HomeViews is changing the game when it comes to UK residential property marketing, by providing a platform for people to leave honest and unbiased reviews about their development. The USA rental market is already familiar with the importance of this, and understands the impact reviews can have on a business.
Lessons from the USA
America’s National Apartment Association conducted research on renters. It showed that reviews really matter. Here are some of the outputs…
- 70% of renters decided to visit a property with a higher reputation score
- 73% said reviews affected their decision to rent
- 89% said they used review sites to narrow down their search and make a final selection
Berger Rental Communities is another US company, and one of the first to proactively engage and request reviews from the tenants of their 2,323 apartments. They then made sure these reviews were visible and easy to find. Dan Berger, President of Berger Rental Communities wanted the good the bad and the ugly to be available as “prospective residents are willing to overlook some bad reviews. Not everyone is going to like the same movie and not everyone is going to like the same apartment”.
Berger implemented this marketing strategy ten years ago and believes it helped the company achieve an average occupancy in 2010 of 95.15%, with 4.5% rent increases.
Trustpilot
Last year Trustpilot saw their TrustBox widgets surpass one billion impressions. The value and benefits in openly and honestly displaying reviews on your website is clear.
Consumer reviews are nearly 12 times more trusted than descriptions that come from your marketing team. Ultimately, existing residents are the best advocates and sharing their enthusiastic reviews is the best way to build trust with new customers.
Marketeers often talk about what a brand stands for. They recommend telling a story to your customers about what your mission and brand really means to them. Reviews are a great way of communicating your brand values and emphasising them through the words of your residents. An overwhelming 90% of Millennials say brand authenticity is important, proving that younger consumers prefer ‘real and organic’ over ‘perfect and packaged’.
It’s well documented that user generated content also actively drives people to make new purchases. Reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales while allowing you to add authenticity compared to competitor generic quotes.
“Our core values are trust and transparency. We feel by inviting all our customers to leave feedback and displaying our TrustScore we can successfully portray our message across. After all, our customers are the best form of advertising.”
Ben Mills, Digital Marketing Manager, Fords of Winsford Ltd, source Trustpilot
“Engagement rate is significantly higher when we use reviews compared to a lot of what we share online. Big, happy faces accompanied by a real customer review seems to resonate well with people scrolling through their news feed. Being an online business, our excellent team behind the scenes rarely gets the public recognition it deserves. Our service is far and away the best in the surety industry. It’s easy for us (and our competitors) to make such claims, so we rely on reviews from our customers to drive that fact home to new prospects doing research.”
Michael Henderson, Digital Marketing Director, Surety Bonds source Trustpilot
“We have always been entirely open about what our tenants think about us – HomeViews can endorse the credibility of our results by showing that they are at arm’s length.”
Harry Downes, Managing Director of Fizzy Living
HomeViews
Lots of operators undertake customer satisfaction surveys, and it’s easy to invite your residents to add their review to www.homeviews.com as part of this process. Alternatively, we can create a survey that’s made up of HomeViews questions and additional bespoke questions tailored to your needs. We’ve created a number of widgets and materials to help developers promote reviews across their marketing channels and within their buildings, plus there’s a host of opportunities to get your business promoted or featured on our site.
Find out more by emailing us at info@homeviews.com.
