Before You Invest: A Multifamily Digital Marketing Resources Checklist

Equipped with your strategy, benchmarks, goals and budget for 2020, you are ready to invest in multifamily digital marketing resources to help your property management company succeed in the year ahead. A brief search of online options may result in feeling overwhelmed and asking yourself: “How will I know what marketing resources are right for my business?” 

When selecting digital tools to bolster your brand and multifamily websites, utilizing a checklist may ease your fears and help you decide which resources will best support your multifamily digital marketing plan. Understanding your company’s challenges, current resources, and determining what success will look like is a great place to start. 

With the average U.S. adult spending half the day interacting with media content, according to a recent Nielsen study, attracting customers and setting your business apart from the competition online is crucial. More than 80% of prospects start their apartment search online and can spend up to three months narrowing down the one or two properties they will visit in person before signing a lease. Is your multifamily website equipped to earn you a spot in a renter’s top picks as they narrow their search? Digital marketing for apartments takes a look at your website and in recent years there has been an increase in apartment social media ideas.

Turn your multifamily websites into an online leasing consultant with a technology solution to help facilitate a prospect’s research while gathering and monitoring high-quality lead information from each customer. 

Chris Berry, Senior Regional Manager at First Communities in Atlanta, Georgia, believes data reporting is critical for decision-making and calculating return on investment. “With tracking technology, we can see how all the digital marketing pieces work together to get results,” Berry says. “Once all forces work cohesively to get positive results, you’ve reached maximum potential.”

Multifamily Digital Marketing Resources Checklist 

Attracts and Acquires Leads

Website interface: Software that identifies each consumer who visits and engages on your website, then tracks that user across multiple digital platforms for multitouch attribution. Facilitates a prospect’s research while capturing high-quality lead information on each prospect.

Measures channel performance: Helps you evaluate the efficiency of each effort, including social media and digital ads, to deliver real-time results while helping you to adjust digital advertising campaign spends based on performance.

Prioritizes leads: Collects detailed and robust lead information during customer interactions and prioritizes leads to make the follow-up process more efficient and effective. 

Utilizes Artificial Intelligence to Learn and Adapt

Creates personalized experiences for customers: Includes advanced technologies like AI to add interactive experiences on existing property websites.

Automates communication: When tied to an AI-driven marketing cloud, automate email and text communication through nurture campaigns to drive leads back to the website and deliver personalized incentives to inspire action. 

Analyzes Data and Adjusts

Delivers useful data: Demonstrates what’s converting on your website in real-time, learns valuable consumer insights to gain an understanding of what prospects want, and shows which combination of marketing sources drive the most valuable leads and leases at the lowest cost.

Understands consumer’s decision-making process: Reveals personal insights on a prospect’s lifestyle factors and what’s most important to them when choosing an apartment, driving renters’ decisions.

Captures market trends: Provides custom marketing intelligence to identify trends specific to your online audience, and how to best attract and serve this customer. 

Demonstrates return on investment: Tracks performance and ROI of all digital marketing spends to demonstrate the continuum of lead generation to property tour and lease. 

Converts Online Visitors to Tours

Targets prospects with personalized service: Delivers real-time data to provide outstanding, personalized service to your customers every step of the way, while building long-term loyalty. 

Informs SEO and content strategy: Helps you optimize digital campaigns and adjust keywords, ad groups, and content for improved SEO rankings to convert more traffic to your website and improve channel performance.

Provides online tools: Provides consumers the convenience of chat-to-text communication, interactive quizzes, video tours and online tour scheduling tools.

Nurtures prospects: Educates consumers who are still shopping for an apartment with automated emails based off of information they shared during previous website sessions to bring brand awareness and help them choose you over a competitor. Emails will help to bring prospects back to your website to continue their research.

Partners with your Multifamily Team

Ongoing support: Find a digital marketing partner that offers support beyond the sale and continuously offers feedback to help you and your team perform better.

Pay for performance: For a fair exchange, find a vendor whose pricing model is tied to real results.  

Always improving: Invest with a company that works to constantly improve its products and supports a culture of innovation.

Digital marketing for apartments can be a little scary at first. There is a lot of competition out there but with this checklist you can feel secure in your multifamily websites, the tools you invest in, and your overall digital marketing plan.

Additional Multifamily Resources