| When your core business is all-consuming, branching out to new technologies and opportunities can be daunting. But in highly competitive industries, it’s the seemingly off-topic offerings that can make all the difference between a long-term customer and another lost prospect. Property managers are constantly looking for ways to retain residents, attract new ones and stay ahead of the curve competitively.
Property Centric, a Vortaloptics sales channel, has an innovative way to help property management companies better market their apartment and condo communities. Interestingly, the key is local search. The company is announcing its launch this week in Las Vegas at the National Apartment Association Education Conference & Exposition.
Property Centric provides custom-built, local Internet search solutions dedicated exclusively to serving the multifamily property management industry. These local search solutions are deployed on apartment, condominium and community association web sites, portals and their residents. As part of Property Centric's launch, Rob Remus has been named president.
"More than 75% of Internet users go online to find a new home, and at least 70% of U.S. households go online to find local businesses, which underscores the demand for 24/7 access to relevant and local information that helps people run their lives," explained Remus. "Property Centric offers a proprietary and completely customizable Web search technology that allows property managers to profitably tap into these trends.
"By generating more relevant search results for web site visitors - both current and prospective residents, as well as local businesses - property management firms can further build their brands, acquire and retain more residents, and generate ancillary revenue with Property Centric's solution," explained Remus.
By providing property managers with a controllable, custom solution, the benefits of its technology and business model hit home with the multifamily and property management industry.
First, through its hyperlocal and ultra-relevant search results, property managers can offer a premium, always-on amenity to its residents. This is a major retention tool and a great lead-in for prospective residents, speaking to the company’s resident-centric goals.
Then, with the addition of thousands of local links to down-the-street businesses, the property websites can generate more site traffic and increase repeat visits. "This not only can generate stronger brand awareness, it can dramatically improve a property's search engine optimization (SEO) rankings in the major search engines. More users finding and clicking on their site leads to improved rankings of the property management firm's or community's web site on major search engines such as Yahoo and Google, for example," Remus explained.
Mark-Taylor Residential, a Property Centric client since 2006, in Phoenix, continues to see dramatic traffic improvements and other benefits. According to Kim Atkinson, director of marketing and public relations for Mark-Taylor, "With Property Centric's local search engine in place, repeat visits are on the rise and our site traffic and natural search rankings have improved drastically.
"For example, without any other search engine optimization efforts, the Property Centric search engine has helped www.Mark-Taylor.com consistently appear on page one of Google, Yahoo! and MSN for our most targeted keywords: 'Phoenix luxury apartments.' Also, we can now be found on page two or three of natural search listings at the major search engines for more broad searches such as 'Apartments Phoenix.' Before the installment of Property Centric's search engine, our site was typically found on page 10 of Google's natural listings. Additionally, search volume to our local search engine has skyrocketed, bringing in on average, an additional 43,000 page views per month for the last quarter," Atkinson explained.
Another major benefit is the that the search technology accommodates paid search and banner advertising. Local and national advertisers can market their products and services to actual local residents and do so in a very flexible and easy-to-manage environment. This provides a new and significant ancillary revenue stream for the property manager.
"The multifamily industry is constantly looking for ways to generate ancillary revenue," Remus noted. "Property Centric offers a solution that is completely customized to property managers' needs and allows them to effortlessly and with a minimal investment, deliver a rapid ROI for a monthly stream of revenue beyond rents."
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