Boost Your Rental Business with AI & Streamlined Management | Harrison Stevens from TurboTenant 

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98 percent of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully share your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more.

Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50 percent more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Harrison from TurboTenant, VP of marketing with them. How are you doing today, Harrison?

Harrison Stevens: I’m great. How are you?

Ernesto: I’m doing great. Thank you so much for asking, almost ready to get going for the holiday. So, let’s kick it off with what TurboTenant is all about. In your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Harrison: Sure. We’re an all-in-one software for landlords and renters. We offer services and software that allow you to handle vacancy, find someone to move into your place, background check them, screen them, and have them apply. We help with the legal aspect of leasing, writing the right types of leases, what can be said, and what can’t be said. We also offer services for maintenance; things break on these properties, and we can help with our partners to fix them. Additionally, we assist with accounting. Once a year, we all have to do our taxes, and adding a rental property is a new layer onto that. Our software helps with that. We work with Stripe to do rent payments so you can pay safely and securely through our platform to accept rent from your tenants. We also educate you along the way with a whole education team that provides you with information when problems come up that might not be solvable with software but with knowledge.

Ernesto: Definitely. That’s great to hear. So, that way our listeners can get a good understanding of TurboTenant. What would you say is a key problem that you solve? Is it for the tenants, the owners, or both?

Harrison: Sure. We target every problem, honestly, but the biggest problem we solve is the vacancy problem. When you own a property as a landlord and your renter is moving out, how do you get the next person in? We have tools that allow you to list your property on our website, help you write the descriptions with our AI tool, and then syndicate it out to every major listing website. You can manage every single site in one place. When people apply, they all funnel into TurboTenant, and you can manage it all in one place. Once you find someone great, you can background check and screen them. We offer an affordable product at $99 a year for unlimited properties, with background checks and screenings costing per use. You can manage your property for $99 a year versus paying a property manager 10 percent a month. We invest in the user experience daily to make it better for landlords and renters.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great to hear that. Do you focus on clients with many properties, or is it for those with just one rental property?

Harrison: We definitely provide the most value to those with up to 10 properties—people who have stumbled into becoming a landlord or have done it intentionally and saw an opportunity to buy a place to rent out. As they scale their portfolio, we provide more value. The really large-scale apartment buildings with hundreds of units likely need a property manager. Our strength is helping people with a few properties manage them themselves. We also focus on education, providing webinars and an upcoming ebook to teach all the nuances of what to expect and how to manage rental properties.

Ernesto: Great. As the VP of marketing, what would you say is a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Harrison: It’s search. We are growing in other channels, but our software solves many pain points throughout the year. When a pain point arises, people search for a solution, and we provide that answer. It’s the highest intent channel. Other platforms are more top of the funnel, but when problems come up, they search for our brand because they’ve already seen it.

Ernesto: Great to hear that. I’m on your website, turbodependent.com. What role does the website play in your client acquisition?

Harrison: It’s everything. Besides traffic coming in, that’s how we convert. The only way to sign up for our product is through the website. We invest in conversion rate optimization regularly, running three to four tests at a time. Once you sign up, the portal you use to manage your properties is part of the website. It’s how we provide the most value, manage all your properties in one place, and support through the website. It’s how the entire business runs.

Ernesto: Definitely. Would you recommend any tools or methods you used in 2023 for marketing efforts?

Harrison: An A/B testing software goes a long way. There are plenty out there, and just the ability to test one version versus another is crucial. Language goes a long way. We test different things on our pages. For instance, mentioning our AI tools for writing listings produced a 7 percent lift. We test strategically and consistently, learning from our customers. If a change works for the majority of our users, we roll it out to more pages.

Ernesto: Awesome. Let’s switch gears a bit, Harrison, and talk about you as a leader. As the VP of marketing at TurboTenant, what are some key tasks you focus on in your day-to-day work?

Harrison: There’s the big picture part. We do quarterly planning and goal setting, making sure what’s moving the needle is focused on regularly. I check in with each team leader and channel manager to ensure we’re moving in the right direction. Ongoing projects, providing support when needed, business development, costs, and revenue are essential too. I’m responsible for our P&L, so daily I ensure the expected revenue is coming in and we’re spending efficiently. Balancing these tasks regularly is just the surface level of the job.

Ernesto: Great. Let’s jump into our rapid-fire questions round. Are you ready?

Harrison: Let’s do it.

Ernesto: First off, what is the last book you read?

Harrison: I don’t read anything for work. It’s usually Audible. The last book I finished is “Sunlit Man” by Brandon Sanderson. I enjoy the escape of something really unusual and new.

Ernesto: Nice read. What is one single thing that TurboTenant is focused on the most at the moment?

Harrison: Increasing our recurring revenue. We’re a software subscription business, so we spend all day figuring out how to make the landlord and rental process better.

Ernesto: If there were no boundaries in technology, what would be the one thing you would fix for your role as a marketer today?

Harrison: The full attribution journey. If there were a way to understand a person’s entire journey from seeing an ad to converting, it would be invaluable. Tools provide some insights, but connecting all the dots would be great for marketers.

Ernesto: If there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Harrison: We usually automate them, but right now we’re pulling spend numbers manually and putting them in a sheet. We plan to automate the calculations and pulling spend by channel, campaign, and keyword. I don’t want my team spending 30 minutes every morning doing that.

Ernesto: Lastly, with your experience in marketing, what is one piece of advice you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Harrison: I believe all my missteps got me here, so I wouldn’t say much. Always focus on the next step. Deal with what happened and get excited for what’s next. Being excited for the next step keeps me going, and learning that earlier would have made the journey more exciting.

Ernesto: Great advice. We’re coming to the end of the show, but I want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about TurboTenant?

Harrison: We’re the best solution for managing your property, making everything easier, more streamlined, and safer. We do it affordably, allowing you to sign up for free and use many services without paying.

Ernesto: There you have it. You can always check them out at turbotenant.com. Make self-managing your rentals simple. Thanks for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode of Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Harrison.

Harrison: Thank you. Have a great day.