Multifamily Marketing Ideas
There are a lot of ways to approach multifamily marketing. From apartment advertising ideas, to outreach marketing ideas for apartments, to social media marketing, there’s a lot of content you can create to keep your multifamily property ahead of the competition and on top of rental prospects minds.
Multifamily is in the business of selling people a home for however long they need or choose. A lot of multifamily marketing ideas tend to forget that it’s more than just the property and units, it’s a community where people live their life, have kids and pets, go through transitional phases and more. When putting together your multifamily marketing strategy and plan, you need to keep the emotional aspect of renting in mind.
In this article, we touch base on multiple multifamily marketing ideas, including technology solutions, content ideas, and outreach efforts to help you have a more well-rounded and successful marketing plan. The tech you invest in is important. These days, multifamily has seen a lot of innovation in property management software and lead management solutions. These solutions help onsite teams with their workload, nurture leads better, and collect insightful data.
6 Multifamily Marketing Ideas
Use Websites Designed For Engagement
One of the best ways to increase traffic to your apartment community websites is to have an engaging website that fits the needs of your target audience. Multifamily websites eventually all blend together in a prospect’s mind. After all, there isn’t much variation besides branding. The latest innovations in multifamily tech have proven to create a strong apartment lease-up strategy for many communities. AI Leasing Assistants live on your site and engages with prospects while collecting better data and giving real-time reporting. A website that is interactive keeps prospects on it longer. The longer they are there, the more probable they will talk, tour, and lease.
Create Purposeful Content
You can look up apartment advertising example and find some creative ways to advertise apartments for rent. Fun marketing ideas for apartments examples include multi family outreach marketing, like emails, that is more personalized and feels less robotic. You might be thinking, how can that be possible when a lot of email follow-up and lead nurture is and needs to be automated. PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant allows for customization in your follow-up by learning your brand voice. This keeps prospects top of mind no matter where they are in the pipeline.
Some marketing ideas for luxury apartments and marketing ideas for apartment lease-up in general touch on social media content. There’s a reason this pops up so much. Multifamily communities social media content is boring and doesn’t sell to prospects at all. It’s important to share property and unit photos but all of those can be found on your website. Your Instagram, Facebook, and if you are able to, TikTok should have content around the people and the neighborhood. You aren’t just selling a unit, you’re selling a home to someone. Home includes the people that work and live there as well as what the neighborhood is like.
Realtors and leasing agents do this a lot on their own pages. They review local businesses or spotlight them. You can also promote events going on in town. For example, a lot of communities have farmer’s markets on Saturday morning. This is a great way to promote the local community and show rental prospects that your multifamily property is a part of the neighborhood.
Doing a pet of the month post, or asking residents if they would be okay if their decorated units could be posted, or doing a get to know a member of the onsite team post are all different ways to give rental prospects a better idea of what it’s like living in your community.
Combine Content With Engagement
All of that content above can be repurposed into blog posts. Having a blog will give your website more visibility in searches and businesses with blogs have more monthly visitors and leads than those that don’t.
People love to read apartment content. When an event in town happens, or an event put on by the onsite team, take photos and videos. Write up a recap blog post about what happened. You can encourage residents to contribute as well. They can write a day in the life post.
You can also write blogs with tips for move-in day, how to get referrals, how to send in maintenance requests and other useful things that may be frequently asked. You can also come up with posts on decorating tips that are specific to your units, whether its small space storage ideas or how to set up the living room.
Having content that is more than just property photos, a blog, and tools on your website to make it more interactive and engaging are how we move forward in the multifamily industry. The new generation of renters loves to consume content and they expect automation and a digital presence. Consumer buying habits have changed and leaning in to leasing AI will keep your property up to speed and meet the demands of today’s renter.
If you’re still unsure about whether or not to add AI to your multifamily property website, check out this post about Unified Residential. They have a decent portfolio of properties all over the US and leasing AI has given them some of the best results they’ve ever had. If you’re interested in learning more about our AI Leasing Assistant, talk to one of our specialists today.
Use Outreach Marketing as a Tool to Spread the Word
What does it mean to be a part of a community? It’s more than just having property and providing housing. It means interacting with the local businesses and events, encouraging residents to explore, and creating the space on your website to be the hub of what’s what in the neighborhood.
Multifamily outreach marketing is important because it really brings together the community aspect that property management companies say they want more of in their marketing efforts. Some outreach marketing ideas for apartments include:
- Pop-up Shop Event
- Resident Night
- Donation Drives
Doing a little pop-up shop event or inviting a local business to set up a pop-up during a resident event are great resident event ideas to create that community. Residents can bring their friends and shop the different local businesses at your property and meet people in the neighborhood. On national holidays like National Beer Day or National Cookie Day, partnering with the local brewery or bakery and offering a selection of beers or cookies on said day is a great way to spotlight a local business.
Offering to do Donation Drives at your property that benefit the local schools or non-profit/charity organizations is another way to do some outreach marketing. Be sure to take photos and videos of these events and occasions so you have that content to post on your website and social media. This gives you a variety of content and plays to the emotional aspect of renting talked about earlier. This content can be repurposed into ways that make your website more engaging as well.
Increase the Organic Traffic of Your Multifamily Website
There has been a dramatic increase in online leads recently, especially an increase traffic apartment community websites. Whether it’s the casual visitor just browsing, a prospect looking a few months down the road, or someone looking for a new place in a month, more people are looking at apartment websites.
You might’ve Googled “how to market to apartment complexes” and found this article hoping for ways to manage this increase of online traffic or get your multifamily website ranked higher up in search results. In order for those things to come true, you need to focus on SEO and creating copy and content with SEO in mind. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a big part of digital marketing for multifamily, and business in general, today. It uses keywords and phrases that your consumer is typing into Google or other search engines to find what it is they are looking for. For example, “1 bedroom apartment for rent in Indy” could be a keyword a prospect in Indianapolis might use. Knowing this means you can write the copy on your website and blog to include these keywords. This way you rank higher up in organic searches.
No one goes to the second page of a Google search, especially those looking for an apartment online. In fact, you might’ve typed in “how to market to apartment complexes” and found this page. This is also why businesses with blogs have more monthly online visitors and more leads. Having a blog on your site gives you more chances to have keywords on your website, giving your multifamily property website more visibility when search engines are looking for pages.
Advertising Ideas for Multifamily Properties
Apartment advertising ideas can also be fun, but this is where SEO comes back but this time the focus is more on PPC. PPC stands for “pay-per-click” and is a big part of today’s marketing and advertising. Using keywords that you’ve identified through SEO can help your advertising efforts by using those keywords in your digital ads.
You’ve got the copy through your SEO findings, but what about visuals? An apartment advertisement example that stands out is one that repurposes some of that social media content. Yes, you need some ads with property photos and the staged gallery photos, but every multifamily community does that. If the prospect has been on your website, they’ve already seen those photos. Using some of the more community centered content from your website or social media is a way to take your apartment advertising to a different level.
Having ads that promote the neighborhood is a great way to grab prospects’ interest while they are casually online. Especially for someone who is new to the neighborhood or moving from out of state, they are more interested in what life in the community is like once they’ve seen the property and unit photos. Advertise the community as well as the property. Depending on your target audience, social media advertising can also be effective. That said, using Facebook Ads and other similar type of advertising can be incredibly effective to reach prospective renters.
Bonus: Fun Marketing Ideas for Apartments
Now that we’ve gone into the more technical part of marketing, this section explores some fun marketing ideas for apartments. We’ve touched on social media content above and what sorts of posts you can be doing to make your social media more about the community. Now let’s dive deep into the world of YouTube and TikTok, two social media platforms that are only for videos sharing.
Apartment content on these platforms is incredibly popular, especially with potential renters. The content ranges from empty apartment tours, decorating tips and diys, to a day in the life videos. There are lots of creative and fun ways to market your apartment community through video! By putting your community in these tags, you are gaining more visibility and sticking out to renters more.
When thinking about apartment marketing ideas 2021 you need to work on your TikTok and YouTube presence. Many students housing multifamily companies have started using TikTok to promote leasing season, how to fill out maintenance requests, moving day tips, moving out tips, what life looks like in their community, etc. This is where your marketing can be more fun, and today’s prospective renters have grown up using these platforms and watching this kind of content. It may seem foreign but for this generation of renters, it’s content that they love to consume.