How to Promote Your Short-Let Apartment in Nigeria

Do you have short let apartments for rent in Nigeria? Yes! And you are looking for strategies to promote your shortlet apartments. This article explains how to promote your short-let apartment in Nigeria and get more bookings.

A great short let apartment marketing strategy makes potential guests aware of your apartments and helps you convert them into clients. A proper promotion plan for your short let properties includes offline and online methods. However, your strategy depends on the location, size, and type of accommodation for which you are trying to get bookings.

Table of Contents

Build a Website for Your Short-Let Listings

Your website is your home online; ensure it is very welcoming. Create an online format of the experiences guest would have at your apartment. Employ the services of a professional photo studio to take excellent photos and videos that shine the best light on your home.

In addition to photos and videos, hire a copywriter to create your website text in an inviting tone. You should organize your website with easy navigation from one listing to the other.

The purpose of your website is to display a listing of short let apartments you have available. First, however, you need a landing page your promotional activities see first before your listings. This landing page (like a homepage) contains content made to convince; testimonials, reviews, featured listings, and your contact details.

Optimize Your Website and Listings for Search Engine

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long-term inbound marketing strategy that results in your website pages appearing when people search for terms related to your business.

SEO work starts when you are building your website. Your copywriter should include keywords people search for in the write-up for your website. Also, your web designer should fill out the meta title and description for every web page and listing.

For Instance, if you have a shortlet apartment for rent in Lekki, think about how people search for this.

Most people will search for ‘shortlet apartment for rent in Lekki.’

When creating your listing, you must add this (shortlet apartment for rent in Lekki) at least once for every 300 words in your web page text. You must also add the exact text to your meta title and description. Then, to be confident you did complete work of it, you can make that keyword a part of your URL.

Like – yourcompanyname.com/shortlet-apartment-for-rent-in-Lekki

This calls the attention of search engines to your listing when potential guests are searching for you and increases your overall ranking.

Add Your Listing to Free Online Directories

Adding your apartment listings to directories online does two things for you;

1. It gets attention and visits your listings for free

2. It helps with SEO improving your search engine ranking

Google My Business (GMB) is the most extensive online directory to list your apartment.

Other examples include; classifieds like Jiji and Olist, property sites like Property Pro NG, and Nigerian Property Center.

To open a GMB account, all you need is a Gmail account. First, create a separate Gmail account for your property, then open a Google My Business Account with this.

Next, fill in the necessary details about your business; your contact address, pictures of your short-let apartments, videos, etc. See every component you add as something that increases your chances of ranking high on search results.

Once your GMB account is complete, reach out to your past guests, send them a link to your GMB listing, and ask them to give you a 5-star review with testimonials. Ask your past clients to type your keywords in their testimonials if possible.

Up Your Networking Game

Many people are involved in running a short let business; furniture suppliers, electrical gadget retailers, plumbing services, facility managers, commercial banks, etc.

Managing your apartment requires a lot of people (or companies) from various industries. Don’t be quiet; let people know why you are working with them. Most of these people have people as well, people they can refer to your listen.

Referrals are a two-way thing; if you help people, you will get help in return. Let your service providers know you need their help to book guests in your apartment. Ask them to share your website listing if they don’t mind.

Build an Audience on Social Media

Imagine a past client telling his friends about your apartment. If he has 5 friends, that’s 5 more people who know about you. If you have 20 clients do the same, that is around 100 people who know about you. While word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing in terms of quality (those friends are most likely to book), it is very limited in quantity.

An audience for your business on social media is like an army of people likely to refer you. If you succeed in entertaining people with your content, they reward you with engagement which translates to more people seeing your content.

While most people want to be entertained, you should not post engaging content for the sake of it. Research content your target audience gravitates towards, and search for the type of discussion that interests them. Create images, carousels or videos that solve challenges they face.

Don’t get carried away posting engaging content and forget to sell your listings. Add call-to-action to your posts telling people to share your listings with their contacts. Make beautiful listing posts that include special discounts for your social media audience.

Apart from content, collaboration helps on social media. Engage with influencers who align with your brand, you can offer them free stays at your short-let apartment for a feature on their pages. Encourage them to take pictures or videos of themselves and friends while hanging out at your apartment. Influencers expose you to more people who visit your profile and follow you or visit your website to check out your listings.

Put Money Into Paid Ads Online

While content marketing on social media and SEO for your website helps you build a business that promotes itself, the results can take a long time.

If you would like to get bookings on your listings as soon as you launch your business, then you need to hire an online paid ads advert. Paid adverts on meta (previously called Facebook) help you target your audience based on factors like;

Demographics – age, gender etc.
Location
And most importantly, Interests

You can narrow your audience to target only the interests of people likely to book a stay. For instance, you can target your ads to ‘frequent international travellers’ and narrow it to people interested in Airbnb.

Facebook ads targets audience based on interest and you pay based on impressions, the more impressions you get, the more you pay. You also tend to pay more per impression for a narrow audience.

While meta ad campaigns use interest for targeting, Google search ads show to people based on their search terms and you only pay when people click your ads to visit your website.

Google search ads grant you SEO results while you are working on your search optimization. Depending on your ads quality score and how much you bid, your ads can show on top of search results for relevant searches.

This image shows what Google search ads looks like for a search term like 'short let apartment in Ikoyi.'

For example, if you have a short-let apartment in Ikoyi, you want to set up your ads to include that keyword.

Short let apartments in Ikoyi.

Paid online ads are highly measurable, you get metrics for impressions, views, clicks, conversions, etc. This helps you decide if it is working and what needs to be changed as you progress. You can also run tests to find out what type of ad works for your listings.

Need It Done for You?

This article explains how to market your short-let apartment in Nigeria. Most of these things are things you can’t do by yourself, you would need the services of a;