6 Tips to Help You Advertise Effective Rental Incentives

Getting new tenants into your property units can be an exhaustive process that sometimes yields no results. Between endless advertising and asking peers for recommendations, bringing in new tenants can be hard to do on your own. A helpful way to cut out this frustration is to offer and advertise rental incentives that potential tenants can take advantage of. Doing so can give you a pool of potential tenants to fill your property units, which helps to lessen the burden of searching for them yourself.

If you are a property manager and want to get started on advertising rental incentives, here are some tips that will help you!

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1. Start on Social Media: If you don’t have accounts/pages on various social media platforms, it’s time to get on. Once you’ve set up your pages, promote your listings on social media networks, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and even YouTube. Create specific pages on these sites for your business and link your website or contact information on your various social media accounts so not only can people reach you on social media, but they can also share your listings to spread the word! Use hashtags and look at the best times to post on each social media site to optimize your reach.

2. Offer and Share Appealing Incentives: Once you’ve created social media pages, it’s now time to create, offer, and share your incentives to your target audience, i.e. the potential renters. Offering incentives is a useful way of gaining new tenants, as incentives are essentially any prize or award given to potential tenants for agreeing to a property lease agreement for renting purposes. These prizes and awards can include discounted rent, gift cards, sports or event tickets, special amenities, or even household appliances. The better your incentives are, the more likely your tenant will not only sign a lease agreement but may also potentially bring you a solid new renter.

3. Advertise Your Listings: For businesses big and small, advertising on social media generates traffic and leads users to their product or brand. Because so many of these sites are interconnected, you can share listings from an Instagram account to both Facebook and Twitter in a matter of seconds. Several social media sites have paid advertising options, so your listings and/or business page can reach people outside of your immediate connections. Through advertisement options, you can select specific demographics of people, targeting people based on location, age range, gender, interests, etc. By utilizing paid ads, you can not only gain more followers, friends, and connections but also continue to build your business and draw in potential renters.

4. Add Upgrades Property When Possible: Though most people spend more time indoors than outdoors, the maintenance and upkeep of an outside area of a property is just as important as the inside, and in fact, makes it feel nicer in the eyes of a tenant. Adding trees, plants, shrubs or planter boxes is great advertising, and it can attract a potential tenant and make the outside of your property look cohesive and well put together. For beautiful color, less maintenance, and a short lifespan, annual flowers are a great choice for outdoor landscaping. In addition, making a comfortable outdoor living space is a huge attraction for potential tenants. You can create this space by adding a few patio chairs and a glass table, or perhaps with some large comfy chairs with a fire pit in the middle.

5. Boost Tenant Engagement: Engaging with potential renters on any level shows them you are dedicated to your business, always looking out for their satisfaction, and genuinely want to build meaningful relationships with them in the future. To help boost engagement among potential renters, you can also highlight current renters’ loyalty and good renter etiquette, answer questions or comments, and showcase your incentives to draw prospects in on your social media pages. Property Matrix recommends, “Consider a giveaway or small incentive for ‘follows,’ offer a rental discount off the first month or a month of free parking. Incentives for submitting a rental application online or providing a referral will generate activity and keep conversations going.”

6. Make the Application Process Simple: Once you have spread the word, create a landing page on your business website that makes the application process and incentive “program” easy to participate in. Include information like the incentives offered, eligibility rules, and what the potential tenants need for an application, such as proof of income, credit score, references, and more. If a prospective tenant can’t figure out this information or determine how to submit an application, they are likely to not follow up, ask about it, or even consider applying in general. Make the application and incentive information accessible, and streamline the process to make it easy for your potential tenant to follow the instructions, get their incentive, and sign a lease agreement.

Navigating a market that is filled with competition can be bumpy at first, but creating rental incentives, advertising your listings, and attracting potential renters to them can be as simple as posting online, showcasing what you have,, and making the application process simple.