Multifamily Marketing in 2018: Where and How to Spend Your Budget
In general, digital marketing trends continue to evolve and adapt with an ever-changing market. In the multifamily marketing space, where the bottom line is tied to a very specific metric (leases/attrition rate), these changes can have drastic and immediate effects on results. A lot has happened in 2017 - some trends have solidified themselves as extremely important, others have fallen by the wayside. With that in mind, let's take a look at specific trends that are forthcoming in the multifamily space 2018, what you should focus on, and where you should spend your money.
What to Market
1. The Ideal Urban Lifestyle
Right now, the ideal urban lifestyle, one characterized by convenience and cosmopolitan locales, are demonstrably trending. Renters-by-choice are looking for low-maintenance, high-amenity, and walkable housing. Research from Axiometrics found that, between 2010 and 2013, 750,000 new renter households were formed, with heads of households between the ages of 55 and 64.
*image from Cyrene Apartments on Seattle’s Waterfront
Empty nesters aren’t the only group seeking a piece of the urban pie. Millennials, of course, are looking for the same service-driven living situation as their older counterparts. However, millennials are far more likely to trade living space for a close-in location along with the other trappings of of urban living.
2. Luxury and Value
If you can strike a practical balance between luxury and value (the experience renter’s achieve in your building), you’re well on your way towards attracting the most viable tenant. Every renter is looking for something that falls between these two extremes, and depending on your target market you’re likely to lean slight one way or the other.
*image from Osprey Apartments in The South Waterfront Portland
But remember, just because many renters are idealistic in terms of what they want in a home doesn’t mean they can afford all of those things. As we’ve already pointed out, many renters are willing to trade space for location. Get more mileage out of the luxury you offer tenants and consider investing in updated community amenities that boost the value of your building and it’s location.
3. Sustainability and Green Living
Sustainable and eco-friendly buildings and amenities are an important part of committing to protecting the environment and climate, but they also help to set your property apart from the competition.
*image from Eleanor Apartments in Roosevelt Seattle
Green living is popular in urban areas and, if you include green clauses in the lease, can self-select to retain an intentional community that will make your property more attractive. What’s more is that, in addition to savings in energy costs, many urban areas offer tax credits for eco-friendly building practices. Those savings are great for you and can be passed down to renters.
How to Market
1. Apartment Listing Sites
You’re marketing in 2018, so hopefully you already know that the most direct and immediate way to market an apartment is through listing websites. Because there are so many listing sites out there, your own website is likely to get buried in a search engine results page if you’re competing for keywords with particularly large search volumes. There are way, way too many listing sites out there to list them all here, but it’s important to note that these massive sites garner a lot of traffic and they have A MASSIVE budget, so there’s really no sense in trying to outrank them, and if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. If you have units available, include photos, floor plans, whatever a renter might want to know about the space.
Consider the renter you’re hoping to lease to; different listing sites have different audiences. Craigslist is ubiquitous, the new classifieds page in the newspaper, but listing there means getting loads of responses from a ton of unqualified leads. Likewise, advertising a micro-apartment on, say, Coldwell Banker, would mean marketing affordable living to a luxury-seeking market. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t explore every opportunity available on listing sites - it just means that, like your balance between value and luxury, you need to spend your time where it’s most likely to count.
2. 80/20 PPC vs SEO
PPC, or pay-per-click, is more immediate and thus more effective for leasing up a building, while SEO (search engine optimization) is longer term strategy. Each of these marketing strategies is trying to accomplish the same thing, generating eyeballs on your site from search results, and they each go the farthest when used with the other. PPC has a limited ROI, but it works as soon as you pay for your given keywords. SEO, on the other hand, has a basically limitless ROI, but it takes some time (and good research) for it to start working.
SEO depends on organic clicks, which can be hard to do if people are unfamiliar with your brand. That’s where PPC comes in. Even if PPC doesn’t generate a million clicks for you, it will garner brand visibility rather quickly, which in turn will boost organic traffic. PPC has the added bonus of generating tons of data to apply to your SEO campaign and allows you to see which keywords have the highest conversion rate.
3. Social Media
For almost any industry, more and more marketing is moving to social. Apartments are particularly well-suited to SMM, because renters want to know what their new home is going to look like and they want to be able to interact with stave and current tenants, all of which are afforded by social. Add to that that people retain 65% of information when it’s associated with an image versus only 10% when it’s received aurally. Don’t let potential renters down, it’s likely that they’re using social media in part to find deals and get customer service from other brands they follow. Use SMM as an opportunity to engage existing tenants and attract new ones with special offers.
60% of business gain new business through social media. Don’t miss out.
2018 is likely to bring many more changes to the the multifamily apartment marketing space. In order to stay competitive in those white hot apartment markets, you’re going to have to adopt some of these new tactics, as stay on the vanguard of those that are still yet to come.
