Apartment marketing is ever-changing, so it’s important to stay current on the very best — and most cost-effective — methods in attracting new renters to your apartment community.
Multifamily Insiders recently released its annual marketing survey, and it shines a light on what’s hot when it comes to apartment marketing and what’s not. Some surprising results: 34% of those surveyed do not use pay-per-click advertising; 32% don’t analyze their lead sources; and 82% don’t use Snapchat, the third-most popular social media app available today.
Below, we take a look at these missed opportunities when it comes to marketing your apartment community in addition to others you should consider using.
Use PPC Advertising
Also called pay-per-click or paid advertising, PPC has become a very effective way to get eyeballs on your apartment website using platforms such as Google Ads or Bing Ads. Rather than targeting a broad audience, the trick to a successful apartment PPC campaign is to focus your efforts on the people who are interested in renting your type of apartment in your city right now. Using a strategic set of keywords, your ads — which appear above, below and sometimes beside organic search results — ideally would only be displayed to those who are most likely to be interested in your community.
Analyze Apartment Lead Sources
Effective apartment marketing is all about analysis. If you’re not tracking how prospects found you, you can’t assess what’s working and how you should spend your apartment advertising budget. The first step is installing Google Analytics, a free tool that collects data and tracks website activity of users such as how long they spend on your apartment website, how many pages they load and which ones, the bounce rate, how they found your site, and much more. If you want to go beyond the basics, our experienced apartment marketers at Respage can assist you in setting up measuring funnels, integrating Google Analytics with Google Ads, and going deeper into your traffic data, which can be used to reach more apartment prospects.
Effectively Use Snapchat
Members of Generation Z — those between 18 and 24 — are looking for student housing or beginning to lease their first post-college apartments, so it’s important to meet them where they are, which is Snapchat. It offers an intuitive design and it’s easy to navigate, and it’s a somewhat untapped landscape for apartment marketing: only 16% of communities are using it, so your efforts have a greater chance of being noticed. Creating tours with My Story, expanding your reach with custom geofilters, and encouraging your apartment community to create a collaborative story are just a few ideas.
Use Text Messaging with Apartment Prospects
The survey reports that 44% of apartment communities don’t follow up with apartment prospects through text. Again, keeping in mind the younger demographic of apartment renters today, it’s crucial to use technology for outreach. Use texting to remind prospects of tour appointments and follow up with them after touring your community rather than calling or sending an email and hoping they read it. (It’s also a good practice to use texting to communicate with your current residents about things like water shutoffs or anything else that’s important and time-sensitive.)
Don’t Rely on Old Fashioned Marketing Techniques
According to the survey, some apartment communities are still replying on brochures, business cards, personalized candies, and balloons as their primary outreach methods. While these tactics can’t hurt, you can reach more people with apartment marketing that has a strong focus on digital strategies. Not only that, it gives valuable insights into what’s working in terms of your apartment website or advertising tactics and what’s not.
Respage can help you achieve your apartment marketing goals, so reach out to set up a demo!
