Creating effective apartment marketing strategies for 2021 budget season is quite the complicated topic that can easily become overwhelming. You’re being asked to look into the future and make decisions that can have a long-term impact on your community’s bottom line. And, unless you have a crystal ball, none of us have mastered that.
Building these budgets and plans requires leasing and management teams to consider multiple trends. Not just apartment marketing trends, but consumer trends and larger economic shifts as well. And, if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we are going to get some curveballs along the way. However, we can learn from the past and we can use current information to make some smart assumptions for the future.
To help you with your 2021 apartment marketing budgeting and planning, here are some key considerations when creating those apartment marketing strategies.
Keep the Foundation in Mind
While today’s leasing and apartment marketing landscape may look quite different that you thought it would, the foundation of multifamily marketing is still the same. When developing apartment marketing ideas, make sure you consider the where and who. Meaning, where your community is located and who your target audience is.
Tailor your apartment marketing strategies accordingly. If you’re a family-friendly community in the middle of a larger city, focus your apartment advertising ideas on reaching families and promoting the family-friendly environment your community fosters. Or are you looking for marketing ideas for luxury apartments? Ask who is your ideal resident? What do they do? Where are they from? How do they like to receive information? While the mechanisms have changed, at the core, your marketing strategies should have goals and objectives with that ideal resident in mind.
Virtual Leasing
Perhaps the largest shift in the multifamily industry has been the move to virtual leasing. In the time of COVID-19, unless you have adapted to virtual leasing, creative apartment marketing slogans and fun marketing ideas for apartments don’t mean much. If you are reaching your target audience, but are not giving them a safe, secure way to connect with your leasing team and experience your community, then you will likely be leaving conversions on the table.
Effective virtual leasing allows leasing agents to build trust and transparency through the process, even if human-to-human contact is limited. The best virtual leasing efforts are also integrated into your marketing efforts, systems and processes, and are fully tracked to be able to prove effectiveness and ROI. By building virtual leasing into your apartment marketing strategy, you’ll retain the best parts of multifamily leasing in any environment.
Video Touring and Leasing Tools
Going hand-in-hand with virtual leasing comes another major consideration – video touring and leasing tools. Both live and pre-recorded, personalized videos are and will continue to be major tactics for any apartment marketing strategy. Investing in and including these powerful tools can foster the realness and human interaction that is missing from 360 and 3D virtual tours. Being able to show a prospect exactly what they want to see when they want to see it? Being there to answer their questions? Or pre-recording a video specifically for them that shows them something as seemingly minor as the measurement of a closet? That level of service is a sure fire win and key differentiator between your community and the comp down the street.
In addition, live or pre-recording videos can be great as part of social media marketing for apartments. Record and use them as community outreach marketing ideas. Or use video to share apartment leasing specials or apartment move-in incentives. There’s no reason not to consider a live video platform in your marketing strategy either. Think virtual open houses that take your property straight to your target audience online no matter where they are. The demand is only growing for apartment videos in all forms and as virtual leasing takes off, video needs will be right there with it.
Flexibility
You may have put all the right resources and thought into creating a world-class marketing strategy. However, you have to have some flexibility to pivot if that’s what the environment requires. The best marketing strategies allow for some flow based on where customer and market sentiment goes. Those who were quickly able to move to virtual leasing at the start of COVID-19 restrictions can attest to how important that was for their communities.
The atmosphere of 2020 has made virtual leasing a must have for multifamily communities. However, this disruption was a long time coming. The pandemic, eventually, will pass. But virtual leasing and these other key apartment marketing strategy considerations will continue for quite some time. Today’s consumers wanted it and now, they’ll fully expect it. Prepare for 2021 to continue the virtual revolution. Make sure your marketing is up to the challenge. Then, your community will not only survive this pandemic-themed time, but will thrive in the next.
If you’re ready to make the virtual leasing leap or have questions about how to do so in the most effective and affordable way, reach out. A seamless transition between your apartment marketing efforts into virtual leasing efforts will be a critical piece to get right in 2021. If you’d like help in making that happen, Realync is here to help.
Until next time…keep it real!
