As a software product with a monthly subscription cost, people don’t normally think of Showdigs as a profit center, or a branch of the company that directly adds to the bottom line. But the reality is, you can actually make a profit off of your Showdigs subscription.

We’ve seen five major ways that property management companies have successfully monetized their Showdigs subscription, bringing in even more money and improving their bottom line. In this post, we’re going to discuss the ways you can leverage Showdigs to earn more revenue while doing less, including how to:

1. Use Showdigs as your competitive differentiator
2. Improve your metrics to improve your bottom line
3. Lease faster and cheaper without your in-house team
4. Create and monetize more services, and
5. Expand your business past geographic limits

In each section we’ll outline how to use these tips to optimize your business and maximize the best of Showdigs, and then summarize if the activity is a money-making activity, work-saving activity, or both. 

We know you’re busy, which is why we’ve included a TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) for each section as well to help you get the gist while skimming.

If you have any questions about the material covered in this post or would like to learn more about getting started, please reach out and our team will be happy to chat with you!

1. Use Showdigs as your competitive differentiator

TL;DR: There are more than 300,000 property management companies in the US — use a unique value proposition like Showdigs to set yourself apart from the competition, win more business, and increase your revenue.

Start with the “wow” factor to set your business apart. When you’re meeting with a potential new owner client, what services set your business apart from the competition? Odds are you’re not the first property management company they’re meeting with, so adding a “wow factor” to your service offerings can make you stand out and attract potential new business.

‍Use empathy to market your services to potential owner clients. Start by imagining yourself in the shoes of your owner clients. What would impress you as a property owner looking for a property manager? What would make you choose one company over another? Simply put, this is what you base your marketing around!

‍Need some marketing inspiration? Here’s some sample marketing language that current Showdigs users have found to be impactful when selling their services to property owners!

We use state-of-the-art technology to rent properties quickly, efficiently, and with the best customer service possible. This includes offering:

• On-demand property tours with nearly 100% calendar availability to rent faster
• Professional one-on-one showing appointments with pre-qualified prospects
• Total visibility of your investment, including photo-rich PDF condition reports every 6-12 months
• Fast turnover time between renters so you never have to miss out on potential rental income
• Top notch customer service, including a 24/7 phone line and a live, US-based operations team to handle all emails, calls, and texts

Does this help you make money, work less, or both? This is definitely a money-making activity for your business. Attracting and winning new business is crucial to building your client base, which creates more business and increases your revenue.

2. Improve your metrics to improve your bottom line

TL;DR: Paying close attention to your leasing metrics, especially your tour conversion rates, will offer valuable insight when understanding how effectively you’re marketing your listings and catering to today’s renters. Using Showdigs to improve your leasing metrics will greatly impact your bottom line. 

An important metric to optimize is your tour conversion rate. A high tour conversion rate means that a large percentage of prospective renters who find your listing will book a tour to see the place, making it more likely that the property rents quickly. On the flip side, a low tour conversion rate usually correlates to a property spending more days on the market.

‍Take a long hard look at your tour scheduling process. One of the easiest ways to miss out on prospective renters is by having a clunky tour scheduling process, which could look like:

• Asking prospects to call or email your office to book a tour — most renters do not want to talk on the phone or make cold calls, and emailing uses up a lot of your team’s time. 
• Limiting tour availability to office hours only — typically the best prospective renters have full-time jobs, which means they want to schedule tours for after work or on the weekends. In fact, more than 60% of all Showdigs tours happen after 5pm and on the weekends.
• Playing week-long email/phone tag to reschedule an appointment — a prospect having to reschedule a tour should not take up anymore of your time than what has already been sunk. Also, it’s just plain annoying. 
• Not having the capacity to respond to every phone call, text, email, and guest card — it’s normal for things to slip through the cracks in any business. But the biggest problem in leasing is letting prospects slip through the cracks because you’re unable to respond to their questions or miss their tour request. The fewer prospects you have booking tours, the longer the property sits on the rental market.

‍Highlight on-demand tours in your listing ad. Encourage prospects to see the property as soon as possible by letting them know that tours are available to book on their schedule, 7 days/week from 9am-8pm. Tours can be easily requested on a mobile device and scheduled for same-day and in as little as two hours.

‍Attract quality prospects with better service. In today’s technology-fueled world, renters have learned to expect everything on-demand. You can perfectly align with their expectations by offering on-demand tours, which also positively impacts your future relationship with this potential new tenant. On top of that, the expert level of customer service will demonstrate even more value to your current and future owner clients.

‍Follow up with prospects immediately following their tour. Using the Prospects section of your Showdigs dashboard, you can see all recent prospects and tours, use their contact info to answer any questions they have, or see if they might be interested in any other properties you manage. 

Take it one step further and use this touch point to ask for a Google or Yelp review of their experience so far — you’re most likely to get a positive review at this stage in the prospect’s journey! The more positive reviews you can get, the higher your business will rank on search results pages and the more clients and prospects you’ll be able to attract.

‍Does this help you make money, work less, or both? Both! Showdigs handles all pre-tour communication which frees you and your team up from the busy work. Plus, highlighting on-demand tours means quality prospects will tour sooner, thus increasing your tour conversion rate, decreasing your days on market, and improving your bottom line. Current and future owner clients will be impressed with the service you’re able to offer, which can bring more money into your business.

3. Lease faster and cheaper without your in-house team

TL;DR: Your in-house team is awesome. They know the ropes of your business and their expertise is a huge value-add to your company. Which is exactly why you should stop using them for your leasing fieldwork and pay them for valuable work instead.

‍Stop paying for drive time. Anytime you or a member of your team gets behind the wheel, you’re essentially flushing money down the drain. Why? Because driving is not a specialized skill, nor does it make your business money, so it’s a waste of time — especially when you can outsource your fieldwork. When you use Showdigs Agents to handle your showings and condition reports, you can keep your team at the office to work on actual money-making activities.

‍Use your tour budget effectively. Most likely you’ve created a budget to go towards leasing activities, like tours for example. Using Showdigs Agents allows you use that tour budget more effectively since you’re only paying one agent for each showing, whereas for an in-house employee you’re paying for all the time they're sitting in the car unable to be productive. If you’re only paying a flat rate per activity and don’t have to worry about payroll costs eating at your bottom line, you can use your budget accordingly and fit in more tours for less money.

‍Does this help you make money, work less, or both? Both, in addition to saving you money. Use your tour budget wisely by paying third-party fieldwork agents to handle your tours so that you’re not wasting any money on drive time. You and your team are relieved from tediously driving all around town, you never have to pay your salaried employees overtime for after-hours or weekend tours, and you make more rental income by leasing the property faster.

4. Create and monetize more services

TL;DR: To make money, property management companies typically charge a monthly fee, either as a percentage of rent collected (usually 8-12%) or a flat fee per property. If each property only brings in $100-150/month, your company will likely need to create and charge for service offerings to bring in more revenue per property.

‍Monetize services to generate more revenue per account. Are you only charging your clients a flat monthly fee or rental commission? Start offering add-on services that you can charge for! You can create 10-25% profit margins on several of your service offerings. Leverage Showdigs condition reports, vacancy checks, marketing photos, etc. so you can cross-sell services to your clients and generate more revenue per account.

‍Provide even better service for less work. Offering additional services to your owner clients means better, stickier customer service that actually makes you money. Keep them impressed by your proactivity and appreciative of your level of care. The best part? You don't have to do any additional work except submit the work to Showdigs!

‍Does this help you make money, work less, or both? Another double-whammy! Offering more monetized services will increase the spend per owner account which directly increases revenue. You make more money by offering better customer service, and your workload basically stays the same.

5. Expand your business past geographic limits

TL;DR: Property management is a very hands-on job, so it’s hard to imagine expanding your business geographically without hiring a full time team member (or two) to manage a new territory. One of the most unique value-adds of Showdigs is that there’s no need to imagine growing your business without adding employees to payroll. 

The Showdigs Agent Network has more than 1,500 licensed real estate agents across the US, with more being added every day. You can easily take on new business in any location where Showdigs Agents are available without changing anything about your business.

Your business is no longer geographically limited. Tapping into the Showdigs Agent Network means that your business is no longer limited by how far you or your employees are willing or able to drive. No more turning down potential new business because of traffic, drive time, or because the properties are outside your “service area."

‍Open a new office without actually opening a new office. Expand the radius in which you do business and extend your property management services to areas of less competition and more demand! Think about it like opening a new office — but without any of the actual costs of opening a new office. Showdigs Agents can handle all your fieldwork needs virtually anywhere, which means you can take on new business, wherever it is.

‍Does this help you make money, work less, or both? This one is all about making money. The untapped potential of lifting geographic boundaries is almost endless — by no longer limiting your business to the confines of your city or surrounding area, you’re opening up your business to unlimited expansion, regardless of location. 

Mix and match ways to further monetize your business

In summary, these are just a few of the ways that hundreds of Showdigs users have figured out how to make the most of monetizing their Showdigs subscription. The most successful businesses will mix and match the ways you can leverage Showdigs to work less, earn more revenue, and cut costs. Whatever works best for you and your business, we’re here to help!

Get started today!