How Can You Advertise an Apartment for Rent

In today’s world, advertising apartments and multifamily communities has changed significantly. Marketing and advertising as industries themselves are constantly adapting to shifting markets and consumer wants and needs. Apartment advertising is exactly what it sounds like: advertising an apartment or multifamily community to get occupancy numbers up and bring awareness of your community to prospects. This article will discuss everything you need to know to create an apartment advertising plan.

Apartment advertising is one facet of an overall marketing plan to get higher occupancy and conversion numbers. Prospects want to engage with your apartment community online, both on your website and on your social media. They want to know what it’s like to live in your apartment community while sitting on their couch. Let’s go deeper into how advertising apartments can and should look like.

Apartment advertising ideas that work

Without a plan in place, your marketing and advertising efforts for your community won’t produce the results you are looking for. Having a plan in place with the right tools will help everyone from higher management to the onsite leasing team stay on the same page.

When it comes to apartment advertising, having the right mix of creative ideas and proven tactics is key to filling your leasing funnel. Below, we’ve gathered some of the top apartment advertising ideas that are both effective and budget-friendly:

Proven Apartment Advertising Ideas

1. Google Search Ads: Target keywords like “apartments for rent near me” to appear at the top of search results.
2. Facebook and Instagram Ads: Use compelling visuals of your property paired with short, engaging copy. Target by interests, income, or location.
3. Pinterest Ads: Ideal for showing off apartment interiors, floor plans, or decorating ideas.
4. Retargeting Ads (Remarketing): Reach back out to people who visited your website but didn’t take action.
5. Video Advertising on YouTube: Give prospects a virtual tour of your apartments in a 30-second video ad.
6. Influencer Partnerships: Partner with local lifestyle influencers to promote your community on their platforms.
7. Geo-Targeted Ads: Focus your advertising efforts on specific neighborhoods or ZIP codes near your property.
8. Event Promotions: Use advertising to promote leasing events, open houses, or resident referral specials.
9. Special Offer Ads: Advertise move-in specials, reduced security deposits, or waived application fees.
10. Landing Pages for Specific Campaigns: Send ad traffic to targeted landing pages that focus on your most popular floor plans or amenities.

Advertising works best when combined with a strong SEO strategy. Research and use keywords that your ideal renters are already searching for, like “pet-friendly apartments,” “downtown apartments with parking,” or “luxury apartments with pool.”

No matter which advertising platforms you use, be intentional with your approach. Start by asking yourself:

• Are you trying to generate more leads, improve your conversion rate, or both?
• Where will your prospects land when they click the ad—your homepage, a blog, or a custom landing page?

Landing pages tailored to specific ads or promotions give prospects exactly what they came for, making them more likely to continue exploring your property and eventually schedule a tour.

Don’t Forget Social Media Planning

Social media advertising isn’t just about placing ads—it’s about consistency.

• Create a content calendar for organic posts.
• Post regularly using hashtags like #ApartmentLiving, #Multifamily, and #NewApartments to stay visible.
• A recognizable brand style on social media makes your property stand out from competitors.

Apartment advertising works best when it’s creative, targeted, and consistent. Now, let’s talk about how to turn that advertising into leases.

Outreach Marketing ideas for apartments

Multifamily professionals have heard lots of different ways they can up their advertising efforts. In this section we are going to specifically look at one approach—outreach. Outreach marketing for apartments is about being proactive. Your goal is to get a prospect in the door, tour a unit, and sign a lease. This is where outreach marketing can help bridge the gap.

Outreach is focused on actively seeking out prospects instead of waiting for prospects to reach out to you. SEO and keywords are amazing long-term marketing tactics that help pull in prospects. However, those results tend to take some time to come in. There are times when units open up unexpectedly and you need to get them filled sooner rather than later.

Outreach marketing ideas for apartments need to hit one of the following areas:

• Local Community
• Events
• Social Media

Invest in the Local Community

Your outreach marketing efforts should reflect your role in the neighborhood. After all, your residents are part of the community and help shape its character. Ways to connect locally:

• Partner with local businesses and community centers: Offer resident discounts or co-host fun events. This encourages foot traffic and helps residents engage with nearby shops and services.
• Distribute promotional materials: Create brochures, stickers, or info cards that can be placed at checkout counters or on community boards. Shoppers in the area can grab one and learn more about your property.
• Encourage community involvement: Invite residents to join a local community garden, participate in donation drives, or volunteer together. These activities help build goodwill and visibility for your apartment community.

Host Community-Friendly Events

Community events create natural opportunities for outreach and connection. Ideas to try:

• Apartment yard sale: If you have outdoor space, host a community yard sale. Residents can set up tables to sell items, and local visitors can explore your property in a casual, welcoming environment.
• Monthly resident events: Aim to hold at least one event a month to boost resident satisfaction and encourage word-of-mouth referrals. Happy residents are more likely to recommend your property and leave positive reviews.
• Popular event ideas: themed happy hours, game nights, holiday gift wrapping, virtual trivia nights or online happy hours via Zoom (great when in-person isn’t possible)

Use Social Media Advertising

Don’t overlook social media—especially paid ads—as a powerful outreach tool.

Why social media is effective

• Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest offer affordable ad options and detailed audience insights.
• You can track engagement metrics like who clicked, who skipped, who visited your profile, and other demographics and interest data.
• Even a small daily budget can help you reach renters who are actively considering a move or browsing communities like yours.

Why Outreach Marketing Matters

Outreach marketing should be a core part of your overall strategy. Here’s why it works:

• Gets your property in front of new prospects, beyond your existing channels
• Builds a positive reputation in your local area
• Encourages local businesses and residents to see you as a valued neighbor
• Supports word-of-mouth and strengthens your social media presence

In general, outreach marketing helps your apartment or multifamily community stay connected, visible, and trusted—both online and off.

Marketing Apartments: Move Beyond Generic Listings

There are lots of different ways marketing apartments can go. Outreach marketing has already been covered, but what else can you and your team do? There are lots of different ideas for marketing apartments but at the end of the day whatever ideas you choose to go with, they need to get more prospects in the door and more leases signed.

Write Listings That Stand Out

Marketing apartments includes the written copy in your listings on internet listing services (ILS). Generic apartment listings are boring. Prospects have seen dozens of the same description for numerous apartments. Yes, you need to have amenities, features, square footage, and all the details that a prospect needs to determine if your apartments fit their needs, but it doesn’t mean you can’t add some personality to it. Prospects are looking for their next home, a generic listing they’ve already seen won’t make your multifamily community stand out. Make them entertaining and fun, it’ll make your apartment community more memorable than your competitors.

Start a Blog to Build Trust and Traffic

Speaking of written copy, starting a blog on your website is a great way to build your reputation and trust with prospects. Businesses with blogs see 67% more leads monthly and get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t have a blog.

The multifamily property management industry relies heavily on blogs written by marketing and leasing experts to learn about up and coming trends, new technology solutions, and discover unique ways to increase tours and leases. These industry experts recognize blogging as an influential and cost-effective tool in digital marketing for apartments to reach their target audience and build credible authority.

Why do we read multifamily and apartment industry blogs? They’re helpful, insightful and you likely only read content by industry influencers who show up on the first page of your search engine results. Why not post a regular blog on your apartment website? Your apartment community can provide similarly helpful advice to prospects, residents, other industry professionals and improve your search engine ranking while increasing organic traffic onto your apartment website.

“There are several benefits to this,” says Corey Egan, Co-Founder and Director of Business Development at LeasingKC, which posts bimonthly blogs on its website and promotes the content through their social media.

Creating and engaging with an audience is an important function of blogging for a multifamily community. Keeping this audience engaged with fresh, creative content will reinforce your brand… Also, this becomes important when trying to boost the SEO of your property website.”

Corey Egan, Co-Founder and Director of Business Development at LeasingKC

Expand Your Reach with Guest Posts

Blogging on your own apartment website isn’t the only way you can blog. You can write guest posts for local blogs highlighting a resident event or some of the other outreach events your multifamily community has done.

Guest posting on industry blogs is another way to boost your reputation and credibility. The more visible your blog content is the more visible your apartment website will be and your SEO will improve greatly.

Your apartment website can also include a neighborhood/city guide. Marketing apartments means marketing the community your apartment is in as well. Create a page on your website as a dedicated hub of information of local bars, restaurants, shops and community events! You can include a map of where everything is located with your apartment’s location highlighted too to give online prospects a visual of the area before coming in.

Including a neighborhood/city guide will boost your local search traffic and SEO rankings as well. You can include local businesses from this guide in blog posts reviewing/spotlighting them. For example, if your apartment is near a lot of nightlife, you could write up a piece on the top 5 bars in your neighborhood. You can open it up to more than just your leasing team and ask residents if they want to submit a piece for the apartment blog.

Resident pieces are great for retention and give prospects who are on your website more than just a testimonial, it gives them an inside look at life in your multifamily community. Marketing apartments is where you and your team can be fun and creative.

The end goal is attracting prospects and increasing your multifamily lead conversion numbers. All of this can be done through the ideas mentioned above and through a focus on SEO and targeted ads. SEO is a little more technical in comparison to blogs and social media content but is the way most digital marketing happens now.

Marketing for apartment communities

A new study from Millennial Homeownership Report shows that 18% of Millennials believe they will always be renting — a 6% increase from the previous year. That’s a significant number of people who plan on always being a renter. That means that they will go through a lot of different apartment communities and multifamily properties in their time. How can your community stand out to prospects that have seen it all?

Let’s take a deep dive into some creative ways marketing for apartment communities can take.

Optimize your website for higher search rankings

The first step to helping your apartment website be more visible online is to identify the keywords your target demographic is typically using in organic searches. Don’t settle for 5 keywords. Keep a list of a few dozen that you or an outside SEO strategy partner can keep track of.

These keywords need to be present on the copy of your website. Your primary keyword needs to be in the header/headings of the main page with the secondary keywords scattered throughout. This is how prospects will find your apartment community, through organic online searches. Your apartment community needs to be higher up on the search engine results in order to remain relevant amongst competitors who are high up on the page. Outside of the website, using these keywords in your paid advertising and other digital marketing pieces will help boost your search rankings as well.

Ensure your website is memorable

You’ve got the prospect on your website but you don’t want them to find it boring or similar to every other apartment website they’ve seen. You want them to stay on your website for a while, making a lasting impression of your community. From blogs to a video series to multifamily podcasts, your website can be where prospects, residents, and multifamily professionals go to for apartment content.

Businesses that blog are more visible online and in searches than businesses that don’t. Apartment blogs have always done really well because prospects and professionals alike love to read about all the fun ways they can decorate and make their rental space feel like home.

There are thousands of apartment videos on YouTube that cover all sorts of apartment related content — apartment hunting, decor for small spaces, storage solutions, renter friendly DIYs, a day in the life, etc. Creating a video series will bring more traffic to your website and build trust with your video audience. This is a great tool to also build your online reputation as a leader in the community your property is located in. This will also give you a leg up on your competitors because not a lot of apartment communities are taking advantage of this opportunity.

Get creative with showcasing your property

You’ve got the online prospects at your website and now they are ready to come in for a tour (or take one virtually). Some apartment communities show empty units while others show staged units. Re-thinking how to stage your unit so your prospects can easily imagine living in it can be tricky.

For starters, no one wants to spend a bunch of money on staging furniture, but there are other ways to make it easier for prospects to picture life in the unit. On self-guided tours, stocking the fridge and pantry with sodas, drinks, chips, and other non-perishable snacks is one way to make prospects see what it would be like to sit on the couch and have a snack.

This concept can come into the in-person tour as well. Offer a drink to prospects and sit at the table or kitchen island/counter and talk to them about what it’s like living in this space. Talking while “breaking bread”, in this case a drink or a bag of chips, is more casual and more candid than taking the prospect room to room and giving them just the details and features of the unit.

The point of all of these ideas is to create a more candid conversation instead of the typical script leasing teams tend to follow. These prospects know the script now. They know what you are going to say but surprising them with more casual conversation starters, taking a second to sit down and chat over a snack in the unit, is more personable and gives that human touch that a basic script won’t. At the end of the day, you want to grab their attention online, keep it long enough to get them to come in and tour, and be wowed by the tour they sign a lease.

Choose the Right Marketing & Leasing Partner

Leasing has and always will adapt to the times. Back in the day when carbon-copies were how we tackled maintenance requests and leases were done all on paper, marketing was a lot different. Now with virtual touring and leasing, online applications and requests, multifamily marketing advertising has changed too. 

Multifamily marketing and advertising is all geared to make sure your occupancy stays high and increases your lead conversion numbers. Online consumers today have higher expectations when it comes to quality of online content and are more informed than ever before. This means that you might need to seriously start thinking about finding a professional multifamily marketing agency so that your team can focus on nurturing leads and keeping residents happy. 

When looking for a multifamily marketing and advertising agency, some things to keep in mind are:

• Trends
• Personalization
• Scalability

Look for an agency that stays on top of industry trends.

Any marketing and advertising agency should be able to identify current and upcoming trends in the industry their clients are in. This includes an agency working for multifamily communities. In the multifamily sphere this could involve virtual leasing software, local SEO trends, what multifamily industry leaders are discussing in panels and webinars, and more. This will keep you ahead of your competition and up to date with what professionals in the multifamily industry are talking about. 

From budget season to mental health in multifamily communities to virtual leasing, staying up to date on what is trending in the industry is crucial to having a credible brand and staying relevant with your competitors and others in the field. 

Choose an agency that personalizes its strategy to fit your property.

Every multifamily and apartment community has its own nuances that make it unique. A good multifamily marketing and advertising agency should be able to create marketing and advertising plans that include strategies to meet your property’s individual needs. They need to be able to highlight what makes your property different and be able to find the selling point to keep conversion rates high. 

Personalization will set you and your multifamily marketing apart from your competitors. Creating blog posts or videos that highlight specific amenities you offer or features in your units is a great way to personalize your website and make it stand out. 

Work with an agency that understands scalability

Scalability is important in any marketing plan for any business. You need to know when to push your efforts and when to take it back because it’s going to be a waste of funds. It’s hard to see past the highs and lows that come with multifamily leasing, it quite literally comes in waves. Leasing is very seasonal especially if your multifamily community is located in a college town. This means that your multifamily marketing strategies and advertising plan should be able to keep up with the seasonal aspect of leasing. 

Knowing the trends, personalizing your marketing and advertising strategies, and understanding the scalability of your plan is key to digital marketing for businesses. Digital marketing for multifamily communities needs to still maintain their SEO efforts. A marketing agency that doesn’t prioritize should raise some eyebrows but luckily there are lots of SEO strategy companies that specialize in this.

Optimizing your website and advertising with primary keywords and ensuring that your search engine rankings are high will help you get in front of online prospects and on their own feeds. Understanding what your prospects are searching for will help you and whoever is working on your marketing and advertising create relevant ads and content. 

Online consumers want what they are looking for. Providing content that specifically has what they were searching for will make it more convenient for them and make the first initial conversation with the leasing team more efficient. 

Virtual leasing really kicked off in 2020 and it’s here to stay. While in-person tours are still the most popular, according to PERQ data, not offering a virtual leasing option is going to set you back. It will exclude a lot of prospects and send them to your competitors that offer virtual touring and leasing. These prospects could be out-of-state or have health conditions that make it hard for them to come in.  

Multifamily marketing has come a long way and it’s becoming more efficient in getting lead conversion numbers up. Digital marketing is marketing today. While word of mouth and print can still be used they shouldn’t be the only thing you depend on, especially when virtual leasing has changed the game.

How PERQ helps you turn apartment advertising into leases

Getting clicks on your apartment ads is great—but what happens after that click? That’s where PERQ comes in.

PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant takes your apartment advertising efforts to the next level by helping convert online leads into signed leases. It works right alongside your advertising by providing:

• An interactive, conversational AI that greets prospects when they visit your website.
• Lead conversion tools that capture information and keep visitors engaged.
• Automated follow-up that’s timed perfectly to the prospect’s move-in timeline.

The best part? PERQ integrates seamlessly into your website and existing technology. No need to overhaul your processes.

Unlike basic chatbot tools or piecemeal solutions, PERQ’s platform handles the entire leasing journey—from first click to scheduled tour. That means better lead quality, more conversions, and fewer wasted marketing dollars.

Results You Can Expect

• 2x to 4x increase in qualified leads
• Up to 40% more tours booked
• Cleaner, more actionable data for better follow-up messaging

As Jamin Harkness, EVP at The Management Group, put it:

We love PERQ because you help convert people. With your AI Bot, my favorite part is that when there’s a chat on the AI Bot, all that information goes into our CRM as a guest card. That gives us context of what was asked before we reengage with that prospect again.

Jamin Harkness, EVP at The Management Group

If you’re investing in advertising apartments, PERQ ensures that investment translates into real results for your community.

Click here to to request a demo or talk to someone about adding PERQ to your tech stack.

Related Links

Apartment Marketing Blogs: Getting Started

Building Your Apartment Complex’s Brand on Instagram

Empowering Your Leasing Team: A Guide to Effective Digital Leasing

Multifamily Marketing Ideas