Trending In The Right Direction? 8 Essential Apartment Marketing Strategies For 2018

How you attack your marketing efforts to begin 2018 will set the tone for how successful you’ll be over the next 12 months. In order to maximize your time, money, and resources, you need to know where to concentrate those efforts. While it’s important to try a variety of tactics, there are trends for 2018 that we feel you should really pay attention to.

When it comes to apartment marketing, your strategy has to be tailored to the type of consumer that fits your target audience. In doing so, you’ll find that the time you spent was much more productive than if you decided to generalize your audience.

Here Are 8 Strategies To Boost Your Apartment Marketing 

#1 – Live Video Streaming/Video Content in General

Whether you’ve noticed it consciously or subconsciously, the shift to video content has been dramatic and constant.

Did you know…

online video is expected to account for 82% of internet traffic by 2020, where it’s currently over ⅔ of internet traffic already*

This content juggernaut simply cannot be avoided, and doing so will result in getting left behind.

*according to a Cisco Report

-Let’s start with live streaming:

This has been a growing trend that has emerged over the last year. We most often associate live streaming social media with celebrities or influencers sharing their lives with us. However, live stream platforms offer a great opportunity for consumers to familiarize themselves with your brand and what you can offer them.

Using social media channels like:

• Facebook live
• YouTube live
• Instagram live, etc.

. . . you can show off your property in a variety of ways.

For example: let’s say you have a new property that features an incredible rooftop pool and outdoor lounge. Live streaming people hanging out by the pool or enjoying the outdoor lounge is an excellent way to help your followers visualize themselves in that lifestyle/space.

Another idea: to use a live stream is for when you have an open house. You can take your followers on a live virtual walkthrough, giving them an opportunity to view the place if they don’t have a chance to see it in person.

From a pure video based content perspective, simple drone flyovers of your place highlighting amenities and features is an excellent way to add value to your marketing strategy. This can then be uploaded to your YouTube channel and embedded into your site to add SEO value and boost organic search results.

#2 – AI (artificial intelligence)

What once sounded like a creepy robot takeover has now transformed into a legitimate asset for your marketing efforts. AI, or artificial intelligence, has been improving upon the productivity side of people’s everyday lives, and in particular, for websites.

Enter: chatbots.

Chatbots are a computer program that serves as your customer service representative on your apartment website. Instead of having to have someone constantly fielding general inquiries or questions all day, the chatbot handles this busy work for you.

The benefit for this service:  allows you and your team to spend more time working on big picture items and other tasks of more importance.

#3 – Content Marketing

When it comes to marketing strategies, content marketing is clearly not a new idea. However, there’s a reason it’s still around today and why it continues to be an important strategy in 2018. According Smart Insights poll, content marketing ranked the highest in what people thought the largest commercial impact will be in 2018.

This further illustrates the importance to have a clearly defined content marketing strategy and making sure it’s relevant to your apartment marketing goals. Think about your target audience and what they want to read, and mostly importantly, what they want to share. The key ingredient to good content is getting people to share, retweet, or like your content for others to see.

#4 – Privacy Protection

People value their privacy now more than ever, especially when it comes to their online experience. They also are concerned about that breach of privacy in the form of hacks, stolen information, and fraud. One simple way to market your website is by demonstrating the security of it.

For apartment marketing, this can come through security badges and certificates, positive customer reviews, fast load-times, and secure outgoing links.

For example: when it comes to rental payment systems, you need to do your homework when choosing the right company. Otherwise, tenants won’t feel safe entering their credit card information when going to pay rent.

#5 – Interactivity

Building a client list is an important step to your marketing efforts, but what comes next? Your email marketing needs to be interactive, not just regurgitating information they can find anywhere online. Interactivity will help boost your engagement and allow your subscribers to feel as if what they’re reading is of importance to them on a personal level.

The question then becomes, how do I incorporate an interactive approach to my email marketing?

Here are a few ways to add real value to your emails:

-Add surveys, polls, & reviews

This interactive email idea is by far the best way to engage with your apartment clients.

For example: You have a apartment project that’s under construction.

You can send out an email with a survey asking:

• what they would like to see in the entertainment rooms, or
• what kind of music they’d like in the workout facilities.

When it comes to polls, you can ask:

• what kind of games they might want in the common area
• what kind of coffee they would prefer in the residential cafe

These are fun and engaging ways to get useful information from your subscribers and also gives them a sense of importance in the decision-making process of where they would be living.

-Include videos

Referencing back to our video content paving the way for your 2018 marketing efforts, you can combine this with your emails. Add videos of anything you think would be enjoyable for the subscriber to watch.

If you talked about 4th of July events, send them a funny firework fail video.

If you mentioned the outdoor deck being built, send them a video tour of the new amenity. Whatever it is, make sure it’s relevant and interactive.

-Choose GIFs instead of pictures

via GIPHY

#6 – Prioritize Mobile

2018 is set to bring about big changes, none perhaps quite as big as Google’s shift to mobile-first indexing. According to Gary Illyes, Google webmaster trends analyst, the initial timeline was for end of 2017, but is now more 2018.

One thing is certain, that the change will be coming and failure to prepare for this monumental change will prevent your marketing efforts from taking off.

Website design often carries the connotation of a desktop platform. However, you’ll need to switch this mindset moving forward if you wish to see results on the SERPs and don’t want to see a loss in traffic.

#7 – Voice Search and Local Listings will be important

As the rise of voice-enabled smart speakers become more prevalent, and operating systems like Apple’s Siri, Alexa, and Google Home become more user-friendly, you’ll find a greater importance in Google Local Business listings. Instead of people typing out their questions and queries, they will turn to the voice search features as an alternative.

How this affects apartment marketing is through where these smart speakers pull data from. So when people voice search, “hey google, what’s the (phone number, address, etc.) for X Apartments,” the smart speakers will be gathering data from your business listing.

Therefore, it’s an integral and easy part of your marketing strategy to keep your business listing up-to-date and accurate.

According to a report from Juniper Research,

devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo will be in 55% of households by 2022.

#8 – Visual Content

In a 2016 poll, 37% of marketers felt that visual marketing was top priority for their business. That number has continued to rise with the surge of websites like Instagram and Pinterest.

What this means for you: embedded images become an even more integral part of marketing apartments.

Especially apartment marketing!

Your potential clients don’t want to read about what the apartment complex/residences look like, they want to see them.

Creating visual content should be one of your main goals moving forward. That can come in the form of hiring a professional photographer, getting great shots of residential activity, or even pictures of local activities and things to do.

Conclusion

Should you try all these tactics at once?

Probably not, as it might not only be overwhelming, but hinder your efforts tackling too many things at once. Instead, we recommend honing in on one or two specific strategies and focusing your attention on that with an intended goal.

What does that mean?

After you’re done incorporating chatbots into your apartment marketing strategy, what were your results?

Was it successful? What can you expand upon and make it even better? What needs to be removed entirely?

Whether or not you become successful with these strategies depends entirely upon your ability to constantly fine-tune your efforts and building on what works. Otherwise you will remain stagnant.