The last couple of years have been all about adapting, evolving, and finding new solutions when it comes to how we market apartment communities. While the world has gone digital for quite some time, it wasn’t until the pandemic hit for remote lifestyles to become more normalized. Today’s generation of renters are different from any generation of renters before them and we have access to insightful data on their buying habits and what they want from a rental unit. Let’s dive into ideas that will strengthen your apartment marketing efforts from SEO to creative social media content.
LOCAL SEO MATTERS
You need your apartment community to show up on the first page of Google. In order to do this, you need to lock down a local SEO strategy. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of finding what keywords and phrases your target audience is using when they search on Google or other search engines. Knowing these keywords allows you to add them to the copy on your multifamily property websites so your sites get ranked higher up on search results. We all know how important it is to be on the first page of results. These websites get more visibility and let’s be honest, how many times have you gone to the second or third page on Google?
Once you’ve got your apartment SEO down, you need to have a property website that’s engaging and set up to collect insightful data on the prospect. There are a lot of fun marketing ideas for apartments that talk about social media, which is important and we will touch on, but another important and creative marketing idea is blogging.
Creating and maintaining a blog can be a lot of work but it’s worth it. Businesses with blogs have 55% more online visitors than those that don’t. Writing blogs will allow to have more places to add keywords onto the copy of your website page helping boost your search visibility. There are lots of things you can write about as a property to including:
A Move-in/Move-out Guide
Decorating tips for specific floor plans
How to put in maintenance requests and what to expect from them
Renter friendly storage ideas and DIYs
Recap of resident events
Local business reviews
There really is so much you can write about it. This is great not just for prospects but for residents as well. Creating a neighborhood/city guide will position your property website as the hub of information for what’s what in your local neighborhood. When renters sign a lease with your community, they are also committing to the neighborhood too. They want to know what life is like there and if it fits their needs — whether it’s vibrant nightlife or a quiet community, this impacts renters decisions too.
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
Apartment related content has over a billion views collectively on YouTube and TikTok. Getting your property in these tags will help you meet today’s renters where they are online. A lot of fun marketing ideas for apartments include Facebook contests, but let’s be honest, Gen Z don’t care for Facebook. A lot of them don’t even have an account.
While it’s important to keep a Facebook presence, your social media strategy needs to be focused on Instagram and TikTok. Luckily with Instagram you can easily share your posts on Facebook too so you don’t have to waste energy keeping your Facebook active.
When it comes to TikTok, a lot of the ideas of things you can blog about can easily be transformed into video content. Stay up to date on what the trending tags and sounds are as this is how you will be found.
Even if some of the trending hashtags don’t related to what you are posting are apartments in general, the way the TikTok algorithm works is based on adding those tags as well as #foryoupage and #fyp in order for your video to show up on renters’ feeds. Some ideas of posts, which can be done on both Instagram and TikTok include:
Pet of the month
Meet a member of the onsite team
Move-in/Move-out tips
Resident Event vlogs/recap posts
Local business review
Apartment marketing needs to be more creative in order to get the attention of Gen Z renters. They will look at your competitors before making a decision so you need to make sure you stand out and really show how your community can be their future home.
Consumers demand automation and instant gratification from any and all businesses. They want answers 24/7 and they don’t care if a robot is the one giving them. They care that once the robot can’t help anymore, they get connected to a real person who is up to date on what they already talked about with the bot.
The best chatbot software uses artificial intelligence to power its knowledge and capabilities. Leasing AI has been making waves in the multifamily industry this year. You probably Google chat bots at some point in the last year or at least have had a personal experience talking to an AI chatbot.
There are a lot out there right now that are geared towards multifamily and talking to rental prospects, but they all have differences that don’t seem big at first. Let’s get into one of the most defining differences that impact the consumer experience.
NATURAL LANGUAGE VS RULE BASED
An AI chatbot is either natural language or rule based. Natural language bots are ones where you text it directly and it responds as if it was texting you back. The prospect can type “How many 1 bedroom are available in x number of days?” and the bot will reply with the answer.
A rule-based chatbot gives the prospect prompts that they have to answer in order to get what they are looking for. Instead of getting straight to the point, this way takes more time, and the prospect has to go through questions they might not want to answer. The best kind of AI chatbot example that gives a better idea of what a rule-based chatbot is like would be when you call customer service for your phone, internet, etc and you get a robot menu that you must go through before getting a person on the phone.
Those menu chatbots on the phone are personally very frustrating. It takes forever and sometimes you leave the “conversation” without the answers you were looking for. When it comes to the best chatbots to talk to, natural language is definitely the best. After all, the user is actually talking to the bot and not being forced to answer prompts. When it comes to best chatbot for website, natural language wins too because it’s quick and efficient. It gives prospect more time to go through your website and spend less time trying to get answers through prompts.
THE WHOLE PACKAGE
The chatbot component is very important but what else does it offer? Some chatbots are just chatbots that integrate with other CRMs and lead generation tools while others are a complete solution. Do you want to invest in a bunch of single point solutions that come from a bunch of different vendors, or do you want to invest in one, whole solution from one vendor?
When you go into budgeting meetings this is something to keep in mind. While single point solutions might all be cheaper individually, they do add up and whether or not they work together harmoniously will always be up in the air. A complete solution that offers chatbot, website conversion, lead nurture and follow-up, etc. will be more expensive but it offers more and because it is all in one, you only need to work with one vendor if something goes wrong instead of troubleshooting with a lot of different vendors.
AI LEASING ASSISTANT
PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant is a complete, all-in-one solution with a natural language chatbot. The AI Leasing Assistant not only makes promises of higher website conversion, better lead nurture, and only handing off qualified leads to onsite teams, it actually delivers on those promises.
During an era of website leads increasing dramatically due to more “looky-loos” as Dalia Kalgreen, Director of Marketing at Unified Residential, likes to call them, the leasing team is able to focus on just the qualified leads.
The battle of the bots is more than just who is the better bot, but who delivers the results they promise. Pilots and demos take time and energy. Learning as much as you can about each bot and deciding on which to invest in is important. Interested in hiring the PERQ AI Leasing Assistant? Talk to our team today.
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.
DESIGNED FOR ENGAGEMENT
One of the best ways to increase traffic apartment community websites is to have an engaging website. 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.
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 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.
COMBINING 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.
Technology that has been made for multifamily property management has seen a lot of advancement and innovation in the last few years. With so much new software, is there any harm in trying them out or is it better to just wait, and see?
Lisa Lawrence, Property Manager at Aura at Arbodale, a Bonaventure Property, chatted with Muhammad Yasin on our most recent sofa seminar about the latest in leasing tech. She is known for trying out new and different platforms at her property to see what is the best and what isn’t worth your time.
During this Sofa Seminar, they chatted through a wide range of topics including:
Leasing AI
The Importance of Personalization
Integration within your Tech Stack
As a whole, a lot of us spent quarantine talking about going back to normal and that virtual leasing and leasing AI are fads that aren’t here to last post-pandemic. “There’s no advancement and growth in going back,” explains Lisa. With leasing AI, she knows that herself and her leasing specialists feel more educated and have more confidence when talking to prospects as AI Assistants have empowered them with better and more personalized data on prospects.
“We don’t sound like robots asking all these questions anymore because they have already talked to a robot who’s asked them,” she goes on. By handling prospects’ questions and only handing off qualified leads, leasing AI has saved Lisa and her team hours of work. They are able to talk to personalize the conversation and tour to make the prospect feel more at home. All this new tech has allowed Lisa and her team to make a bigger impact with prospects.
Lisa does note the importance of integration within your tech stack. For her, they use Entrata as their PMS. For any new tech they try out, whether its virtual leasing platforms or AI chatbots, if it doesn’t integrate smoothly, she doesn’t waste her time with it. At the end of the day, all this tech should be making it easier for teams to do their jobs and not create more work.
The multifamily industry has been known to be a little wary of embracing new technology. Within the last two years, the industry has seen how valuable being up to speed is. From virtual leasing and now to leasing AI, there have been a lot of new products to try. To all those who are still unsure, Lisa says “I don’t foresee it hurting, keep an open mind, it’s only going to benefit you.”
Digital marketing for apartments and multifamily communities tends to be the same. While there are some parts of multifamily digital marketing that are important to hit consistently, there are multifamily marketing ideas and aspects of apartment marketing that can be more fun and creative. Both are equally important to getting your property’s name and website in front of prospects and creating lasting impressions with them. Let’s get into how content can help you in all aspects of your multifamily digital marketing plans.
Content and SEO
SEO is a vital part of every business’s digital marketing efforts. In fact, there are SEO strategy agencies out there that specialize in getting your business more online visibility and ranked higher on the results page. Your apartment content marketing needs to keep SEO in mind. How can you do that?
For starters, identify the keywords and phrases your prospects are using when they search for apartments. You can then create copy on your website, social media, and in your apartment advertising that includes these keywords. Whenever you write anything for your website, keeping these keywords in mind is a great way to get you ranked higher up in organic searches without having to pay a lot for ad space.
Apartment advertising ideas need to keep SEO in mind because the content in those ads needs to be targeting online prospects and this will increase traffic apartment community. Using keywords in your ads is a great way to use SEO tactics within your apartment marketing and a one of the more effective ways to advertise apartments for rent . This is also a great way to marry SEO and PPC marketing in your digital efforts. Focusing on both paid and organic searches will help you in the long term with keeping your search rankings high.
Content and Outreach
We’ve written a few blogs already about outreach marketing ideas for apartments, fun marketing ideas for apartments, and marketing ideas for luxury apartments, but how can you tie those into your apartment content marketing?
Multi family outreach marketing can include email marketing and follow-up through text message cadences too. AI Leasing Assistants can help when it comes to email and text follow-up so that onsite teams can focus on qualified leads. PERQ’s AI Assistant goes further by using your brand colors and brand voice in the follow-up messaging. This helps make all your content cohesive and sound like it is all coming from your property and not a robot.
Other outreach marketing ideas for apartments include events with the local community and businesses. These kinds of events are great for having a back log of content for your socials. With the summer season ahead of us, you can host pop ups outside of your property. Local shops can set up their own table and sell their goods. You can also host donation drives for local shelters and nonprofit organizations. Events are not only great for resident retention but it also is a great way to gather content for your website and social media that is more community centered and shows what life is like living in your property.
Content and Social
Some fun marketing ideas for apartments include the content on your social media. From Instagram to Facebook and now even TikTok, social platforms are where content creators can really get the word out there about different brands and companies. This is an area where your property can really outshine the competition and get in front of prospects in a more fun way.
You can post photos of the units and the overall properties on these pages, but it’s more fun and engaging to post about the resident events you put on, meeting members of the staff, spotlighting residents, or doing a pet of the month post. Social media is a great place to show prospects and residents that your property is a community and that this neighborhood is a great place to call home.
Posting about the local businesses and events is also a great way to have content that is still related to life at your property but gives a bigger picture than just the units and amenities. After all, living at your property also means living in the town/city you are located in too. You aren’t just selling your units, you’re selling life in your community too. This is an apartment advertisement example that is unique and caters more to how rental prospects are searching for their next apartment.
Planning out your content with these three areas in mind will boost your digital marketing efforts, apartment lease-up strategy, and also make you stand out to online visitors. Content needs to be cohesive and unfortunately, a lot of content on multifamily websites and social pages are kind of all over the place. Creating a schedule of what you are going to post and when can help keep your online presence active. Using SEO and taking lots of photos and videos at events and of the community will give you a base for where you can build your content from. For more apartment marketing ideas or marketing ideas for apartment lease up and resident retention, go to perq.com/blog for all the latest tips and trends in multifamily.
It’s all anyone can talk about in multifamily these days. There’s a few different leasing AI out there and some of them promise things that seem too good to be true. As we come into budget season, multifamily properties are starting to figure out which AI Leasing Assistant, if any, they want to invest in for the upcoming year. Let’s dive into how an AI Leasing Agent and AI property management can help and what criteria you should keep in mind when trying to pick one.
NATURAL LANGUAGE
Some AI Leasing Assistants, not all, have natural language chatbots while others have rule based chatbots. The big difference is that one is more conversational and can answer the prospect’s questions directly through a texting format and get them serviced quicker while the other makes the prospect follow prompts that hopefully answer their questions. Leasing AI that continues to learn from the data and questions that prospects ask will only make your multifamily property stand out more and that kind of AI Leasing Agent will give customer service you can trust.
Rule-based leasing AI takes a longer time to answer prospect’s questions and has more of a chance of not being able to answer all of them. This is why a natural language AI Leasing Agent is a better investment and more convenient for prospects. This kind of AI Leasing Assistant can give the onsite teams better and more personalized data for online prospects which will only help the team be more prepared and give better service to prospects who are ready to talk.
While we are accustomed to talking to robots on sites, natural language multifamily chatbots have the ability to answer more questions and are less frustrating for prospects as they are able to have their questions answered 24/7. They won’t have to wait for the leasing office to be open and the AI Leasing Assistant won’t hand off the lead until they are ready to talk, tour, or lease. This saves leasing specialists so much time as they won’t be stuck answering every question a prospect has and focus on qualified leads who are ready to continue onward in the leasing journey.
AUTOMATION
An AI Leasing Assistant can also help with automating the leasing journey. We’ve already mentioned how they can answer prospects’ questions 24/7 but they can also handle the follow-up conversations and even help connect other marketing channels, like an ILS, with your site for a more connected experience. The impact of AI on property management speaks for itself. Read about how Unified Residential increased their lead-to-tour conversion and overall operational efficiency after hiring PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant.
AI Leasing Agents, like the one at PERQ, follows-up with prospects through their preferred mode of communication and sends messages based on their move-in timeline. Too many messages can be off putting to prospects, especially when those messages sound robotic and almost like spam. A unique part of leasing AI, is that it also knows when to pull back and not send a message so the prospect is not annoyed by having their inbox blow up with constant messages.
This also is great for leasing specialists as an AI Leasing Assistant can help them manage their pipeline and take care of responding to prospects throughout their move-in time frame and will hand them off to the leasing team once they are ready to speak to a person. The leasing team will also have access to the personalized data the AI Leasing Agent has kept track of in the prospect’s guest card so they know exactly what the prospect is looking for and when. A unique feature of PERQ’s leasing AI is that it also personalizes follow-up messages from a brand perspective. Using that multifamily property’s brand colors and voice, follow-up messages from PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant feel more human, less spam. Using your own brand voice, leasing AI helps make your automated follow-up sound like it is coming from the leasing office and not an AI Leasing Agent.
Leasing agent blogs aren’t joking when they say leasing AI is here to help with the massive workload. AI Leasing Assistants make your leasing team stronger and more knowledgable by giving them the time to focus on qualified leads, knowing that they aren’t forgetting about follow-up because the AI Leasing Agent has it covered, and gives them all the details they need to know about a prospect before the first initial conversation or tour. With automated follow-up and connected channel experiences, leasing AI is the way forward in leasing and will only help your onsite and marketing teams evolve and work more efficiently.
