Beat the January Sales: Expert Tips to Help Landlords & Letting Agents Market Properties to Students

BIRMINGHAM, U.K. - Dec. 18, 2015 - PRLog -- Each year students are fixing their private rentals for the following academic year earlier, with reports of some students renting properties as early as October. January is still the most popular month for students to begin their search¹, which means December is a crucial month for letting agents and landlords to start advertising their properties to secure the best tenants for the 2016/17 intake.

To help landlords and agents increase their student appeal for the next academic year, Glide Utilities (https://www.glide.uk.com/), the utilities and service provider for shared households asked Youth Insight Consultant, Brett Booth, to share his expert advice on how landlords and letting agents can make their marketing work harder, and not only reach students, but talk their language.

VALUE

You can’t talk to students without addressing the bottom line. While you should always price your property according to local student rates, when it comes to marketing, straight price based competition is rarely a healthy place to play. Highlight the benefits students will get from living at your property, or even better ask existing tenants to offer comments and views about their best bits.

See it as a testimonial, an endorsement. A real person sharing insider info about what they find favourable for the price they pay. You may end up with tagline gold for your marketing materials. Plus by using student testimonials, you’ll be conversing in a language your prospective tenants understand and respect. It’s worth also considering that almost one in ten students (9%), choose their accommodation via friends and word of mouth referrals – just 5% will go direct to the landlord to rent a property. This makes the friendship pound a strong one, and one worth nurturing.

VISUAL LITERACY

You’re dealing with the most visually cultured generation yet. They are acutely tuned to the innovative landscape of digital media, so make sure you use social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in your outreach, and consider working with young people to help create your ads. Such an approach will help cut through the vanilla landscape of property marketing.

Break some rules, consider putting people in your property pictures and assets. Real people. Don’t forget, if a picture speaks a thousand words then video speaks volumes so explore and use video formats where you can.

SAY HELLO TO HUMOUR

There is always room for an element of escapism in engaging young people. Within that playground humour is your ace of spades, a guaranteed area of connectivity that, if executed correctly, could make your communications pop from the masses and resonate with students. Play the parody card, don’t be afraid to laugh at yourselves and your industry peers. Vine style sketch series, mini-episodes based in properties. Get creative with photo-shop, using a caveat that ‘some features have been enhanced’ perhaps you could encourage them to guess which one to secure a viewing! Read BuzzFeed to get a good feel for humour that works well for the youth market.

MAKE LIFE SIMPLER

The life-stage transition experienced by many students from home-living to uni-digs can be a daunting challenge. Suffice to say, it can be tough. How can you make life for students a tad easier? They are constantly adding, deleting and appropriating digital apps to enhance their living experience. Follow suit. Adopt tools and technologies that help to simplify student’s lives. Offer inclusive bills – 74% of students¹ rate inclusive bills as an essential or important factor when selecting a property. Promote the fact you use a shared households utilities specialist, such as Glide Utilities, whose very mantra is to make life simpler.

ENDS

1.    Results taken from a survey of 714 students in March 2015. Research was conducted by Accommodation for Students and was nationwide.

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Notes to editors

·        Glide Utilities is a utilities and service provider for shared households. Founded in 2006, Glide was the first company in the UK to offer multi-tenant billing, taking the headache and financial risk out of bills for people living in shared accommodation. Glide’s mantra is bills made simple, life made simple. They exist to take the pain and stress out of utility bills, so letting agents, landlords, and tenants have more time to do the things they love.