The internet has officially changed how potential residents begin searching for a new place to call home. As consumers, we all buy products and make big decisions in a way some never thought was possible. Online has become the front door of all purchase decisions. Blogging, social media, and multifamily marketing are now a must, not an if.

Criterion.B multifamily marketing agency has always been about “bringing the human element” back to the apartment marketing space. Now it’s time for property managers and marketers, to build a foundation that embodies this approach — one that humanizes properties in the eyes of its residents, both present and future.

How Your Property Can Stand Out in a Cluttered Market

What are the most general and universal pain points of multifamily marketing?  

Differentiating your property from the rest can be challenging, especially in a rather cluttered market. In a new digital environment, the implications for multifamily marketing are huge.

How your property is perceived is determined by several touchpoints: ease of multifamily website navigation, online reviews, responsiveness, tone, and personality conveyed through social media.

What’s the number one way to differentiate yourself online? Customer service. No, we’re not talking about mediating a resident’s maintenance complaint (although that certainly falls under this much larger umbrella). We’re talking about “customer service” as a proactive approach to leasing and community engagement.

Here are six things to consider as you change the way you promote your properties to differentiate yourself in the market:

1. Inbound multifamily marketing is here and quite frankly, it’s the future.

The digital advertising world has changed, and inbound multifamily marketing is a shift in the way business is being done. 

2. Residents are more connected and opinionated than ever before.

Potential residents are coming to us more informed, more connected, and more opinionated than ever before. That means our multifamily marketing tactics and methodology needs to change too.

3. Multifamily marketing should never be an interruption.

We are done with interrupting the lives of potential residents and shouting the loudest in an effort to have advertising messages heard … it’s rude! We get it. We are all human beings who want relevant content delivered when we want it, on our terms. Meet your prospective residents where they already are and serve them informative, relevant content on their terms.

4. People matter. They’re not just another statistic in a database.

Potential residents should never be considered an entry in a database or a contact in a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager). Multifamily marketing messaging is meant to connect and provide powerful content that is useful and relevant to their problems. All the while, it’s helping transform your properties through real and honest data. 

What renters perceive is a reality to them, so it is important to ensure your residents feel comfortable and welcome at your property. This requires properties to anticipate the needs of community members, and the best way to do that is to get to know them.

5. Service and resident experience outweigh material amenities.

Amenities are not the point of differentiation in today’s saturated market; amenities have become a necessity. Properties must take a customer service approach permeating every aspect of their operation: prospecting renters, leasing, community engagement, and planning resident events.

6. Trust is key in building the tools for a sustainable future.

Earning trust is important, every step of the way. Trust is essential for building relationships, which are the essence of inbound multifamily marketing. By building relationships with your residents, you’re building a sustainable future.

Instead of spending budgets heavily on the traditional multifamily marketing tactics of trade shows, print campaigns, direct mail, and cold calling, we need to shift rapidly towards a medium that allows for an inbound approach to targeting, interacting, and influencing consumers‘ decisions. After all, content is king.

The multifamily marketing world has changed. It is time to embrace the future.

A Digital Multifamily Marketing Foundation

Here’s the key takeaway: When you know what’s important to your residents, you can serve them better than anyone else. Whether we’re talking about web design, social media, online advertising, or meeting millennial expectations, this internalized customer-centric approach will be the common thread. 

The shift towards becoming a truly customer-centric organization is both complex and long. However, even the smallest changes can have a significant benefit on your property management team, as well as your residents.

Being a customer-centric property is the Holy Grail towards unlocking the true potential of resident value. Always put yourself in the shoes of potential and current residents, and soon, your property will stand out from the rest.

How to Utilize Multifamily Content Marketing to Generate Traffic

The term multifamily inbound marketing is not a new method, but it is a method that still confuses many businesses.

Multifamily inbound marketing methods focus on content creation (e.g., blogging) as a way to attract your target audience and establish your business as a resource within your industry. In turn, regular blogging serves to boost search engine rankings, drive media interest, and provides points of engagement on social media.

Inbound multifamily marketing is a pull method, rather than the push method of traditional advertising, and it all comes down to one very important strategy: ongoing content creation.

When we talk about content, we are simply talking about information. In this case, content is any form of online information that you provide: blog posts, infographics, photo galleries, interactive maps, social media messages, aggregated articles, etc. The most important thing about content is that when it is done right, it does not focus on you; it focuses on your customers.

1. Start a Consistent Blogging Strategy

Great content delivers to your resident buyer persona the exact information they need, when and where they need it. One of the best ways to accomplish this is with a blog. Let’s take a look at a few important statistics:

• Websites with a blog often have 434% more indexed pages.
• B2B marketers with blogs receive 67% more leads than those who do not.
• Marketers who blog regularly are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI.
• Blogs are rated the fifth most trusted source for accurate online information.

While 53% of marketers claim blogging is their top priority when it comes to content marketing, that also means 47% likely do not consistently blog. Considering the bullet points listed above, this 47% is missing out on a significant opportunity.

2. Tell Your Multifamily Brand Story

Blogging is no longer a novelty marketing tactic. Rather, blogging has become essential to businesses in the digital age. As the journalistic landscape continues to evolve, more and more traditional writers and editors are filling demand on the creative side.

Businesses need more than just “a writer;” they need an editorial vision. They need someone who knows how to tell a multifamily brand story and then translate that story to several platforms. Journalism provides an excellent skill set for storytelling, which is why content creation within agencies and businesses is now more of a journalistic process.

3. Create Content That Converts

To truly engage your audience, you need to know how to write a blog that speaks to them. Thinking in terms of inbound campaigns is a great way to optimize your multifamily digital marketing content to maximize conversion.

When forming a campaign, you should focus either on a single resident buyer persona and pain point, or two personas who may share a pain point. Understanding the persona you are targeting, the issue you are seeking to solve, and the goals of the campaign are all important to lead generation.

Another factor in campaigns is considering the buyer’s journey. Always write content for each stage of the journey, rather than just focusing on sales. Focus on these three stages: Awareness (recognizing a problem or need), Consideration (discovering solutions to the problem or need), and Decision (choosing the solution for the problem or need) is key to building a cache of content that can speak to your persona across different levels and convert appropriately.

4. Adopt a Persona-Driven Strategy

While it can be tempting for any business to want to present the maximum information that speaks to their services and reflects the positive aspects of their business, the best methodology is to hold off. Content is the core of how we are perceived online.

Creating content that converts is the key to apartment lead generation. By following a persona-driven content strategy, those leads can become a reality.

If you want more qualified leads, your work is cut out for you.

Gone are the days of traditional inbound marketing methods because the buyer’s funnel is no more. In its place is the flywheel, which focuses more on customer service and retention than on closing the next deal.

What does this mean for your business? Simply put: out with the old and in with the new. Savvy marketers will use inbound marketing methodology to attract and convert visitors, as well as monitor and support every aspect of the consumer’s sales cycle with the guidance of the flywheel.

What Is the Flywheel?

Grasping the attention of your customers has become a tough business. The solution is inbound marketing, where you earn the attention of prospective buyers by creating compelling content, nurturing them through the buyer’s journey, and delighting them with superior customer service.

However, the new buyer’s journey no longer starts at the top and flows down a funnel to the finish; rather it’s a continual cycle that progresses through stages.

The flywheel, introduced by HubSpot earlier this year, features a cyclical, continual journey, the way the buyer’s journey should actually be. This new way of thinking offers a system for scalable, repeatable revenue generation. In essence, the faster the flywheel spins, the more revenue you will generate.

More importantly, the flywheel places customers at the center with marketing, sales, and service revolving around them.  With customers at the center of the process, rather than at the bottom of a funnel, this challenges marketers to focus on harnessing the power of word-of-mouth marketing and retaining customers.

The key to adopting the flywheel framework is to identify points of friction your customers face when scaling their business and help those customers reduce that friction through reorganization, shared goals, and automation.

Forget the Funnel. Embrace the Flywheel.

Today’s consumers are tech-savvy and more educated than ever about their purchasing decisions, so the buyer’s journey is no longer linear. Buyers often flip back and forth on their purchasing decision, entering or exiting different stages of the buyer’s journey as they check online reviews, do their own research, and evaluate vendors.

According to HubSpot, 55% of consumers don’t trust companies they purchase from as much as they used to, 65% don’t trust press releases, 65% don’t trust advertisements, and 71% don’t trust social media ads.

As trust in business continues to erode, it’s more important now than ever for businesses to adopt the flywheel methodology to support their customers better. Continual support and superior customer service will better the odds that those customers will offer a good review, refer the company or product to their friends, and remain loyal.

Interchanging the terms marketing and advertising is commonplace today. However, understanding the difference between the two is important to effectively apply them to your competitive strategy.

Advertising is paid media used to promote a product or service.

Marketing is the strategic planning, implementing, and tracking of a mix of media and business components toward a specific campaign.

In other words, advertising is the promotional piece to the marketing mix that generates buzz around a product or service. Advertising gives the consumer information on the product and the next steps to take to make the purchase. For example, with the influx of CRE construction in DFW, an agency might design a plan that includes banners. The banners are used to draw the audience to that campaign and connect with the consumers.

Marketing as a Primary Strategy

Although advertising is an integral part of any campaign, it cannot exist without a clear marketing plan. Marketing begins by digging deep into your company’s roots to find its value proposition. This becomes the cornerstone of the marketing mix. After uncovering your unique selling point, you can pinpoint exactly how you want to target buyer personas. According to HubSpot, buyer personas “are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.” These personas include the likes, dislikes, occupation, age, gender, and other demographic information that will tailor your advertising message so that your audience will best receive it.

In today’s consumer-centric world, every company’s goal should be to build two-way communication with the target audience. This means that paid advertisements that send out persuasive messages but lack engagement are less likely to create this connection. Keeping consumers interested, informed, and entertained with the right content can generate more leads and a higher conversion rate for your business.

According to AdWeek, a recent survey of 30 content marketing agencies and 600 digital publishers showed that content marketing on social media generated a higher return on investment (ROI) than native advertisements. Kelsey Lipert, vice president of marketing at Fractl, explained that this is likely because “readers are necessarily less engaged with advertising versus editorial content, and metrics show lower share rates, lower engagement rates, lower view counts, etc., in most cases.”

Debunking Advertising’s Bad Rep

On a daily basis, we all feel bombarded by advertisements. As marketers, we have struggled in the past to find the right way to make our audience aware of our offerings without being inundated. However, paid media proves its worth consistently in consumer behavior research in categories such as top-of-mind recall and brand recognition. The key is to sprinkle cohesive advertising messages across the marketing mix that draw consumer attention and create engagement. It’s also important to ensure that you are targeting your consumers in a way that pushes them to pay attention.

As digital advertising continues to grow and develop with technological advancements, advertisers target their paid media directly to whom they want to reach. Personalized messages generate relevance for each buyer persona, which means that advertising is becoming less of an annoyance and more of a helpful tool. With its inexpensive price tag and proven ROI, paid advertising continues to be profitable. Stay up-to-date on the ever-changing world of digital marketing with the newest digital marketing trends.

Marketing for Real Estate

The key to success with digital marketing is to have an integrated strategy. But running an inbound marketing campaign for your multifamily property can be difficult. Download our content calendar to form your content planning strategy.

Unlocking Success: The Critical Impact of Consistency in Content Marketing

We all know content marketing is king, but content is nothing without consistency. Organizations that produce engaging, steady content often achieve greater results. However, consistency is becoming an increasingly significant issue for many businesses.

With a solid content calendar, you can build stronger connections with your audience, hit touchpoints on the buyer’s journey, and position yourself as a trusted and valuable resource.

Why Is Content Marketing Consistency Important?

Grasping the attention of consumers has become a tough business. Traditional forms of mass marketing will no longer be an effective way to bring awareness to convert prospects into buyers.

Creating a few blogs or posting on social media here and there might help a prospective customer understand a topic better. Still, it will not help you hit all necessary touchpoints or build a meaningful relationship. If you are not a consistent content marketing creator, you are not fully connecting with your audience.

Consider your favorite actor, who probably stars in a few favorite movies. If she continues to select roles that you resonate with, eventually, you might find yourself interested in pretty much anything she is involved in. This is how to position your organization: as a well-known, trusted, and familiar resource consistently delivering great work.

How to Create a Strategy — and Stick to It

The solution to consistency is inbound marketing, a modern method that equips you to create content that drives buyer personas through your marketing funnel. The inbound marketing methodology will help guide the context your material should be used within and is based on four stages: attract, convert, close, and delight.

Attract

The attract stage is about building awareness and creating content that turns strangers into visitors. Thus, it would be best to focus primarily on blogs, social media, and white pages. The goal is to provide solutions to your persona’s problems. For example, for an urban apartment, you might write a blog highlighting “The Best Places to Eat Gelato” or “10 Interior Design Tips for a Loft Apartment.”

Convert

The convert stage is about converting visitors into leads. The type of content you are producing would be in the form of a call-to-action (CTA) or landing page. Create gated offers where viewers must provide minimal information valuable to your business (email, zip code, etc.). For example, offers can include infographics, fact sheets, eBooks, or how-to guides.

Close

In the close stage, your strategy should be all about turning leads into customers. In this stage, you should focus on your CRM, email, and workflows. It’s important to speak their language, meet their needs, and seal the deal.

Delight

In the delight stage, you will continue to provide value and show you care about your customers. In turn, they will become advocates and promoters for your business. Through social monitoring and surveys, you can see how satisfied your residents are, and if there is a problem, you can address it quickly. Happy customers are your best advocates for attracting new leads.

Knowing these stages and using them to create consistent and targeted content marketing can help you produce the right material in the right context for your persona.

The Key to Content Marketing Consistency

Running an inbound marketing campaign for your multifamily property can be difficult. Once you draft your buyer personas and map their journey, it’s time to create a campaign. But planning your social media calendar the first time is time-intensive, so we’ve put together this handy template to get you started.

Live Streaming, Chatbots, and Drones … Oh My!

The multifamily market has been a mixed bag, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact. These fluctuations mean that multifamily marketing is imperative for companies to edge out competitors.

Consider the following multifamily marketing trends as they should show positive returns for your company.

1. Let live streaming take center stage.

It’s a game-changing year for multifamily marketing, especially regarding how to reach prospective buyers in your area. Until now, the marketing landscape has remained more or less the same, with social media claiming the throne in every corner of influence. However, we are now seeing increasingly fast-paced developments in the form of new and updated features such as live streaming and instant messaging.

The way it functions within Facebook has made live streaming a growing trend, besides the capability to engage in real-time with clients. Facebook allows you to prioritize updates from friends and family rather than pages you like or follow.

What does this mean for multifamily marketing? Put simply, it means that content will have to be creative and engaging to gain more activity online. The update ranks content that receives the most activity and shares it closer to the top of the feed. A multifamily marketing team with experience in social media content will optimize results. And since live video is currently the most preferred type of content among Facebook users, it is an area in which marketers will naturally place additional creative efforts.

Social media features contain many great multifamily marketing opportunities, including the capability to broadcast a live house tour or announce real-time property events for clients or prospects. And the live features allow for specific market targeting across multiple platforms, such as Instagram and Snapchat.

2. Understanding the continued rise of IM and chatbots.

Connectivity is another great advantage of social media. The simple ease of using direct messaging functions makes it easier to engage with your audience. However, property managers now face the conundrum of responding quickly and accurately to prospective buyers.

Cue marketing automation bots, also known as chatbots.

Today’s consumers want to engage with a company when and where it’s most convenient. This could mean losing possible leads for real estate if we cannot respond to needs instantly. Chatbots seem to have cracked the code, quite literally, on instant communication. According to Botpress, a chatbot is “any software that performs an automated task … the most intuitive definition is that a bot is a software that can have a conversation with a human.”

In addition to being programmed to have realistic, human-like conversations with prospective clients, chatbots can also gather specific information relevant to the seller or the marketer.

In the context of multifamily, a chatbot can mean providing 24/7, instant responses that do not require an individual behind a screen scrambling to answer a question. Chatbots also provide a smoother user experience for the buyer, and user experience is always critical.

Social media features such as live streaming and instant messaging are powerful tools that benefit both sellers and buyers. Multifamily marketing trends are growing rapidly, and their influences within the industry are rising.

3. Let drones offer a bird’s eye view.

Drones are a defining piece of technology for multifamily and commercial real estate. Several years ago, hiring a professional photographer for aerial shots of a property was conventional. With drones, on the other hand, you can capture stunning images and breathtaking videos of your property with camera-equipped drones, all while cutting back on costs.

Drones can depict a great layout of the entire property, especially when recording video. For larger areas, drones’ unique benefit is navigation beyond the property and into the surrounding area. They can capture incredible bodies of water, beautiful landscapes, and nearby neighborhoods. This particular feature can be optimized if paired creatively with live streaming.

Drones also allow high-rise apartment complexes to capture images of the entire building and attractive neighboring hotspots. Drones are one trend guaranteed to set your multifamily marketing apart from competitors and will surely spread within the industry.

4. Take advantage of virtual and augmented reality.

Though we have seen impressive and usable trends for multifamily marketing, virtual and augmented reality takes the prize.

Virtual reality opens new doors for prospective clients by providing a behind-the-scenes look or digital tour of a property. As the real estate industry rapidly moves forward, embracing new technologies, virtual has already made it into many multifamily marketing plans. Companies now design 3D models through the power of virtual reality. Prospects can walk a unit and experience property amenities firsthand without being onsite. This trend took a significant leap at the pandemic’s start, when many properties had to shift to a virtual-only touring model. Today, virtual tours are offered at many properties in addition to in-person tours, offering prospects even more opportunities to sign a lease from the comfort of their couch.

Marketers and realtors are also using augmented reality to bring blueprints to life. With the aid of smartphone and tablet cameras, AR technology can render a 3D image of a building from a blueprint or a completely interactive layout. This tool will prove useful in all stages of development by allowing clients to visualize the entire project.

Augmented and VR technologies, drones, and social media make the customer experience more convenient and engaging. With these trends in mind, your renters will be brought smoothly through the sales funnel and to that final decision.

Fostering Collaboration Between Departments for Enhanced Reach and Engagement

The dynamics between marketing and sales have historically been closely-tied and wildly different. At a basic level, marketing teams manage promotional tactics while sales teams fundamentally warm leads and close deals. Together, they go hand-in-hand to drive business for their company and impact the bottom line.

Despite some distinct differences between the two departments, marketing and sales should be strongly aligned with goals, projects, and analytics. Yet, when a business looks at its marketing and sales teams, it often finds this to be far from the truth. Developing a strategy that creates strong interdependence to optimize success is the key to bringing these two together.

Different Departments, Same Goal

Our previous blog outlined the clear differences between marketing and sales teams. While these differences exist in many companies, it’s important to empower both sides to work together cohesively to generate success in both departments.

According to HubSpot, 87% of the terms that sales and marketing teams use to describe each other are negative. This can only be counterproductive for creating a strong alignment. Marketing has been known to refer to sales as simple-minded, incompetent, and lazy. Meanwhile, sales use terms like “arts and crafts” and “irrelevant” to describe marketing.

However, this could not be further from the truth. Without marketing support, sales teams would not be able to get the warm leads they need to close a sale quickly. Without a solid sales team, marketing would not have on-the-ground insights from specific markets to create relevant content.

Marketing and Sales Feedback Loop

Developing an interconnected strategy that creates a feedback loop is the key to marketing and sales alignment. Marketing teams do heavy market research on a company’s target personas to understand their ideal customers’ demographics, lifestyles, and behaviors.

All information created and used to sell to the customer should reflect their specific interests, pain points, and concerns. Without this detailed research, both teams struggle to target the right lead accurately. While sales can use this information to address their customer better, their team receives feedback from regional markets that may differ slightly from the more generalized personas that marketing created. This regional-specific information is vital for marketers to understand their audience better.

This is just one way a feedback loop is essential to seeing positive communication and successful campaigns for sales and marketing. The feedback loop is where both teams communicate continuously, providing back-and-forth communication and adapting their approaches based on this feedback. To ensure communication, the teams must regularly meet through onboarding, weekly sales, and management meetings to review goals and analytics.

Incorporating marketing and sales alignment into the company’s culture and processes is a great practice to ensure this feedback loop stays strong. Therefore, leadership and managers must reiterate that neither sales nor marketing is the king of the mountain. Rather, they are both pivotal generals in the company. Ensuring an equilibrium between salaries of lateral sales and marketing roles will help the mentality.

Finding Harmony Through HubSpot

It is important to embrace the tools that facilitate marketing and sales alignment. Meetings are a great way to stay on track, but they aren’t enough to ensure your teams are in sync.

Marketing automation tools like HubSpot are built to blend marketing and sales teams into one well-oiled machine. HubSpot coins Smarketing, which refers to marketing and sales alignment created through frequent and direct communication.

Companies that practice Smarketing ensure that two departments have one goal and established measurements to achieve that goal. They also make goals together and review them frequently.

For instance, according to DemandGen, 74 percent of organizations that use marketing automation and CRM said their sales and marketing teams are aligned.

As the lines blur between marketing and sales, empowering both teams to be experts in their field is crucial. HubSpot separates its software into a Marketing Dashboard (complete with analytics, blog performance, and content creation tools), and a Sales Dashboard (highlighting deal forecasts, sales performance, and prospect tracking). HubSpot brings the two together while amplifying each with its productivity tools.

HubSpot’s tracking allows marketing and sales to determine when a lead visited a website, how long they were there, and what they searched for. Not to mention its ability to create complex workflows for email nurturing to ensure no lead goes unnoticed. This gives both teams more information to do their job better and convert the lead into a customer.

Marketing and Sales Alignment

As a digital multifamily marketing agency, we practice what we preach. We combine sales and marketing efforts to drive traffic, warm leads, and send a potential customer down the buyer’s journey. Through marketing and sales alignment, we can drive results and ensure success for our clients and our agency.

In the world of digital marketing, it can be hard to know which tactic works best. These days, a lot of businesses mistakenly focus too much of their digital marketing efforts on one specific tactic like blogging or social media.

However, each part of your digital marketing strategy should fit together as one cohesive piece. Your website, social media presence, user experience (UX), customer experience (CX), etc. should all work together to create a successful inbound marketing plan.

Bring Them to You

Digital marketing and specifically inbound marketing is all about the consumer. However, it’s not about bombarding them with interruptive advertisements. It’s about providing relevant and helpful information to your customers. The internet has truly changed the flow of advertising because consumers are now able to research a product before making a purchase.

As a marketing professional, it’s important to think of yourself more as a resource than a salesperson. People will want to come to you if you’re providing the right kind of information. When people see you as an asset, they’ll feel a sense of trust.

Research Your Audience

The first thing you need to do to serve as this resource to your consumer is to identify your audience. A multifamily property in downtown Dallas may know that a typical resident is a young professional between the ages of 23 and 30, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Using market research, you can analyze who your target market is beyond the typical demographics, and begin to understand their needs, their pain points, and where they might seek out information.

A combination of market research and customer interviews can help you create buyer personas. Per HubSpot, a buyer persona is the creation of a semi-fictional profile. The persona profile should include a narrative of day-to-day interactions, demographic behavior, goals, pain points, what his/her search process has been, the type of experience desired, common objections, and a photo of your persona.

Most businesses have multiple buyer personas to understand the full scope of the audience that uses their product or service. Having a unique profile for each persona is important. Your buyer personas should inform everything you do and are integral to your digital marketing strategy.

The Perfect Content

Once you have a persona, the next step is attracting people through content creation. According to HubSpot, businesses should focus on “creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time.”

Now here’s the caveat: According to SingleGrain, you should be spending about 80% of your time promoting your content and 20% of your time creating it. Think about it, If you have the world’s best content but people aren’t seeing it, what’s the point? It’s like the old adage about a tree falling in the forest when no one’s around to hear it — did it really fall? While creating relevant content is incredibly important, it’s the promotion of that content that is imperative.

Now, this is where the other elements of your digital marketing strategy can come into play. Each of these tactics should work together to build a well-rounded digital marketing campaign. These tactics are more effective in working together because the inbound methodology builds on each tactic to create a strategy.

Digital Marketing Elements: Email, Web, Social Media

Email marketing, for example, is considered to be one of the strongest tactics for nurturing leads. Integrating a strong email campaign into your digital marketing strategy is an important part of converting leads to leases. However, it’s most effective when pushing out sharable content that will lead customers down a purchase path.

Email marketing is also a great tool for tracking your target market so you can inform your content strategy. Based on the number of email opens and the clickthrough rate, you can see what kind of material your prospects are interested in.

This is also the case on your website. Automation allows you to track what your website visitors are doing on your site. Using this newly gathered information, you can help move leads along in a more personalized and effective way.

Knowing the content your audience is interested in is also helpful in social media as you’re able to show them what they want to see. Your user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) also tie into this notion. The better the experience your potential clients have, the more interest they will have in moving forward with you. The same works for existing clients. About 83% of customers who experience positive interactions with brands are willing to offer referrals.

The integration of all aspects of the inbound methodology will differentiate you from the competition. You need more than a few social media pages or an automated email campaign to be successful. A full digital marketing strategy includes these elements and builds on them as a part of a comprehensive plan. It’s the combination of these strategies that will truly make your digital marketing strategy successful.

Cracking the Code: How Marketers Can Prove ROI and Win Over CEOs in Multifamily

As marketers, we constantly face the challenge of justifying our efforts and proving that multifamily content marketing isn’t just a cost center — it’s a revenue driver. Whether working within a multifamily branding agency or an apartment marketing agency, we know that digital marketing plays a pivotal role in driving multifamily lead generation and contributing to a property’s bottom line.

Yet, despite our best efforts, 69% of CEOs believe marketing wastes time, money, and resources. This perception is why proving the ROI of multifamily marketing strategies is more crucial than ever. It’s not enough to talk about engagement rates, impressions, or social media growth—we have to connect our efforts directly to multifamily leads, lease conversions, and NOI improvements.

So, how do we shift the narrative and prove the value of multifamily branding, apartment branding, and digital marketing strategies to CEOs and stakeholders? Let’s break it down.

1. Be Relevant

While metrics like website traffic, social media engagement, and email open rates have their place, they don’t mean much if they aren’t tied to the property’s bottom line. To prove multifamily marketing ROI, marketers need to:

• Set SMART Goals – Establish Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound objectives that clearly define success. Instead of saying, “We want more engagement,” set a goal like: “Increase apartment tour bookings by 15% through our inbound multifamily campaign.”
• Track the Right Metrics – Multifamily inbound marketing should focus on data that connects to revenue: cost per lease, lead-to-lease conversion rate, and retention impact.
• Improve the Apartment Brand Experience – Ensure every marketing effort enhances the resident’s journey. This means investing in high-quality apartment brochures, engaging content, and compelling ad campaigns that convert apartment leads into leases.
• Integrate Sales and Marketing – If leasing teams aren’t using the leads marketing generates, multifamily marketing efforts go to waste. Regularly aligning with sales ensures apartment marketing trends translate into real results.

2. Play Offense

Too often, marketing is reactive, waiting for stakeholders to question ad spend, campaign performance, or leasing results. Instead, we need to proactively demonstrate the value of our strategies by:

• Justifying Budget with Data – Show how investing in digital marketing impacts apartment leads, retention rates, and resident lifetime value.

• Educating Leadership on Inbound Multifamily Marketing – CEOs may not fully grasp how content marketing, SEO, and digital advertising impact leasing efforts. Provide case studies, trend reports, and multifamily technology insights that showcase measurable results.

• Highlighting the Competitive Edge – In today’s competitive market, marketing ideas for apartment communities aren’t just about visibility—they’re about survival. Properties that fail to adapt to multifamily marketing trends risk losing out to competitors with stronger multifamily branding and better digital marketing strategies.

3. Always Go After the 3 Hs

To gain buy-in from stakeholders, your approach must be both logical and emotional:

• Head (Logic) – Present data-driven insights that defend your strategy. Use numbers, case studies, and industry benchmarks to show why content marketing works.
• Heart (Emotion) – Align marketing goals with CEO priorities. Whether it’s increasing NOI, boosting occupancy, or improving reputation, position your efforts as a strategic advantage rather than just another marketing expense.
• Hands (Action) – Once you have leadership buy-in, set clear action steps for implementation. Make it easy for leasing teams to adopt marketing initiatives and track lead performance.

4. Prepare to Show Your Medal

Marketing isn’t about quick wins — it’s about long-term brand building and sustained lead generation. CEOs and stakeholders might not always understand the nuances of multifamily branding and digital marketing, but they do care about one thing: results.

So, how do you prove that apartment marketing strategies are essential to business growth?

• Demonstrate ROI Over Time – Highlight long-term value over short-term costs. For example, an investment in content marketing for multifamily properties continues to generate leads months after a campaign ends.

• Tie Your Efforts to NOI – Show how SEO, content marketing, and Google Ads increase occupancy rates and reduce vacancies.

• Leverage Multifamily Technology – Use automation, CRM tracking, and AI-driven insights to refine multifamily inbound strategies and optimize lead generation.

Take risks and be the change that will keep your organization moving forward.

Proving That Content Marketing ROI Matters

At the end of the day, multifamily marketing isn’t just about branding — it’s about driving real, measurable business outcomes. To succeed in today’s industry, marketers must:

• Align marketing plans with real estate business goals.
• Leverage data and analytics to prove ROI.
• Integrate inbound and outbound marketing strategies.
• Stay ahead of multifamily marketing trends to maintain a competitive edge.

When done right, multifamily content marketing and inbound strategies can transform how a brand attracts, engages, and retains residents. And that’s a game-changer for any CEO watching the bottom line.

Understanding Millennials: A Generation Shaping Multifamily Marketing

In the ever-evolving landscape of the multifamily industry, staying attuned to shifting demographic trends is paramount for success. Among the most influential demographics shaping the market are millennials — individuals born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s.

With their unique preferences, values, and behaviors, millennial renters have become a driving force in shaping your multifamily marketing plan.

Understanding Millennial Renter Preferences

1. Embracing Technological Connectivity: Millennials have grown up in a digital age, where technology is deeply embedded in their lives. They rely on smartphones, tablets, and social media platforms to stay connected, conduct research, and make purchasing decisions. As a multifamily marketer, harnessing the power of technology and embracing digital marketing strategies is crucial to engage with millennial renters effectively.
2. Prioritizing Experiences Over Ownership: Unlike previous generations, millennials emphasize experiences more than material possessions. This mindset extends to their housing choices, as many millennials prefer the flexibility and convenience of renting over the commitment of homeownership. Highlighting the experiential aspects of your multifamily properties, such as amenities, community events, and convenient locations, can be key selling points to attract millennial renters.
3. Sustainability and Environmental Consciousness: Millennials are environmentally conscious and seek sustainable living options. Incorporating eco-friendly features into your multifamily properties, such as energy-efficient appliances, recycling programs, and green spaces, can resonate with millennial renters who value sustainability. Communicating your commitment to sustainable practices can differentiate your property and attract environmentally conscious millennials.
4. Authenticity and Transparency: Millennials value authenticity and are adept at detecting multifamily marketing gimmicks. They seek transparency in brand messaging and prefer genuine interactions. Building trust through honest and transparent communication is crucial in multifamily marketing. Share authentic stories, highlight the unique aspects of your properties, and engage with millennials through personalized and meaningful interactions.

Multifamily Industry Implications

1. Shift in Property Amenities: Millennial preferences have led to a shift in property amenities. Millennial renters increasingly seek out fitness centers, communal workspaces, outdoor recreational areas, pet-friendly facilities, and smart home technology. Incorporating these amenities into your multifamily properties can attract and retain this target demographic.
2. Rise of Digital Multifamily Marketing: Traditional marketing channels are no longer sufficient to reach millennial renters. Digital marketing, including social media for apartments, influencer partnerships, and targeted online campaigns, has become instrumental in effectively engaging with this tech-savvy generation. Investing in a comprehensive digital marketing strategy can yield significant results in attracting millennial renters.
3. Enhanced Community Engagement: Millennials value community and social connections. Creating opportunities for community engagement within your multifamily properties, such as hosting resident events, organizing volunteer activities, or facilitating social platforms for residents to connect, can foster a sense of belonging and enhance the overall resident experience.

The Technology Factor

Millennials are the first generation to grow up around the internet. Interconnectivity and information explain much of what makes millennials who they are. By looking at specific digital trends among millennials, we can understand what drives their behavior and how they make purchase decisions. Because of their large purchasing power, marketers are changing their tactics to get in front of this generation. New social media advertising tactics have evolved due to millennials spending more than three hours a day on mobile phones.

While millennials are evolving online marketing, their lifestyles define the multifamily space. As millennials tend to wait longer for marriage and kids, they delay homeownership and rent longer. Multifamily communities have to adjust their marketing tactics to attract these sought-after renters.

Understanding Millennial Renters to Craft an Effective Multifamily Marketing Plan

Understanding millennial trends is crucial for developing an effective multifamily marketing plan. By embracing technology, prioritizing experiences, emphasizing sustainability, and cultivating authenticity, you can align your marketing efforts with the preferences and values of millennial renters.

Leveraging these insights can help differentiate your multifamily properties in a competitive market, attract millennial renters, and position your brand for long-term success. Stay attuned to evolving millennial trends, adapt your marketing strategies accordingly, and embrace the transformative opportunities presented by this influential generation within the multifamily industry.