The property management landscape is becoming more competitive with new players entering an already saturated market and companies struggling to gain new business.  To maintain a sustainable business model and generate revenue, it’s important for management companies to focus on finding fresh new leads that are in need of the service you provide.  In this blog post, we’ll focus on four significant ways to boost lead generation and stand above the competition.

1) Be visible on search engines

When developing or updating your HOA, condo, or rental company website, it is important to make SEO or search engine optimization a priority.  Search engine optimization is an important effort that leads prospects from searching for specific information to your website, discovering that you have an answer to their question and eventually, you can help solve their challenges.  For management companies that service one or more geographic locations, implementing local SEO is critical because association boards and apartment managers will search for a management company in their vicinity. Here are a few SEO tips to help guide your efforts:

• Focus on the keywords that are most important for prospects to find you and implement it in your content, page titles, descriptions, links, and images.
• Implement local keyword search into your SEO strategy.  For example, if you’re a condo company that manages high-rises in Seattle, make sure that your site is discoverable for the keyword.  Pudget Sound Condo Group, for example, does a good job with their local search efforts. They’ve added relevant keywords in its page title, URL, and description – thus, they are on the first page of Google’s search engine.
  
• If your budget allows, spending marketing money on online search ads such as Google Ads or Bing allows you to improve your company’s visibility.  Again, if you’re a local management company, keep in mind how a local HOA board or apartment manager would search for you.
  

2) Make digital marketing a priority

Digital marketing is an important effort that allows companies to increase their reach by sharing knowledge and expertise.  HOA, condo, and rental management companies can benefit from digital marketing by building credibility over time. Digital marketing includes a variety of tools all meant to support your efforts in moving prospects along the sales funnel – blogs, email marketing, social media, search engine optimization, and online advertisements.

Here are a few ways to engage in digital marketing:

• Add a blog to your website and write content frequently.  Write about the challenges community associations or apartments face and how to solve them (such as board meeting efficiency, keeping residents engaged, the impact of drones, and the list can go on).
• Build an email list to send newsletters or company updates to.  If you are providing new services such as in-house maintenance, that’s something worthwhile to share with your audience.
• Create your presence on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Share your blog articles, company updates, new staff joining, tips, and more.

3) Network and share your expertise at industry events

Networking at events helps you to make connections and build relationships with prospects.  There are many trade associations that operate on a national and state-level such as Community Association Institute (CAI) for HOA’s and condos, and National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) and Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM) for apartments and rentals.  These trade associations provide a multitude of services that empower management companies to succeed. They provide opportunities to attend industry conventions, luncheons, and other events that are great for networking, sharing your knowledge with others, and learning the latest trends.   Other ways management companies can utilize their memberships in trade associations include purchasing a booth or sponsorships, speaking at conventions or teaching classes, or providing expertise at luncheons that laser-focus on an important topic such as emergency preparedness or handling community relationships.

4) Leverage modern technology solutions

Community management software is not often considered a lead generation tool, but from the experience of our clients, I’d argue that it can become a very powerful asset that gives you a competitive edge.  When board members or apartment managers seek a property management service, they are looking for the whole package. If you don’t provide the services they’re looking for due, and if part of that reason is that you’re using an inefficient software platform, your prospect is more likely to go with another property management that uses a more powerful software platform.

Obtaining new sources to generate more quality leads is a very important goal of growing your property management portfolio of community associations and/or apartments.  A combination of these four strategies enables you to not only generate new leads but move them along the sales funnel to becoming a customer and building a sustainable property management business.       

About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company. 

As we enter a brand new year, we’re excited to reflect on the features we\’ve released last year.  Furthermore, for us at Pilera Software, this past year has been a thrilling journey filled with innovation and commitment to making our community management clients’ jobs easier!  This blog article will share an overview of new modules, improvements, and achievements in 2023! 

New Modules

We continue to develop new modules based on our clients\’ needs to help you create more self-sufficient communities. From brand-new modules to improvements, our software has evolved to cater to the growing needs of modern community management.  

1) PileraVOTES

If you’re tired of delays in community decision-making, worried about security, or have to deal with the tedious chore of manually counting votes, PileraVotes can help!  We just introduced PileraVotes, a more streamlined way to run secure and fair voting or elections in your community association.  Our new voting platform allows you to reach quorum faster, improve community decision-making, and increase satisfaction.  Our beta clients have experienced 80% owner participation with the platform.  

How PileraVotes simplifies your community’s voting experience:

• Easy to use & modern voter portal
• Vote on anything – surveys, amendment changes, and elections
• Questions customized to your community’s needs with candidate write-in options
• Fractional voting with unit weights
• Restrict to one vote per unit
• Secure access link
• Tamper-evident technology
• Instant tallying with visual charts & reports
• Integrated with your daily workflow for resident engagement and communication. 

Learn more about E-Voting for your HOA or Condo community in our release notes.

Resource: Guide to Running Smoother HOA Elections 

2) PileraPROCURE (Request for Proposal Software)

Securing qualified vendor bids and contracts for your communities can pose a challenge. That\’s why Pilera launched Pilera Procure (in partnership with RFP Plus), a cutting-edge RFP tracking solution. It centralizes all your request for proposal (RFP) tasks, vendor communications, and documents in a single location, simplifying data retention. Our RFP solution streamlines your processes, saving your team valuable time, fostering stronger vendor connections, and ensuring you can get the best bids for your communities. 

How our RFP management solution makes your procurement process more efficient:

• Manage your entire process, from sending an RFP to finalizing a vendor.
• Automate RFPs quickly with bulk sending and assignment
• Get board member approval on RFPs
• Track vendor and staff responses directly within the RFP
• Protect your community with license expiration notification reminders to managers and vendors.
• Dashboards and charts that give you visual insights into your RFP progress
• View accepted/rejected vendors per category
• All RFPs, documents, and communications are in one place.

Improvements

We firmly believe that community management software should make your lives easier, not harder.  Alongside introducing new products, we prioritize continual improvement of our existing functionality. We aim to improve the workflow of the functionality you use and love to bring greater efficiency to your team.  

Message Inbox

The Message Inbox is the newest addition to PileraCONNECT, our Communications module.  For busy community managers juggling multiple tasks, sifting through endless emails to locate a vendor or board member\’s response can eat up valuable time. Our new Message Inbox changes that. Now, you can find email responses within seconds, not hours. This inbox consolidates all email conversations from residents, vendors, board members, and fellow managers that originated within Pilera. The powerful search and filtering capabilities let you find conversations in a snap. 

Architectural Change Request Committees

The ACR committees feature was a popularly requested feature among our clients who needed a better way to streamline the review and approval process for ACRs.  We introduced the ACR Commitee Role, which you can assign board members and residents to so they can access ACRs, approve/decline them, and stay informed throughout the process.

Ticket Charts

Want to track the trend of open versus closed tickets? Easy! How about a breakdown of your team\’s tasks based on priority? Or a chart showing ticket assignments? We\’ve got you covered!

Ticket Charts are designed to quickly highlight operational trends and the work affecting your communities. Explore these charts across various ticket types—from work orders and support to ACR, violations, and more—to gain quick insights into your team\’s activities.

Ticket Messages

View a history of all conversations from vendors and managers/assignees within the ticket itself, eliminating the need to search through your emails endlessly. 

Other Ticket Improvements  

• Create and update tickets in bulk – Speed through your work by duplicating and updating tickets in batches.  These enhancements are great if you need to assign similar tickets to the same staff member or close multiple tickets at once and need to notify the resident. 
• Create tickets directly from the dashboard – Managers, board members, and residents can save time by creating or submitting tickets right from the dashboard in Pilera. 
• Select ticket attachments – When replying to a ticket, you can choose which attachments to include in your email.  For example, you can send a different attachment to a vendor than a resident.  Once sent, you can also track the attachments you send as part of a conversation in the history of the ticket.  
• Modify ticket attachments – You can also easily add or remove new file attachments to a ticket and retain the history in the audit logs. 

Vendor Improvements

• Filter dashboard by vendor – See the workload associated with vendors in your community anytime.  
• Manage vendor staff in different departments – You can add multiple staff members from a vendor company to the database and allow them to be assigned tickets.  That way, you can communicate more easily with an employee from different departments, such as accounting, a triage person, or the owner of the vendor company, etc. 
• Set a default vendor assignee – To avoid any confusion about who should be assigned work orders from a vendor company, you can set a default vendor contact to be assigned work orders.
• Invalid contact information – In the app, you will see if a vendor staff member cannot receive notifications because their email address is invalid. 
• Vendor communication tracking – Email communication with vendor staff is now tracked in the Message Center. Additionally, vendors can reply to work order and RFP tickets and their responses are tracked in the Message Inbox.

Achievements 

Pilera earned recognition as a top software performer across multiple industry reports last year!  We couldn’t have done it without the support of our amazing clients, who inspire us to keep innovating!  

GetApp for Exceptional Performance in Property Management Software Category

In July 2023, Pilera was recognized as a Category Leader by GetApp, a free online service that helps organizations find the right software in the property management technology space.  GetApp’s recognition of our software in this category is a significant achievement.  Pilera has an overall rating of 4.8/5 on GetApp.  Check out our reviews here!

FrontRunner for Property Management Software by Software Advice

In June 2023, Pilera was recognized as a top-rated product by Software Advice in their 2023 FrontRunners Report for the Top Property Management Software Category.  In their report, Pilera ranks as one of the highest-rated products for its customer service and usability.    Check out the reviews here!

Capterra Shortlist for Property Management Software

Capterra is a popular free online service that helps organizations find software that’s right for them.  In June 2023, Pilera was recognized as a Top Performer in the 2023 Capterra Shortlist for Property Management Software.  With an overall rating of 4.8/5, our clients rated Pilera the highest for its customer service and ease of use. 

What our customers say:

“Pilera has been influential in helping me become more acclimated to my job as a property manager. It allows me easy access to reaching out to residents, as well as tracking the history of communication between management and homeowners. I would absolutely recommend this software to any and all property management firms.”

Nick K. (Capterra)

“Our office now runs all our resident interface and communications through Pilera. The resident portals have been a big hit with our residents. I can’t tell you how happy our Boards are with our reporting capabilities. What we really appreciate from a business perspective is the level of support and the constant improvement culture Pilera exhibits. They don’t rest on their laurels. They continue to improve on their offerings.”

Carlos (Source: Software Advice)

“I love that the software is not complicated. It is very user-friendly. I love that it provides a “go-to” place for our residents to keep up with the community and their accounts. I also love that Pilera offers great customer service that is professional, reliable, and provides resolution when I have an issue.”

Sierra (GetApp)

Conclusion

In 2023, our team was hard at work releasing brand-new modules and improvments, all shaped by our customers\’ feedback! This year, we\’re excited to bring new features to help you create self-sustaining communities, improve your team\’s workflow, and grow your company!  Stay tuned to our releases this year on our blog! 

About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management software that has helped thousands of community managers enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations. Book a personalized demo so you can see firsthand how Pilera can help improve efficiency and reduce costs. 

In a perfect world, an HOA would have regular meetings where members of the community would ask the board questions, raise concerns, and receive regular updates. It would be structured, straightforward, and civilized.

Unfortunately, that’s not how most meetings with the board go. Invariably, there will be a homeowner who thinks that their opinion is more important than anyone else’s, and that the best way to get that opinion heard is voice it at the loudest volume possible. Not only does this behavior bog meetings down, it serves no purpose other than to turn meetings into shouting matches.

But what happens when this behavior escalates? What if a homeowner is verbally abusive to a member of the board, or to the entire board itself? What if someone threatens violence against the board? These are unfortunate scenarios, but they do happen. Fortunately, there are steps that can be taken.

HOA Board steps to prevent further harassment

If a homeowner is verbally abusive to a member of the board, the board can draw up a letter to that individual, informing them that that type of behavior won’t be tolerated, and suggesting alternate means of getting their point across, e.g., writing up their grievances and submitting them to the board for review. This is normally sufficient, as often the homeowner simply needs it pointed out that they’re not behaving appropriately.

If that doesn’t work, the board can take it to the next level and request a restraining order against the individual. This is a difficult situation to manage, as the homeowner still technically has the right to attend HOA meetings, but not if they’re going to do nothing but disrupt and abuse.

Should a homeowner threaten physical violence against any member of the HOA board, the police should be called immediately. Under no circumstances should a member of the board fear for their safety simply for doing their duty.

Harassment is unquestionably a challenge for HOA board members, but if handled properly, shouldn’t interfere with things getting done.

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!