Leveraging Emotion for Effective Multifamily Digital Marketing

In the swift-moving world of digital advertising, we are accustomed to swiping right and left (up, down, and around) through countless disruptive ads as we navigate our day. But let’s take a moment to swipe back to the soul of advertising and the emotional connections.

Every ad generates an emotional response, because everything we encounter in life generates an instinctive emotional response.

Today’s digital marketing world yields enormous ads at an extraordinary pace, often making it hard for the average human to digest even one advertisement. As promoters face pressures to meet deadlines and provide the lowest word count possible, the art of telling stories that inspire emotion seems to decline.

While you may be overwhelmed, the gear-up process for your marketing strategy can be a breeze with the right tools. This free inbound marketing kit includes four major tools we use in-house to outline our inbound marketing efforts and strategy.

What does this mean for today’s digital advertising world in the multifamily market?

How to Use Emotion Effectively in Digital Advertising

Attention spans are shorter than ever. So, how do you slow someone down long enough to make an emotional connection?

Understand Your Target Audience

Before diving into emotional advertising, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of your target audience. Identify their aspirations, desires, pain points, and values. Conduct thorough market research, gather insights from existing residents, and create buyer personas to understand their emotional triggers comprehensively. This knowledge will serve as the foundation for crafting compelling digital campaigns.

Tell Authentic Stories

Storytelling is a powerful tool that appeals to emotions and establishes a connection with the audience. Rather than focusing solely on promoting features and amenities, weave captivating narratives that resonate with your target audience’s dreams and aspirations. Showcase real stories of residents and their experiences, highlighting how living in your multifamily community has positively impacted their lives. Authentic stories foster trust, create an emotional connection, and differentiate your property from competitors.

Evoke Positive Emotions

Tap into positive emotions that align with your multifamily community’s lifestyle and experience. Incorporate elements that evoke joy, excitement, comfort and a sense of belonging. Showcase vibrant and relatable visuals that depict happy residents enjoying the amenities, community events, or engaging in social interactions. By creating a positive emotional association, you can generate interest and enthusiasm among potential residents.

Inspire Word-of-Mouth

When people hear a great story, they look for an opportunity to tell it again — to someone new. (They might even tweak it just a little.) We like things that make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. And we even get gratification from passing that feeling along to others.

Would you be likelier to watch a video advertisement or a video your best friend shared on Facebook? Word-of-mouth is powerful; it slows people down and builds connections.

Capture Them in Three Seconds

It only takes a few seconds to set up a story, but that story could have lasting hours of impact and conversation. Capture your audience in the first three seconds; they may slow down their scroll long enough to tune in.

Address Pain Points and Offer Solutions

Emotionally-driven advertising also involves acknowledging and addressing pain points your target audience may be experiencing. Identify their challenges or frustrations when searching for an ideal living space and present your multifamily community as the solution. Highlight how your property addresses its concerns, such as security, convenience, community, or flexible lease options. By empathizing with their pain points and offering viable solutions, you establish an emotional connection built on trust and understanding.

Utilize Compelling Visuals and Design

In the digital realm, visuals are crucial in conveying emotions effectively. Incorporate high-quality, captivating imagery that showcases your multifamily property’s ambiance, aesthetics, and unique features. Infuse the visuals with warmth, comfort, and elements that resonate with your target audience’s desired lifestyle. Additionally, pay attention to the design elements of your digital ads, ensuring they evoke the intended emotions and are consistent with your brand identity.

Incorporate Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

While emotional advertising focuses on forging connections, it is essential to guide potential residents toward taking action. Include clear and compelling calls to action in your digital ads, inviting prospects to schedule a tour, request more information, or explore available floor plans. Combining emotional appeal with actionable next steps increases the likelihood of converting prospects into residents.

Forge Deeper Connections in Digital Multifamily Marketing

In the digital multifamily advertising landscape, leveraging emotion is a powerful way to connect with your target audience on a deeper level. You can create impactful digital campaigns that resonate with potential residents by understanding your audience and telling authentic stories. Harnessing the power of emotion in your advertising efforts will differentiate your multifamily community and foster a genuine connection that drives conversions and long-term resident satisfaction.

While you may be overwhelmed, the gear-up process for your marketing strategy can be a breeze with the right tools. This free inbound marketing kit includes four major tools we use in-house to outline our inbound marketing efforts and strategy.

Exploring the Benefits and Drawbacks of Hiring an Inbound Multifamily Marketing

Should I hire an inbound marketing agency? This is a question that comes up naturally as businesses discover the inbound process.

Inbound marketing is a complex and intensive marketing methodology that offers a strong ROI when implemented but can be difficult to navigate. While several businesses opt to utilize the inbound methodology in-house, many others prefer to employ an inbound marketing agency.

As an inbound marketing agency, we admit to being biased in this area. However, the points can be viewed objectively despite this.

How can different marketing methods impact your brand? This marketing story infographic looks at four popular marketing methods and explains how each impact a fictional company looking to grow and expand. Discover how these different methods could impact your business.

The Complexity of Multifamily Inbound Marketing

To take on a multifamily inbound marketing approach, you must first understand what it takes to run a successful campaign. A campaign is comprised of multiple bits and pieces working together to accomplish a specific goal. That goal may vary but should still utilize the same fundamental resources and tools.

Being fundamentally content-focused, people need clarification on multifamily inbound marketing with content marketing. In reality, inbound is much more complex. This methodology utilizes content but relies on a strategy to target that content and use tools like forms, landing pages, and offers to gather pertinent information from prospects to convert them.  

The success of inbound content, however, is dependent on other aspects. For example, comprehensive knowledge of your buyer persona’s journey and lead qualification for your business is important. Without these factors, your content could fail to attract the desired audience. Or, you may be able to attract the audience but fail to convert and qualify them properly due to asking the wrong questions.

Items like content creation are also heavily dependent on the processes you have in place. Without methods and consistency, you could fail to build a strong foundation. This, in turn, could impact the success of any ongoing campaigns you choose to operate.

What does this mean for your multifamily inbound marketing endeavors? Potentially nothing. Or potentially everything. Several businesses can adopt and enact inbound with great success. Others try and end up using an inbound marketing agency or abandoning this process altogether. The most important factor in your outcome is the level to which you understand the complexities of this strategy.

Taking the Inbound Marketing Agency Approach

If you choose to take the inbound marketing agency route, there are many things to consider:

Bringing an inbound marketing agency on board means having a team of experts to help guide and execute your strategy. This often means less error and higher efficiency.

Pros

  • Bringing an inbound marketing agency on board means having a team of experts to help guide and execute your strategy. This often means less error and higher efficiency.
  • Hiring a team rather than an individual means having the best of the best to generate your content, including designers, writers, and strategists.
  • Utilizing a multifamily marketing agency allows you to focus on other business factors.
  • Using a team of experts ensures that all knowledge in the field is current and up to date.
This type of marketing takes time to learn and even more time to perfect. This can be difficult for a team to start.
Paying a salaried staff may cost as much if not more, than a monthly retainer.
If key staff members leave, much training is lost, and replacements may have a different knowledge base.

Cons

  • An inbound marketing agency has the perception of being more expensive than in-house marketers. In reality, if you require hiring a team to implement your strategy, it might be comparable in cost. However, agency retainers tend to cause sticker shock.
  • When working with an inbound marketing agency, communication gaps may exist. An agency will need time to develop knowledge in your field and to execute your needs, as they are away from the office with you.
  • Negotiating project scope can be challenging, as agencies must balance their work with other clients. This means that issues may arise when a project is underestimated in hours. This could impact the project and/or your costs.
  • Agencies require kick-off time to educate themselves on your industry. They must learn about your company to ensure your marketing system is in place.

Taking Inbound In-House

Taking multifamily inbound marketing in-house can be tempting, but this approach has several positive and negative factors.

Pros

  • In-house marketing communication is much simpler and quicker. You will not have to onboard an agency or worry about passing along the correct information. Instead, the team working on the marketing is local and aware.
  • Using a marketing manager or a small in-house team means more easily aligning your strategy with other business efforts.
  • An in-house team may be able to implement strategy more quickly because there’s no learning curve.
  • Your team controls the related decisions, successes, or failures.

Cons

  • This type of marketing takes time to learn and even more time to perfect. This can be difficult for a team to start.
  • Paying a salaried staff may cost as much if not more, than a monthly retainer.
  • If key staff members leave, much training is lost, and replacements may have a different knowledge base.
  • Your staff will have a different skill depth than professionals to produce top content and design.
  • An in-house team may also be spread too thin, especially starting. Without a full team, your in-house department will likely wear multiple hats.

The Deciding Factor

If things look pretty even to you now, they are. Choosing an in-house team vs. an inbound marketing agency is simple enough for some companies based on their needs. For others, it’s too early to determine which will work best for their company. What is the best thing to do when choosing? Remember your goals, timeline, budget, and plans for scalability to determine which options will meet and support your business.

The True Cost of Doing Inbound In-House

Many businesses need help with the choice of choosing an agency vs. doing the inbound marketing in-house. Some factors impact the success of each option. However, what most businesses need to take into account is cost.

When we discuss cost, we don’t necessarily mean the monetary costs of running a campaign (though that certainly is a component). Instead, we mean non-monetary costs like time, resources, staff training, etc. Knowing the significance of these costs on an organization is challenging when deciding which option is best for you.

To understand this, you must first know what your costs are or will be.

Hiring and Training an Apartment Marketing Team

The highest cost to companies looking to do inbound marketing in-house is staffing. This impacts teams without a marketing department and those with an established one. Businesses’ most significant concern is bringing a team to use a new strategy like inbound or finding the talent to implement it.

If you already have a team, it means spending money on training. And the training and transition of your team to inbound methods can easily take months. It means hiring and onboarding new staff to implement your plan if you still need a team.

Additionally, adding staff salaries is pricey. The national average wage for a marketing manager is $74,532, per Glassdoor. If you hire a director, that salary can cost you $169,058. Then you must account for the rest of the team — designers, copywriters, strategists, and developers.

Factor in the two to three months it will take for onboarding and add that to those costs. Then consider turnover, additional hiring as needed, and additional training.

Quality and Quantity of In-House Marketing

Another factor to consider is understanding the costs related to workflow variance. There are busy times and lulls, which will impact your team’s efficiency and productivity. This can affect the overall return on your apartment marketing investment.

Quality is trickier to quantify or put a number value to directly. However, it is an equally important cost. The quality of your efforts impacts the effectiveness of your strategy. With a newer team, a dip in quality will recover over time but may cost you apartment leads or require additional efforts to meet goals. Ultimately, this means more time spent on the campaign than originally budgeted.

Quality is trickier to directly quantify or put a number value to, however, it is an equally important cost. The quality of your efforts impacts the effectiveness of your strategy. With a newer team, a dip in quality will recover over time but may cost you apartment leads or require additional efforts to meet goals. Ultimately, this means more time spent on the campaign than originally budgeted.

Managing Resources

An inbound marketing agency will have several proven resources, services, and software that are efficient in its processes. Usually, the agency covers these costs and will split and pass the cost amongst each client. However, when doing your marketing in-house, you will be forced to learn which resources work for you and cover the entire cost yourself. This will likely be more than what the agency charges you for its resources.

The reasons for this are widespread. First, you’ll likely have more trial and error associated with these resources as you learn the effectiveness of different tools over time. In addition, while an agency will pay a high cost for a high-level tool, that cost spread among many clients will mean a small cost to you. There’s also the cost of learning and developing processes for a tool. Finally, the time that goes into finding and researching a tool, learning that tool, and training staff is a cost to you.

Know Your Capabilities

While all these costs aren’t necessarily deterrents from bringing multifamily inbound marketing in-house, they are often overlooked. Therefore, when calculating the value of an inbound marketing agency vs. taking it in-house, it’s important to analyze the cost and time factors to determine the true impact on your company. You will only truly capture the differential and determine the most effective method.

How can different marketing methods impact your brand? This marketing story infographic looks at four popular marketing methods and explains how each impact a fictional company looking to grow and expand. Discover how these different methods could impact your business.

How to Convert Apartment Leads Into Leases Using Your CRM

Sales are all about converting apartment leads into residents. And a CRM (customer relationship management) system can be an invaluable tool for making that happen for your property. 

You can improve your chances of converting leads into leases by tracking apartment leads and resident interactions. Key features to look for in a CRM include apartment lead management, multifamily email marketing automation, and contact management.

How can different marketing methods impact your brand? This marketing story infographic looks at four popular marketing methods and explains how each impact a fictional company looking to grow and expand. Discover how these different methods could impact your business.

Apartment lead management is important for monitoring prospects and keeping track of their progress. Multifamily email marketing automation can help you nurture leads with automated email campaigns. And contact management can help you keep track of resident interactions and follow up with them effectively.

When it comes to multifamily marketing, these CRM features can be extremely helpful in booking more property tours. By using a CRM system, you can better manage your apartment leads, automate your email multifamily marketing, and keep track of resident interactions. This will all lead to more sales and a higher conversion rate.

That being said, not all CRMs are created equal. Some CRM features are more helpful than others when it comes to conversions. 

Here is a closer look at what our team views as the most important CRM features for conversions (and what we use every day in our multifamily marketing efforts!): 

1. Customizable lead capture forms

A good CRM will allow you to create custom lead capture forms that fit your needs. This is important because you want to ensure you’re capturing all the information you need from potential customers to follow up with them effectively.

A good CRM will allow you to create custom lead capture forms that fit your specific needs. This is important because you want to make sure you’re capturing all the information you need from potential customers, in order to follow up with them effectively.

Custom lead capture forms are online forms that allow you to gather leads for your multifamily property. By collecting contact information and other key data points, you can nurture leads through the sales process and ultimately convert them into residents.

A good CRM will allow you to create custom lead capture forms that fit your specific needs. This is important because you want to make sure you’re capturing all the information you need from potential customers, in order to follow up with them effectively.

There are several features that can be included on custom lead capture forms, but some of the most important for conversions include the following:

  • Property type: By asking leads what type of multifamily property they’re interested in (e.g., apartments, townhomes, etc.), you can ensure that you’re marketing to the right audience.
  • Budget: Collecting budget information helps you qualify leads and determine whether they can afford your multifamily property.
  • Location: Knowing where your apartment leads are interested in living helps you target your multifamily marketing efforts and ensure that you provide relevant information.
  • Contact information: To follow up with leads, you’ll need to collect their contact information (e.g., email address, phone number, etc.).

By including these key data points on your custom lead capture form, you can increase the likelihood of conversion by ensuring that you’re marketing to the right audience and providing relevant information.

2. Lead scoring and grading

A lead scoring system will help you determine the most promising leads, so you can focus your energy on converting them. This is important because it allows you to prioritize your time and resources and increase your chances of making a sale.

If you have access or interest, marketing automation software offers lead scoring to qualify your apartment leads. Lead scoring involves tracking any lead in your CRM across your multifamily website. With lead scoring, you can ascribe value to different blogs or page views, offers or email interactions. When a lead reaches a certain score, decided on by your team, they become sales qualified.

With lead scoring, you can ascribe value to different blogs or page views, offers or email interactions. When a lead reaches a certain score, decided on by your team, they become sales qualified.

3. Automated follow-up

Automated follow-up is one of the most valuable features a CRM can offer. Once an apartment lead has been captured, it’s important to follow up with them as quickly as possible. An automated follow-up system will ensure no potential sale slips through the cracks. It allows you to set up automatic email or phone reminders to follow up with apartment leads, so you never miss an opportunity to convert them. 

An automated follow-up system will ensure that no potential sale slips through the cracks. It allows you to set up automatic email or phone reminders to follow up with apartment leads, so you never miss an opportunity to convert them.

For example, you will want to set up automated follow-up emails for anyone who fills out a form on your multifamily website to book a tour, contact your leasing team, or if they download any of your free resources.

Don’t forget to use personalization tokens in the body copy of your email to ensure your message is catered to the specific resident. However, be cautious with personalizing your subject lines, as recent studies found that emails with personalized subject lines get lower open rates (18.79%) than those with generic ones (22.14%). Further, the personalized subject line click-through rate was 1.74% versus 2.74%. 

However, be cautious with personalizing your subject lines as recent studies found that emails with personalized subject lines actually get lower open rates (18.79%) than those with generic ones (22.14%). Further, the personalized subject line click through rate was 1.74% versus 2.74%.

4. Detailed customer profiles (AKA get to know your prospects)

The more information you have about a resident, the better equipped you are to provide them with what they need and want. A detailed resident profile will include contact information to lease history and interests. 

This profile can also help you refine your resident buyer persona. Potential residents should never be looked at as an entry in a database or a contact in a CRM. 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. 

Potential residents should never be looked at as an entry in a database or a contact in a CRM. Multifamily marketing messaging is meant to connect and provide powerful content that is useful and relevant to their problems.

What renters perceive is reality to them, which is why 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.

Qualifying your apartment leads to increase conversions

Just because a lead is sales-qualified does not mean they are a good fit. As a multifamily marketer, you’ll likely never know if a lead meets sales’ needs. That requires sales to engage with the lead first. Instead, it’s imperative to use lead qualification methods to ensure your apartment leads are qualified from a multifamily marketing perspective and ease sales jobs on the rest. 

With the right CRM tool and marketing automation software, you can more easily determine who your hot leads are and take action, so no sales fall through the cracks. Or, you can use this information to nurture those leads to eventually become leases. Ultimately, with the right tools, you’ll be well on achieving your leasing goals.

How can different marketing methods impact your brand? This marketing story infographic looks at four popular marketing methods and explains how each impact a fictional company looking to grow and expand. Discover how these different methods could impact your business.

Learn the Expert Secrets Behind Apartment Logo Design

Arguably the most important feature of any branding effort, apartment logo design is an oft-misunderstood art.

Logo design isn’t as simple as sketching at random and hoping for the best, nor is it simply waiting for inspiration to hit you out of the blue. Apartment logo design should be strategic, thoughtful, and yes, even aesthetically pleasing.

Brands that achieve great branding find great success. Don’t blend in the crowd. Wondering where to start with branding your multifamily property? This free brand guide will show you three design aspects that can transform your branding project.

When branding for multifamily, logos can often become complex — the logo not being just the extension of the building or its amenities but also of the community, the culture, and the reputation. In short, branding a multifamily project is critical to its success.

There is no easy way to ensure your multifamily branding project will bring the success you desire; however, there are three simple steps you can take to ensure your logo design is as successful as possible:

1. Concepting Your Idea

Establish the “feel” first. What kind of organization are you designing for? Obviously, as a multifamily development, you may have different brand needs than a hip new restaurant, but dig even further than that. Know your property and which people need to be involved.

Things to think about include:

  • What is the internal culture?
  • What is the public-facing culture?
  • What separates you from other similar properties?

A great way to answer all these questions is to start with word exercises; a mind map can help you make a connection you didn’t see at first. All of these elements need to be represented in some way with the brand as a whole. 

Every great apartment logo design starts with knowing your demographic as well. You also need to ask yourself: who, what, where, when, and why.

Every great design starts with knowing your demographic as well. You also need to ask yourself: who, what, where, when, and why.

  • WHO: Who is your property? Who is your competition? Who is your target audience?
  • WHAT: What differentiators does your property offer? What are you trying to achieve or what emotion are you trying to evoke?
  • WHERE: Where is the property located? 
  • WHEN: When will the property be ready for leasing?
  • WHY: Why should residents rent here and not another property?

If you followed the multifamily inbound marketing strategy correctly, your teams all came together to identify your buyer persona. Doing this should have resulted in defining your lead lifecycle stage and identifying the answers to all the above questions.

If you have not done this, go back and do it now because this data is vital to your brand identity.

The apartment logo is one of the first aspects of your property that people see, and it shows on every piece of a multifamily brand. Be sure to make a good first impression.

2. Just Keep Sketching

Sketch, sketch, sketch. It’s highly unlikely that any great (or even good) apartment logo design has ever been developed start-to-finish on a screen. Pencil and paper are still the best free-form way to get ideas started.

Sketch, sketch, sketch. It’s highly unlikely that any great (or even good) apartment logo design has ever been developed start-to-finish on a screen. Pencil and paper are still the best free-form way to get ideas started.

Remove any ideas of “pixel perfection” or perfect lines and fully rendered visuals, as this allows you to think more fluidly and discover ideas that might have been missed if the first step were to fire up Illustrator.

Only after sketching, more sketching, pulling the interesting ideas out from the boring ones, and refining the sketches should you turn to your software tools. That apartment logo should be designed in the program of your choice that allows for fully scalable vector art. Designing something in pixels in Photoshop might be fine for now, but what happens when that apartment logo needs to be scaled? Always be conscious of future needs.

Think about applications. An apartment logo always looks great on a blank white page with nothing else competing. Consider the following:  How is that mark going to be used? Does it look good in a one-color variant for black and white printing? What about reversed out over a dark background? How much clearspace does it require to not get lost in a busy application? What if it needs to be really large or really small? Does it scale well?

Think about applications. An apartment logo always looks great on a blank white page with nothing else competing. Consider the following:

  • How is that mark going to be used?
  • Does it look good in a one-color variant for black-and-white printing?
  • What about reversed out over a dark background?
  • How much clearspace does it require not to get lost in a busy application?
  • What if it needs to be really large or really small?
  • Does it scale well?

3. Presentation Is Everything

Presentation is key. Whether you are presenting the apartment logo to the property management team, owners, or other marketing team members, your logo should be presented without any ornamentation or competing elements — then show the applications. Black, white, and alternate brand colors — if providing a logo system.

Mockup major applications, like signs or collateral. The presentation needs to show the main applications in a way that allows everyone to really visualize how the new apartment logo fits into and helps the property’s brand position.

Mockup major applications, like signs or collateral. The presentation needs to show the main applications in a way that allows everyone to really visualize how the new apartment logo fits into and helps the property’s brand position.

Building a Successful Multifamily Brand

Creative pursuits are fun and exciting because processes can vary from person to person. While this process is not the only way, it’s rather important to have some semblance of a process that brings you to the place where your creative output is best. Not only does your creative need to be strong, but you have to have a strategy in mind for what makes an apartment logo design work and why it will help your brand become successful.

Think about apartment logo design like a cross-country trip. If “creative” is the destination, that makes “strategy” the journey. You can’t arrive at your final destination without going on a journey first.

Properties that achieve great multifamily branding find great success. And you don’t have to start this brand journey on your own. Our multifamily marketing agency is here to help! We’re experts on multifamily branding and apartment logo design, so you can focus on building your property (and leases), while we build your brand.

Brands that achieve great branding find great success. Don’t blend in the crowd. Wondering where to start with branding your multifamily property? This free brand guide will show you three design aspects that can transform your branding project.

Creating Marketing Qualified Leads With the Right Form

The excitement of starting an inbound marketing strategy for your organization can lead to initial eagerness to get things rolling. But in that sprint to kick off your multifamily marketing, you might find yourself missing a step or two.

14 Multifamily SEO Facts You Didn't Know (Plus Tips for Implementing these SEO Tips Into Your Multifamily Marketing Strategy)

The use of content to gather apartment leads is, without a doubt, the primary focus of inbound. Therefore, many marketers and property managers spend their time emphasizing content strategy to generate those apartment leads. 

However, optimizing your content without optimizing your lead strategy defeats the purpose of inbound altogether. Instead, marketers should spend much of their intro to the inbound process on apartment lead generation and business strategies to guarantee their content is meeting objectives.

What is the purpose of an apartment lead generation form?

Nearly every multifamily website these days has an apartment lead generation form. But the effectiveness of those forms depends on many factors, including:

  • Type
  • Location on the page
  • The offer
  • The questions
  • How the contact data is used

Have you ever been interested in a new apartment complex or shopping center around town? Maybe you had a specific question while they were in development, so you filled out the contact fields — and waited. And waited. But no one got back to you.

Chances are, you provided a decent amount of personal information on that apartment lead generation form. You did so willingly because it was an exchange you found reasonable: your contact details for the offer or answers you wanted. Understanding this exchange is the key.

In short, an apartment lead generation form is a means of gathering information — the level of which is dependent on what you are offering on the other side of the form.

In short, an apartment lead generation form is a means of gathering information — the level of which is dependent on what you are offering on the other side. In multifamily inbound marketing, forms are also a means of progressive profiling (i.e., qualifying your apartment leads by asking for a little more intel) each time they fill one out. This progressive profiling is meant to get more and more information that qualifies leads by lifecycle stage and determines their point in the buyer’s journey.

What questions should you ask on your apartment lead generation form?

Now that you know the importance of your fields, the next issue becomes, “What questions should I ask?” This is where your apartment lead generation strategy comes in. If you followed the multifamily inbound marketing strategy correctly, your teams all came together to identify your buyer persona. Doing this should have resulted in defining your lead lifecycle stage.

If you have not done this, go back and do it now because this data is vital to your progressive profiling.

Let’s say you are a tenant representative for a large new commercial office building downtown. The project is not complete yet, but it has generated a lot of buzz, and companies are showing interest. You want to be sure you lease up before opening. However, you also need to make sure the companies you bring in are a good fit. This is where progressive profiling comes in.

Your first apartment lead generation form (the awareness one) will always cover introductory information. This includes the basics:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Phone
  • Company name
  • Job title
Smart fields help expedite the lead qualification process by letting you ask for additional relevant information. These fields also make things easier for sales down the line if the apartment lead becomes “sales qualified.”

If you are using certain marketing automation software like HubSpot, you have the opportunity to add smart fields that will populate if you already have this particular information. Smart fields help expedite the lead qualification process by letting you ask for additional relevant information. These fields also make things easier for sales down the line if the lead becomes “sales qualified.”

Developing your questions

Gathering your teams together for your apartment lead generation strategy would be pointless if you don’t have a process by which to direct them. Thankfully, that process is relatively simple. Early in the multifamily inbound marketing process, your team should have come up with an ideal buyer profile and a buyer persona, as well as SMART goals for the year to determine what type of leads you are hoping to attract. Need help building your ideal buyer profile? Check out our other blog here.

At this time, you get to bring all those details together. By using lead and customer goals, persona details, and sales data, your team should be able to determine the necessary lead information to create marketing-qualified leads.

By using lead and customer goals, persona information, and sales data, your team should be able to determine the necessary lead information to create marketing qualified leads.

Back to the tenant rep example from above. You know the office building in question has a specific number of spaces with an anticipated rent range. You also know the amenities that the building does and does not have. Given the nature of the building, along with your business goals, you know you will likely need to build a large awareness funnel to meet the occupancy goals by open.

While your awareness questions are simple enough, the details you need in the consideration and decision stage are much more in-depth. For one, the type of business and size is important in determining fit, as the building may not support the needs of certain companies. If the building is high-end, questions around “current rent” or “monthly revenue” may be important to help you discover if the company is a good fit from an affordability standpoint. By gathering this information early on, when it comes time to start leasing, the tenant rep’s job should be fairly simple in picking sales-ready leads that met the requirements.

Segmenting your list

While the ultimate benefit of progressive profiling is to shorten the sales cycle, there’s a secondary benefit that can help. List segmentation is the act of separating contacts in your CRM by various criteria. If you run a multifaceted business with a lot of different verticals, list segmentation is a lifesaver. 

List segmentation is the act of separating contacts in your CRM by various criteria. If you run a multifaceted business with a lot of different verticals, list segmentation is a lifesaver.

If you have a new offer for clients in the senior living space, for example, you don’t want to send it to the people in the economic development of mixed-use developments. Furthermore, people interested in your ad services probably aren’t interested in what you offer in multifamily branding. By gathering this information from apartment leads, you can use it to segment your multifamily marketing for a more streamlined message.

For content marketing success, an apartment lead generation form is much more complex than slapping a few fields on a page. Forms require a certain amount of business strategy to be used for their optimal effectiveness. This is a powerful tool that can improve the life of your sales cycle while requiring little more than some upfront strategy. All it takes is asking the right questions.

14 Multifamily SEO Facts You Didn't Know (Plus Tips for Implementing these SEO Tips Into Your Multifamily Marketing Strategy)

How to Build, Measure, and Scale Your Multifamily Marketing Approach

When most real estate developments begin to create their multifamily marketing strategy to attract marketing-qualified leads, you can imagine that the conversations are more or less the same each time. 

Namely discussions on ad buys, billboards, large banners, and sales calls. These methodologies are often inefficient, having little ROI and little reach in meeting business goals.

A key reason these methods are inefficient is that multifamily marketing has changed. 

For many years, marketing was based on interruption through things like cold calls and advertising. But as society became more digital — from the VHS and DVR allowing people to fast forward to programs like AdBlock preventing ads from displaying on websites — these methods have become inefficient. 

Technology has empowered consumers to take the buyer’s journey online; therefore, your multifamily marketing efforts should be online too.

How is multifamily marketing evolving?

The better question is, how are residents evolving? Whether you like it or not, millennials (and now Gen Z renters) comprise a sizable chunk of the multifamily market.

Millennials rent longer and by choice, and their lifestyles are vastly different than generations before. Trends like pet ownership and hyper-connectivity define this generation, along with a willingness to sacrifice square footage for prime locations.

And yet, while these lifestyle trends drive development, they’re only a starting point for multifamily marketing.

While these lifestyle trends are driving development, they’re only a starting point when it comes to multifamily marketing and generating marketing qualified leads. Building the perfect product and selling it are two different things.

Here are a few secret keys to attracting and converting web visitors into marketing-qualified leads for your multifamily business:

1. Giving every property or organization a custom approach.

Development and the creative process should cater to the audience — not the other way around. 

Development and the creative process should cater to the audience — not the other way around. Start by really understanding the target demographic for your multifamily property or organization. Immerse yourself in understanding of their lifestyle, pain points, and interests. Bring in a multifamily branding agency who can help you turn insights into a concept that will remain top of mind throughout the entire development process, from contractors to vendors, from building to multifamily branding.

Let’s start by really understanding the target demographic for your property or organization. Immerse yourself in understanding their lifestyle, pain points, and interests. Bring in a multifamily branding agency that can help you turn insights into a concept that will remain top of mind throughout the development process, from contractors to vendors, from building to multifamily branding.

Customizing your apartment marketing approach is essential in today’s world. Marketing strategies vary per market because each market is remarkably different. It would be ignorant to believe that Lincoln, Nebraska residents want the same things as residents in Charlotte, N.C, for example.

2. Creating a narrative and telling your multifamily brand story.

With an earnest understanding of your target audience, a narrative about your residents should unfold. Their motivations, lifestyle choices, and demographic characteristics should come together as a story. From these insights, the concept for your property will be born.

Focus on building something that inspires the people living there. Watch a car commercial, and you’ll see how well the auto industry understands this concept of storytelling. It’s not so much about the product as the lifestyle it promotes.

This aspirational lifestyle affects every facet of multifamily development — from site selection to design and multifamily branding.

When it comes to differentiating your property, it starts with knowing your audience better than they know themselves. Only through thoughtful research can you begin to develop the environment, the lifestyle, and the creative messaging that resonates (and ultimately generates marketing-qualified leads).

When it comes to differentiating your property, it starts with knowing your audience better than they know themselves. Only through thoughtful research can you begin to develop the environment, the lifestyle, and the creative multifamily marketing messaging that resonates and generates marketing qualified leads.

3. Building your digital marketing funnel.

What’s the first thing you do when you’re looking to buy something? Odds are, you do some research on Google first. This is where apartment marketing begins in the modern age. As everything moves online, the internet has become the source of major information exchange.

Having relevant information on your multifamily website isn’t enough to generate marketing qualified leads, however. That information needs to be optimized for search engines to read, which attracts visitors.

What keywords should you be using? Well, imagine what your typical buyer is searching for. If you’re looking to attract people to your blog about real estate developments in Dallas, you shouldn’t mention attractions in Chicago. From there, the information needs to be broad enough and address the buyer persona’s problem in a way that drives interest.

The information should exist as a content offer and will be “gated” so that the visitor will complete the relevant information to download it. That information turns the visitor into an apartment lead

These apartment leads might then consume more relevant information and provide more sales information to become marketing-qualified leads, and so on. This is called building the multifamily marketing funnel, and this funnel ensures that leads are qualified before reaching sales. This methodology also sees apartment leads being pulled in to ask questions and do research rather than pushed and bombarded by unwanted advertising messages.

Your apartment leads might consume more relevant information and provide more sales information to become a marketing qualified leads, and so on. This is called building the multifamily marketing funnel, and this funnel ensures that leads are qualified before reaching sales. This methodology also sees apartment leads being pulled in to ask questions and do research, rather than pushed and bombarded by unwanted advertising messages.

Why is this significant? Because not only are you spending less on obtaining these types of leads, but these marketing-qualified leads are more likely to convert, minimizing your overall ROI.

4. Tracking how you are featured online.

You need to build the funnel to be successful with your apartment marketing to ultimately generate more marketing-qualified leads. The next issue is making sure that you’re presenting this information well. As we stated before, it’s not enough to exist online. Your presence needs to be in tip-top shape!

Why, you ask? Because first impressions are important on the web. People will leave your site within 5 seconds if they cannot find the information they want. So how do you make sure you’re relevant?

Building the funnel is what you need to do to be successful with your apartment marketing to generate marketing qualified leads. The next issue is making sure that you’re presenting this information well. As we stated before, it’s not enough to just exist online. Your presence needs to be in tip-top shape!

Keywords

Ensure you’re using accurate multifamily SEO keywords that your customer will search. You want to feature these regularly enough that search engines will map your content but not so much that they’ll dock you for keyword stuffing.

Focused Content

Staying relevant with your content — including linking to other trusted sites and keeping your information objective — is key to keeping consumers on your site. When a consumer feels like they’ve stepped into an infomercial on your homepage, they’re likely to leave. However, if you keep your content focused and informative, from blogs to social media posts, consumers will more likely see you as an authority and keep coming back.

UX Multifamily Web Design

People are tempted to go with style over substance in multifamily web design. Contrary to what your boss might believe, multifamily websites should always be designed for the consumer and with their interests in mind. What does that mean? The consumer doesn’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about how you’re going to solve their problem.

Keeping your content and multifamily web design consumer-friendly makes consumers more likely to stay on the site. This includes making the site ADA-compliant for your user too. Mobile-friendly designs are here to stay, so make sure your site cooperates.

The Future of Multifamily Marketing

With these aspects implemented, you can expect an improved search presence and a lead ROI that can deliver substantial returns. 

This is the future of multifamily marketing. Rather, this is the roadmap for building brands in today’s world to bring in more marketing-qualified leads, and this industry has finally got its hands on it.

Free Multifamily Marketing Resources

From social media guides and multifamily branding tips, we’ve got all the digital marketing resources you need to launch and maintain a successful campaign. And they are all free!

Our Agency’s Library of Content, at Your Fingertips

Looking for an easy way to plan out your content for the month? Interested in learning more about multifamily SEO and how it benefits your business? Searching for multifamily branding tips for success? We’ve got you covered. Check out our free online marketing tools to help you better understand your buyer personas.

Gone are the days of a “set-it and forget-it” website. To truly engage your audience you need to know how to write a blog that speaks to them. Business blogging is not just a trendy thing to do, it actually is good for your bottom line.

Grow your online presence and enhance your multifamily marketing strategy with this free social media for apartments checklist.

Consider the following statistics:

  • 81% of consumers trust advice and information that they read in blogs. 
  • Nearly 96% of bloggers promote their service business blog posts via social media.
  • 57% of marketers say they’ve gained customers specifically through business blogging.
  • Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website.
  • Using images in blog posts gets 94% more views.

In a world where digital consumption is king, there is only one way to fight the battle against your competitors — business blogging and distributing your content for all the world to see. 

Business Blogging Tips for Multifamily Marketing

Below, our experienced team of content writers at our multifamily branding agency compiled all of our best business blogging tips for writing and distributing a service business blog.

1. Select your platform

Prior to starting your blog, you must first decide which business blogging platform you would like to use.  Some free options include WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr. However, if you do not care for any of these, you can always search for other business blogging platforms via Google. If you are a business, you should consider hosting a blog within your website in addition to an outside blog site. Through your external blog, you can create inbound links that drive traffic to your company’s website and in turn, means free advertising!

Business Blogging Tips for Multifamily Marketing

2. Decide on a web design theme

The next is choosing a web design theme for your business blog. Some bloggers like to talk about the industry, others focus on common problems that clients have. One great way to write about solutions to the problems that your customers have is to predict the questions your prospects are Googling.

If you already have your buyer persona built, predicting your customer’s questions and pain points will be a cinch! If not, refer back to some of our previous blogs for simple steps on how to accomplish this.

3. Pick your design template

Now that you have your theme, it’s time to think about the layout and color scheme of your website. Do you want it to be clean? Simple? Elegant? Fun? Creative? Whatever you choose keep your readers in mind, and make sure that there is a synergy between your design and web theme.

If you operate in the multifamily industry and want a beautiful, affordable, and easy-to-implement web theme, be sure to check out our sister company Swifty!

Multifamily Websites and Apartment Web Designs

4. Create a content calendar

Once all of this preparation is complete, it’s time to create an editorial calendar. You’ll want to begin by mapping out at least 3 to 6 months at a time. Then, make notes on the calendar for each day you want to post content. 

Most importantly, stick to the calendar! Make sure that you create an editorial calendar that is reasonable for your schedule. Do not overwhelm yourself — it will be hard to stick to your goals if you over-commit and in turn will discourage you from writing future content. 

However, you should challenge yourself — don’t schedule just one service business blog a month. Once you get into the groove, you will see that you can post more often and the boost in SEO, engagement, and traffic will make it worthwhile.

Business Blogging Tips for Multifamily Marketing

That being said, your business will struggle if you don’t have a system in place to attract the right kind of audience with the right content at the right time. Your goal is to nurture and convert your audience, not drive them away because you are shelling out the wrong content (and too much of it).

So press pause before pumping out eight articles a day without defining your business goals first. Create a content strategy that will attract your buyer persona and improve their experience.

Running an inbound marketing campaign on your own can be difficult. Where do you start? What do you do? We put together this handy, free template to get you started!

5. Write away!

Finally, now that you’ve established your blog site, designed your theme and layout, and developed a content calendar, it’s time to put your fingers to the keyboard and write your first business blog. 

At first, keep it simple. If you’re not sure how to get started, read through a few established competitor blog sites. Get a feel for the voice you want your service business blog to have. 

Research your customers’ pain points and choose topics that will answer their most pertinent questions. Try to keep in mind what your customers are searching for online so that you can position your organization as a trusted resource.

The length of your blog will depend on your buyer persona and their interests, but we typically recommend a blog post length of at least 1,200 words to get the most out of your SEO strategy. The key for your business is to research your persona and conduct interviews to learn what type and length of content are most valuable.

Interested in more tips for creating a highly optimized blog for your business’ SEO? Check out this blog for step-by-step business blogging tips!

Business Blogging Tips for Multifamily Marketing

How to Distribute Your Blog Content to Reach the Right Audience

Many of our clients ask us about the importance of content marketing and whether they should consider starting a service business blog. Our answer is always a resounding yes.

Not only is consistent content marketing integral for SEO and achieving a higher search ranking, but it’s also a great way to position your business as an expert resource to customers.

However, distributing content is more important than writing content. In fact, promoting a blog can often take more time than writing the actual content. This is particularly true for businesses that do not have a corporate team of writers and marketers on hand.

To make the blog worth the time and effort of your team, it’s critical to distribute the content effectively and obtain as much use from the blog as possible. For example, a single blog post can be shared on Twitter with a snappy headline, extended to Instagram with an engaging image, and adapted to a shareable infographic.

Business Blogging Tips for Multifamily Marketing

Below are a few ways you can get the most bang for your blog:

Organic Distribution via Social Media

One of the biggest perks of social media as a marketing channel is the ability to create an engaged, online community of the individuals that build up your target audience. 

  • Social Sharing Buttons — Allow your website visitors to read your content and share it with their friends. The not-so-savvy internet users, or even the lazy ones, will rarely copy your URL and post it on their social pages, so make it easy for them to share your content.
  • Business Social Accounts — Share all of your blogs through your social accounts. Write a one-line teaser that will encourage them to click on the link and include a blog graphic to give your audience a visual representation.
  • Connections — Connecting with influencers in your respective industry is important to building a solid blog following. Find people on social media that you know will be interested in your content and reach out to them so they can have easy access to your service business blog.

Email Marketing Distribution

Like your RSS Feed, you should encourage your website visitors to subscribe to your email list. Once you capture those email addresses you can send out monthly newsletters that feature your most relevant blog posts and drive traffic back to your website.

Content Syndication

It’s important to build relationships with relevant blogs, brands, or publishers. This ultimately builds your brand and makes your blog awareness a lot higher than others. Asking others to link to your content in return for you linking back to their content gives you a connection that benefits both parties. This strategy is very important because it allows other bloggers to endorse you and build a bigger audience.

Paid Distribution

Paid advertisement distribution on Facebook is fairly simple to use and necessary in today’s digital marketing world. Digital marketing gets difficult when organic reach on Facebook decreases, so use paid distribution to your advantage.

Reshare Regularly

Not all of your potential customers are online or on the same social channel at the same time. Additionally, a customer might have read your article the first time and forgot to save it or forward it along to their co-worker. For these reasons, it’s essential that you reshare your content regularly across your social media and even in your newsletter.

Include an “In Case You Missed It” section in your newsletter that highlights previous popular blogs. Choose several one-line teasers or important quotes from your article and schedule tweets throughout the month. Adjust the ad set and re-run your Facebook ad to get your content in front of an even broader audience.

Make It Visual

Infographics provide significant value from a content-supporting standpoint. Companies are constantly generating content, but the bulk of it is often heavy and wordy. Focus on utilizing the visual aspect of infographics to break up the content. Pull important statistics and tidbits of information from your in-depth service business blog and build out an enticing infographic that users can easily download and view.

Additionally, pull out some other short quotes or statistics to create an eye-popping graphic that you can share on Instagram and Pinterest. Considering you cannot share links in your Instagram posts, prompting users to click the link in your profile is a great way to promote your service business blog.

Making the Most of Your Business Blogging

Business blogging is no easy task, but with these tips in mind, you are well equipped to make the most of your time and effort by expanding the reach of your content.

Running an inbound marketing campaign on your own can be difficult. Where do you start? What do you do? We put together this handy, free template to get you started!

5 Steps to Improve Your Multifamily Marketing Analytics Strategy

The world of digital marketing analytics is always changing, making it difficult to understand the correlation between ad dollars spent and revenue. As a multifamily agency, we know there is not a one-to-one correlation between the two, and it is nearly impossible to prove to upper management that our efforts are actually worth the investment.

The tracking and analyzing of your content mix to measure return on investment (ROI) is what digital marketing analytics is all about. And thankfully, there is no shortage of multifamily marketing resources to help collect and manage these data points.

How can different marketing methods impact your brand? This marketing story infographic looks at four popular marketing methods and explains how each impact a fictional company looking to grow and expand. Discover how these different methods could impact your business.

Gearing Up With the Right Digital Marketing Analytics Tools

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool marketers use to track their multifamily website or app. While the interface seems daunting at first, this tool allows you to seamlessly monitor everything from the demographics and behavior of site visitors to bounce rate and what they are clicking on the most.

Social media insights

Most social media platforms offer their own analytics if you have a business account. Social media insights allow you to measure post reach, follower demographics, engagement and interactions, and even what time of the day your followers are most active. Additionally, you can track ad spend, cost per click, and more through Facebook’s Business Settings.

Hootsuite and Buffer

While Hootsuite and Buffer offer free platforms for social media management, the paid memberships allow you the ability to track all of your social media analytics on a single dashboard. Rather than logging into each of your social accounts to schedule posts individually, these platforms also give you the ability to schedule posts across multiple platforms from a single app.

Multifamily marketing automation software

While there are several tools to track digital marketing analytics, HubSpot, SharpSpring, and other marketing automation software allow you to wrap all of these into one. With these platforms, you can schedule-out email campaigns, social media posts, blogs, and more as well as track the digital marketing analytics for all of them.

While you may be overwhelmed, the gear-up process for your marketing strategy can be a breeze with the right tools. This free inbound marketing kit includes four major tools we use in-house to outline our inbound marketing efforts and strategy.

Practicing Patience With Digital Marketing Analytics

Just as “a watched pot never boils,” you cannot expect to see immediate results from your multifamily marketing efforts. Patience is key as you track the success of your labor.

More likely than not, you will not see significant progress within the first week, month, or even quarter. Successful multifamily marketing takes time. While you should track items daily such as Facebook ad conversions or clicks on a CTA for your weekly e-newsletter, it is more important to monitor these metrics over a more extended time to see real improvement.

For example, your Facebook Business Page may receive 60 new followers in one week but only a handful the next. The change in followers is not necessarily a reason to be concerned, but it is a trend you should track closely to discover why your followers did not increase as much as in previous weeks.

Analyze Your Success With Digital Marketing Analytics

After all, when you spend countless hours each month planning, scheduling, managing, and tracking your content marketing analytics, there’s no better way to enjoy the fruits of your labor (like increased ROI) than to track and improve your strategy continually. The key is to not get frustrated with your digital marketing analytics results. Stay patient and keep tracking.

How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Analytics Strategy

Reaching your buyer persona in the right place at the right time is paramount to multifamily marketing success, and digital marketing analytics are essential to the evaluation stage of any apartment marketing strategy. However, if not collected diligently, they are of no use.

If you are not achieving your multifamily marketing goals or seeing the results you want from your efforts, it’s time to adjust your strategy. The following are a few good practices to make habits that will increase your data’s relevance:

1. Identify your problem areas

First, decide where you could use some improvement. Focus your efforts on a few specific areas such as social media engagement or website traffic to track relevant data for your business.

2. Create SMART goals

To prove your analytics efforts are worth your time, you have to set SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. This way, you can continue to track your progress in comparison to your end goals. Without this step, there is no way to assess the performance of the strategy you have put in place.

3. Stay committed

Now that you have the groundwork set, here comes the hard part — staying fully committed and on track with the goals you set. Tracking and reporting your analytics data weekly as well as monthly, quarterly, and yearly is crucial to finding different trends, so stay committed. Pausing your efforts or adding multiple layers to your pre-constructed plan will only lessen your impact.

4. Track your digital marketing analytics

Follow different trends in your digital marketing analytics data and make adjustments accordingly. Then, track and report the results to find new insights. Luckily, there are a variety of digital marketing analytics tools to help you with this crucial step.

While you may be overwhelmed, the gear-up process for your marketing strategy can be a breeze with the right tools. This free inbound marketing kit includes four major tools we use in-house to outline our inbound marketing efforts and strategy.

5. Report and repeat

Successful multifamily marketing is a long, winding road of strategy, testing, retesting, and careful planning. When you have met your goals, report your data to your team and set new ones.

Analyze Your Success With Digital Marketing Analytics

Trust the Experts to Become the Experts

Use digital marketing analytics to make informed decisions about the time, place, and manner in which you advertise. This way you can focus your ad spending in specific areas, to better reach your target audience and improve the value of your multifamily marketing.

Remember, if implementing and executing a successful multifamily marketing campaign is not your business’ specialty, you do not have to go at it alone. You can leave the heavy lifting to a multifamily marketing agency like Criterion.B. You spent time and energy creating multifamily branding that offers a unique value proposition, so now it is time to trust the experts to develop a multifamily marketing mix that sends the right message to the right people.

Not sure if your apartment marketing strategy needs the boost of working with a multifamily marketing agency? Check out our worksheet that helps you identify where your business’ apartment marketing strategy stands!

How can different marketing methods impact your brand? This marketing story infographic looks at four popular marketing methods and explains how each impact a fictional company looking to grow and expand. Discover how these different methods could impact your business.

Any new business plan starts by assessing the environment and the opportunities ahead. What’s in store for multifamily marketing for the remainder of this year? What goals can we set? How can we achieve them?

We surveyed the digital multifamily marketing environment and made predictions for the remainder of this year and beyond.

We’ve settled on the four multifamily marketing trends we project to have the most impact and potential this year:

Multifamily marketing guide to social media and social media for apartments.

1. Customer Storytelling

Oftentimes, it can be hard to develop a multifamily brand story, especially if our product or service is not outwardly life-changing.

What’s your multifamily brand story? And by that, we mean, what makes your multifamily brand human? How do you care for your customers and your community?

For some organizations, their brand story is an easy one to tell. For example, TOMS donates a pair of shoes for every pair sold, and St. Jude’s helps children fight cancer every day. It is easy to see how these organizations have an impact on people’s lives.

But what about the rest of us? The bankers, the chefs, the designers, the agency owners, and so on … What’s our mark on the community? How do we care?

Oftentimes, it can be hard to develop a multifamily brand story, especially if our product or service is not outwardly life-changing. That’s why we love this example from Airbnb:

Airbnb is all about the customer, which makes obvious sense considering the customer (both hosts and guests) is the brand. The company does not manage or own the properties on its platform; rather, the company offers a platform for customers to book or promote properties, meals, experiences, and more.

Airbnb knows that if no one is using the platform, the company does not have a product. This is why it’s critical for the company to utilize customer storytelling to build its brand. In fact, the platform has an entire section titled “Stories From the Airbnb Community” for this very purpose.

Positioning the customer at the center of its brand and letting the customers be the brand is essential to Airbnb’s philosophy and identity. The company is literally built on the power of customer storytelling.

Multifamily Marketing Trends of 2021

Mobilize your advocates and go beyond the standard

There is a quote we often recite in our office and try to remember in our multifamily marketing efforts, “People don’t buy what you do, but rather why you do it.” 2021 is the year to mobilize your advocates — that is, your loyalists and your enthusiasts.

What role does your multifamily brand play in people’s lives? Create a forum for your customers to tell their brand story (i.e., what they love about your brand). Livestreaming and takeovers on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok will continue to be the breakout social platforms for customer storytelling. Go beyond the standard “Post a photo.” Challenge your advocates.

It all goes back to this: how do your customers connect with your brand? Now, how can we leverage those connections to tell our multifamily brand story?

2. New Data Collaborations

Another significant digital multifamily marketing trend to keep on your watchlist is new data collaborations — that is, how “hard data” will no longer rule the roost. It’s going to be a year of collaboration and teamwork. Hard and soft data, big and small data, quantitative and qualitative … no matter how you look at it, marketers must use both to find digital multifamily marketing success.

Hard and soft data

Let’s start by differentiating between the two. Hard data is quantitative in nature, meaning that it can be precisely measured. It’s usually collected on a large scale, which allows us to quantify and organize the data we collect. With hard data insights, I know that 60% of my customer base is female, 32% is Hispanic, and 10% make $200,000+ each year, etc. Hard data tells me that 40% of my web traffic is coming from a single blog post. Or that 72% of my online customers are finding me through social media.

Multifamily Marketing Trends of 2021

On the other hand, soft data (or qualitative data) is descriptive, intangible, and hard to measure. It also goes much deeper than hard data. Soft data is often gathered from interviews, observations, or from spending time with people. While hard data tells me that 60% of my customer base is female, soft data focuses on just a few of my female customers in an effort to understand:

  • How do they use technology throughout the day?
  • What are their perceptions of my brand?
  • Who do they trust most for product recommendations?

If hard data tells me that one of my blog posts is driving 40% of my web traffic, soft data tells me why that blog is effective.

Nail your value proposition

Traditionally, multifamily marketing and advertising have been a hard-data world. Recently, however, there’s increasing awareness of the value of soft data. Without soft data insights, we will never really know our customers or our target audience. We will never know what is important to them, what they do on the weekends, or what keeps them up at night. Why do these things matter?

Because without these soft data insights, we do not truly know our value proposition. We do not know what problems we are trying to solve for our target audience. We do not know the best way to appeal or intercept them — what kind of technology, what message?

Cue your resident buyer personas …

In the section above, we talked about brand advocacy — that is, when customers voluntarily and excitedly recommend your brand to others (AKA the multifamily marketing mecca). To get there, you have to know what makes your customers tick.

One way to do this is through resident buyer personas. A persona is a semi-fictional character you create that epitomizes your customer. It captures their demographics, behaviors, and motivations. Not only does it summarize your target market, but it gives you “someone” tangible to market to. A resident buyer persona starts with hard data, then adds the soft data insights.

Multifamily marketing guide to social media and social media for apartments.

Role Play: Luxury Apartment

Let’s pretend you are the multifamily marketing coordinator for a luxury apartment complex in Uptown Dallas. You are trying to determine how to attract more young professionals, so you hold a small focus group with a few of your current residents. You ask them questions that aim to understand the “why.” Why did they choose this apartment? Why did they renew their lease? What’s the value of living here for them?

You then emerge with a few character profiles that read something like this …

Multifamily Marketing Trends of 2021

Chris is 28 years old, single, and living in a one-bedroom apartment in Uptown Dallas. He’s originally from Chicago, but he stayed in Dallas after college for a job opportunity.

By day, he’s a financial analyst; however, every evening, you can find him at the CrossFit gym. He enjoys the camaraderie of CrossFit, and he frequents The Pickled Sub, a sandwich shop two blocks east. He always knew he wanted to live in Uptown, where he can walk to nearby grocery stores and restaurants.

His life revolves around Champ, his active three-year-old dog, who he likes to take out for runs. At his current location, the Katy Trail is 100 yards out the back door and the dog groomer is two blocks north. His dog sheds, yet he’s found these hardwood floors easier to keep clean than the carpet in his previous apartment. He’s gotten to know fellow pet owners throughout the apartment complex, with whom he enjoys the small talk that surrounds pet-owner responsibilities.

BOOM. You just got the angle for your new multifamily marketing materials. Remember that Chris does not actually exist. This persona was created from several conversations with residents. Hard data found that 34% of the residents were single, male, pet owners. Soft data revealed why they live there, and how you can continue to attract them. A persona gives you someone tangible to market to.

It’s teamwork, you see, between hard and soft data, big and small, quantitative and qualitative. We will see a lot more data collaboration this year. Why? Because it produces killer insights.

Want to learn more about the importance of building your buyer persona, including free resources like checklists, guides, quizzes, and more to help you do so? Check out our list of free buyer persona resources to help you get started!

3. Multifamily Inbound Marketing

This term, inbound multifamily marketing, has become more prevalent in the last year or so. Inbound multifamily marketing methods focus on content creation (e.g., blogging) as a way to attract your target audience and establish yourself as a resource within your industry or community. In turn, regular blogging serves to boost your multifamily SEO and drive media interest. It also provides points of engagement on social media.

Inbound multifamily marketing is a pull method rather than the push method of traditional apartment advertising. The prevalence of inbound multifamily marketing has necessarily given rise to a new trend: ongoing content creation.

Ready to hit the “GO” button on your campaign? Before you dive in, make sure you’ve dotted all your I’s and crossed all your T’s. This free checklist will help you cover all your bases.

New kids on the block

No longer is blogging merely a novelty multifamily marketing tactic. Instead, blogging has become essential to businesses in the digital age. (Just ask us how our last few clients found us!)

As the journalistic landscape evolves, we will see traditional writers and editors start to fill demand on the creative side. Businesses need more than just “a writer” these days. 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. This is why we’ll start to see content creation within agencies and businesses become more of a journalistic process.

Multifamily Marketing Trends of 2021

By the end of 2021, we would not be surprised to see multifamily companies running their own little newsrooms! Lord knows that multifamily marketing agencies already are!

4. Context-Aware Advertising

Location, location, location. You have heard it before, but how will it drive digital multifamily marketing in 2021 and beyond? You’re about to find out.

Context awareness will be a major apartment advertising trend to keep an eye on this year. As the name suggests, context-aware apartment advertising takes into account your location (along with other publicized information) to serve you ads that are hyper-relevant and thus, more likely to convert.

Imagine all the applications … Consumers can receive coupons (e.g., half-price frozen yogurt, $10 off shoes) as they enter the vicinity of a store. Even small businesses inherit the power to be relevant and connect with consumers at the most actionable time (i.e., when they are standing outside of the store).

Consider beacons that stores sometimes use, and this scenario — already pretty realistic — becomes  all the more possible:

Multifamily Marketing Trends of 2021

Predictably, there are several privacy debates currently surrounding location-based advertisements, which require consumers to somehow “opt-in” to location-based ads or make their location public. Oftentimes, however, consumers may not be aware that they have “opted in.” Other privacy concerns include the ease of “opting out,” which the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) is currently sorting out.

From a multifamily marketer’s perspective, the technology is exciting. Now how to make context-aware apartment advertising work for you?

The key to effective ads (redefine context)

To deliver effective context-aware ads, you do not necessarily need access to personal information. Instead, think broadly.

Context-aware apartment advertising can also pull from other dynamic feeds, such as weather, stock prices, or breaking news. For example, if I own a local ice cream shop, my ads would probably be best served on sunny days when the weather is 80+ degrees. A student housing apartment complex is best promoted in July and August as the new semester begins. So on and so forth.

Think about what makes your product relevant to your customers, then capitalize on the context.

Ultimately, to stay on the pulse of digital multifamily marketing trends, you must first know who your target audience is and make them the center of your multifamily marketing and apartment advertising efforts. 

Ready to hit the “GO” button on your campaign? Before you dive in, make sure you’ve dotted all your I’s and crossed all your T’s. This free checklist will help you cover all your bases.