement team, and I'm really excited about this initiative because it's just that simple one-to-one connection with our audience, is when we get a new follow, just replying or DM’ing saying, hey, thanks so much for following our page, joining our community. It's great that you're here. Are you a PropertyMe user? Would you like to be connected with our Facebook user group, making sure that everyone knows that we've got that resource available for our users. And then opening up that conversation to say, Hey, are you a user? Would you like to demo our platform? Would you like to be subscribed to our monthly release webinars and sort of just prompting that conversation into what's the next step to keep engaging with this audience? 

Ellen: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think so often when we as a consumer, when we make the decision to follow someone that we don't know personally, it is unexpected when we receive some sort of communication from them. So whether we've decided to follow your agency brand or whether we've decided to follow you as a BDM personal brand on social media, if we don't actually know you or if your followers don't actually know you, they're not expecting to hear from you. So as you said, Kate, if you send a little DM to say thanks for the follow, you've immediately opened up a channel for conversation. So you've probably surprised them that there's a real person on the other side of that account, but you've automatically just opened up the door for conversation. 

Kate: In your experience, are there any best ways to position your content to encourage that two person conversation rather than just a consuming videos or consuming media. Is it sort of pick and choose what works for you? Is it live videos, produce videos, Q and A sessions? Is there a right way to do it? 

Ellen: Yeah, you've you've got to find out what works not so much for you, but what works for your followers. So if you are either new and just starting out, you're going to need to experiment with a few different things. And so I would say, sure, video is really popular at the moment and becoming more popular. That doesn't necessarily mean that your followers are going to prefer video for all of your content. So especially if you're first starting out and if video feels a little bit overwhelming, test video. You're going to need to put yourself on video at some stage, but also test carousel posts on Instagram, you know, the little series of images that you can flick through and allow people to sort of swipe through and maybe read a little bit of information. Test single infographics, test using a selfie as the image that goes with whatever you're talking about in your caption. So testing a few different things and continually testing. So notice if you're producing a lot of video and then you notice that perhaps your engagement is falling a little bit. So try doing a couple of different types of posts and seeing if perhaps that performs a little bit better. So it's not just like make a plan once and then stick to it. It's make a plan and then notice if you need to change the plan and then be willing to experiment and change the plan. 

Kate: Absolutely. Checking in with how your content is performing is so important. I think it's great to be batching content and doing like a certain amount at one time to then schedule out later. But try to start the batches at least in bite-size chunks, because what you might find is that live video performs five to 10 times better than a pre-recorded one that you've posted. So you'll want to be doing more live videos.

The great thing is that you don't actually have to stress too much about what you throw out the first time, just getting started because you can grow and build it from there. So if you can only manage photos at that point, do photos with a caption that is really good information. We've trialed this at PropertyMe. Our memes are by far our highest performing content. They are lighthearted, fun, they hit to the point, they resonate with PMs.

We trialed introducing video format to those to sort of extend the reach a little bit and it absolutely flunked. The engagement was absolutely terrible. So it's one of those classic things where you really just do need to test and measure and see what works with your audience. And the great thing about social media is that the platforms will help you get the most out of them. They want you to be posting. They want their audience on the platform. So they're going to tell you what you need to be doing best practice like liking and engaging with your followers content as much as if not more than you're posting, responding to comments. They'll let you know what time of day is the best time to post. All you need to do is get started to give them a little bit of data to work with and then they will help you get the best out of the platform. 

Ellen: Yes, and I think there's this misconception that the algorithm is working against us when in fact, as you said, the algorithm is working for us. The whole job of the algorithm is to keep your followers on platform. And if for some reason you feel like the, what do we say, the algorithm has changed and so all of a sudden you're not getting the views or the engagement or whatever you used to get, that's the platform doing you a favor and showing you that the content or the way you're behaving on social media is not the way your audience wants you to behave or you're not creating the content in a format that they prefer to consume. So that's your sign that maybe you can still create the exact same topics for content, but maybe you need to move to video instead of images or vice versa. Maybe you need to be a little bit more active in your stories. Maybe you need to go live instead of just doing pre -recorded. But if you notice a change and you blame the algorithm, You need to thank the algorithm because what they're doing is trying to keep your followers on the platform. 

Kate: And we do this all the time when we market listings is we'll change the cover photo or we'll change the text or change the price because we're not getting the response that we want. It's exactly the same thing. You just need to apply it with a social media lens. 

Ellen: That's exactly right. Yeah, we've been doing that for years. 

Kate: I know sometimes people can feel overwhelmed on where to start or feel like the market is just oversaturated with just listed and testimonials and is there any sort of strategy that you can suggest to someone who just doesn't know where to start with content ideas? 

Ellen: Yeah, so I always talk about tapping into five categories of social posts and I'll step you through the five categories that I work with and if you're listening to this, you might want to scribble this down or mark the timestamps so you come back and listen to it. But I tap into

education. So this is the providing information about being an investor, using a property manager, optimizing your returns. It's the teaching, sharing your expertise, talking about legislation, sharing tips and advice. So education is your first category. 

Advantage is your second category. So advantage is showcase the advantage of working with you, your team over and above your competitors and that does not mean you need to say anything bad about your competitors but it does mean you need to showcase your actual points of difference and so things like zero tolerance for rent arrears is not a point of difference because if somebody else is using it it's not a point of difference so a money back guarantee might be a point of difference giving away a marketing package might be a point of difference if no one else in your area is doing it. Showing behind the scenes of how you're doing certain things can actually showcase the advantage of working with your office, especially if they're slightly more off the cuff and candid things that you're showing. So that might be a little real or a TikTok. It might be a live video. It might be a series of photos showcasing how you do things that really showcases the advantage of working with you and your team over somebody else. 

So education, advantage, community is a category that you should always be tapping into. And so this means positioning yourself within your local community. And so that can mean talking about things in the community that you and your team are participating in. So that might be a local fun run. It might be a charity event, or it might be talking about the fact that you're going to the farmer's markets on Saturday and giving them a bit of a shout out. Or it might be talking about your referral partners because they're part of your community. It might be talking about your trades people because they're part of your community. It might be talking about other clients because they're part of your community. But it's just about being clear on we’re part of this community, regardless of how large it is, you might serve as all of Sydney and you can still position yourself as part of one or many communities. But also tapping into the community category usually helps with your reach because you are probably tagging other accounts in the post, which helps with your reach and getting audiences that are not your audience on your content. 

So education, advantage, community the humble brag is the fourth category and that's just about having a little brag but staying humble about it It's about showcasing social proof short testimonials reviews case studies, but always explaining What this means to the person consuming this post so if you're sharing a case study explain what this means for investors in your area if you're sharing something that's happening in the market or a review that you've received, explain what does this mean for you as the person reading this post?

 So it might mean, you know, if you're not getting this level of service, you need to send me a DM or it might mean this is the result we received for a client. So if you haven't had a rent increase in the last 18 months or you haven't had an updated CMA in the last 18 months, it is time to get one send me a DM to get one. 

So education, advantage, community, the humble brag, and then the fun category. Fun is the fifth category, and this is just about allowing people to get to know the people behind the brand. So it does not need to be property related. It can be, but it's more you related. So it might mean showing yourself picking up your coffee in the morning. It might be sharing a selfie of you walking the dog at the local dog park. It might mean showing behind the scenes in your property management office in winter when your whole team is wearing UGG boots under their desks. It's about just showing the fun. So I always think if you can keep those five categories in mind and make sure you're tapping into them with your content planning, you will never run out of content ideas. 

Kate: I really like that one that you touched on their community. It's such an important aspect to growing your reach that I think is often underutilized. An investor will have a property for just shy of nine years that they hold that property. So if we can bring on aspirational investors and bring them on at the start of that journey when they buy an investment versus someone who's say five years in and just over it mid-management, then that's an ideal client we want to be targeting someone coming in at the start of that life cycle. So a lot of that content on purchasing property, finance, being organized when open home hunting, how to choose the right investment property, all of that content can be shared or co-created within a referral partner network beyond social media. 

Say, for example, you want to collaborate with a financial planner and you can be absolutely posting and double tagging and making sure you get the reach across both those platforms. But instead of that being a 48-hour piece of content that goes on social media, that's something that you could potentially both put as part of your email marketing campaign. So you have a new inquiry for management services or they have a new inquiry on lending and approval in purchasing for investment. And that can be part of that email journey of have you got your incidentals sorted? You know, how much money do I need to be putting aside? And then that content, if it's relevant for six to 12 months can be going out to a potential audience versus that one hit on social media. You really can extend the reach of that content within referral partner networks, but also the lifespan of content. 

Ellen: Absolutely. And I think we, we often make the mistake of putting content marketing just into the social media box. And you're right, it's so much more. And if we're creating good content, we can extend the life of that content for so much longer than the, yeah, as you said, 48 hours tops that you get on most social platforms. 

Kate: We've covered so much here today from top level strategy of making sure your marketing has those micro conversions and it really is converting the business. Different sorts of content types. I love the different five categories, breaks it down so well. If you had any sort of like top final comment to say to anyone wanting to get started or who's on their journey, but just needing a little bit of encouragement to keep going and persevere, what would that be? 

Ellen: So I'd probably give two little tips, which would be share your opinion online. So add your commentary to things that are going on at the moment and share your opinion because that's what makes you you. And take the selfie. Selfies seem to outperform almost any other type of still images on social media. So please take the selfie. If you have to put a filter on it, go on and put the filter on it. But just take the selfie and publish the post. 

Kate: Yep, just bite the bullet and do it. And I think if you look back, you end up looking back in time, you can sort of see, oh, wow, I've got out of my comfort zone. I did that. It wasn't as hard as it seemed. And once you start that momentum, it actually just becomes a natural extension of you professionally. Like leaving a voicemail, like crafting an email, just jumping on camera and speaking as a professional is such a great skill to have. 

Ellen: That's exactly right.

Kate: Thank you so much for joining us here today, Ellen. If our listeners would like to reach out and continue the conversation, how can they get in touch? 

Ellen: If they want to head to my website, contentcollab.com.au, we've got some free resources on there and I'm always happy to connect there. 

Kate: I love a good free resource. Make sure you jump on and check it out, contentcollab.com.au. Thanks again, Ellen. 

Ellen: Thanks, Kate.