If you want to know how to write a rental ad that works, the VERY first thing you need to do is step away from traditional rental advertising like this:
Townhouse in great neighborhood
3 bedroom townhouse with 1 1/2 bath, hardwood floors through-out, finished basement and laundry room, fenced back yard, high efficiency furnace and central air, close to schools, shopping, & bus route…$1300 plus utilities
Typical & boring ad right?
So if you want to stand out from the rest so you can rent your property faster and for more money, don’t make this same mistake 95% of other investors are doing.
Here’s how to write a rental ad that works:
When you advertise rental property, it should be to a targeted tenant…NOT just anyone.
This is where I find a lot of real estate investors making huge mistakes.
The good news is – it can easily be avoided.
1. Know your “customer”.
This is standard marketing practice.
And yes…you ARE in the marketing business.
That means you’re rental advertising needs to attract your ideal tenant that fits your property and will love living there.
You should know exactly who you want to attract to rent your home.
You obviously can’t discriminate, but if you know your prospective tenant inside and out, it’s easy to write something that ‘speaks’ to them…
..and repel everyone else.
This is KEY, and also how I get GREAT tenants.
Because my ads only “speak” to people I know will pick up the phone :-).
Knowing who you want as tenants sounds simple enough…
but when I ask most investors who their ideal tenant is, they’ll say ‘a good tenant that pays the asking rent’.
That’s not specific enough.
You MUST be specific about what your prospective tenant believes is important.
ASIDE from the typical stuff.
2. “Sell” the BENEFIT of living in your home
Here’s where you need to do a bit of thinking.
WHY should they rent YOUR 3 bedroom place over someone else’s?
You have a garage with inside entrance?
So what – the other one has it too.
But what if your ad said “never get wet or sit in the cold again waiting for your car to warm up because you’ll go straight from the house to your warm dry garage where your car is waiting”
Can you see how I’m “painting” a picture in their mind about how their days are going to be?
It looks simple, but when you understand the frustrations of your prospective tenant, these adjustments from “indoor garage access” to “never get wet or sit in the cold again…” are huge.
3. List Features last.
You’ll notice I put benefits first. That’s because people “buy” something to get a result, a feeling, an outcome.
The “features”, such as 3 bedrooms, air conditioning, finished basement, etc are the things that HELP them GET those results, outcomes and feelings.
For example:
“Each child will now have their own private room to personalize (a 3-bedroom home targeting family or single parent with 2 kids)”
“Your new finished basement ads a full playroom for the kids and keeps the rest of your home neat and tidy (again, targeting a family with kids…but ads the benefit of the basement)”
Can you see how to write a rental ad that is so different with a little thinking?
4. Put it all together with your Headline Hook
Getting your ideal prospective tenant to actually read your ad is the first step…
And you don’t do that with a headline that is buried among all the rest like this:
Awesome 3 Bed, 2 Bath Townhouse Ready For You
What about this:
Need Extra Space for the Kids? This Great Home Has it’s Own Private Playroom
As an exercise, write out a few benefit driven headlines when you’re ready to advertise property for rent.
By focusing on the benefits and outcomes your home features, you’re ad will be the one that stands out and draws in exactly who you want.
THE BONUS to all of this rental advertising
When you do this right, it actually filters out who you DON’T want…and that means the phone is NOT ringing off the hook.
I don’t know about you, but my time is very precious.
So when I write a specific ad like this, I only get a select number of emails and phone calls, usually from people I would love to rent to.
Do you want to be wasting your time with people who are not ever going to rent your unit?
Of course not … so when the phone DOES ring, the odds are in your favour of having a great potential tenant on your hands because your ad has done 70% of the work already.
How’d I do? Did this help you? Let’s get a conversation going below if you have any questions about how to write a rental ad that works.