Be Careful to Avoid These Apartment Marketing Mistakes (No. 4 Might Surprise You!)
It’s official. Multifamily marketing is attracting residents to apartment communities like honeybees to nectar — that is if you are successfully implementing and sticking with your marketing strategy.
By targeting audiences and writing carefully crafted content, multifamily marketing will generate more leads for your property. However, the implementation is not always easy. There are many questions to consider: Who is your audience? What content will you create? How will you distribute your content? With many changes on the horizon place, it can be easy to misstep along the way.
The following mistakes are common but can be easy to avoid when implementing multifamily marketing ideas into your strategy:
1. Creating incorrect resident buyer personas
Multifamily marketing is all about targeting a specific audience. As residents take to the web to research their future apartment homes, it is increasingly important you serve as a resource. You should offer content that informs and educates your audience. Doing so not only helps educate the audience but helps your property in search rankings. If your team is creating content for audiences that are not interested, you will receive little return from the campaign. To figure out who your property’s best target audience is, develop resident buyer personas.
To create one, simply conduct research on your current and potential residents. Focus on their demographics, goals, and challenges to find commonalities that can be put together to create a target persona.
For example, a buyer persona for your property might be a married mother between the ages of 30 and 35. She may have young children, living in a downtown area, and is interested in finding an affordable, spacious property. Directing your content toward this persona will attract the most ideal visitors to your business, generating more promising leads.
2. Rushing the process
A lack of vision and planning in multifamily marketing can lead to the underperformance of the property. Often, properties make the mistake of rushing the process, so they end up posting too much on social media. They might use ineffective technology, or even implement multifamily marketing ideas without a proper strategy in place. By not practicing patience to develop the best processes, you will reach a limited audience, decreasing the impact of your content.
Instead, slow down. Sit down with your team and map out the main goals you would like to achieve with your new digital strategy. Marketers should consider what content interests future residents. Maybe they would like to read a blog about things to do in the area or see social media posts about upcoming events.
Make sure to do your research so you know your content aligns with your target audience. If you take the time, you will see the results.
3. Optimizing for the wrong multifamily SEO keywords
Multifamily SEO keywords are what customers use to find your business on search engines. Therefore, it is important for marketers to optimize important, specific multifamily SEO keywords.
Companies new to digital marketing often make the mistake of using keywords that are too broad. Although it may generate a lot of traffic, a vague multifamily SEO keyword can be very competitive. It can even attract visitors who aren’t interested in your product or service. Another mistake to avoid is using national or global keywords when your company only works locally.
Instead, use specific phrases that are the most likely to guide a searcher to your page. For example, if you are a Dallas property developer focused solely on building apartments, use a phrase like “Dallas apartment property developer” in your content. By including such specific multifamily SEO keywords in your content, your website will be among the first to show up in searches.
Want to learn about the common multifamily SEO mistakes you need to avoid? Check out our blog 6 Common Multifmaily SEO Mistakes You Might Be Guilty of Making.
4. Writing content for content’s sake
Marketers commonly make the mistake of over-producing content. Most believe that if they are not pumping out information 24/7 they will lose leads and residents. This then causes them to create an overflow of content that tends to be less relatable to the target audience.
Rather, focus on what you want to put out there, and create engaging content. It is not the end of the world if you do not post a blog for a few days, or if you miss a post on Instagram. It is more important to have high-quality content than high quantity.
Consider what we call “The Cocktail Party Approach.” If you are a frequent reader of our blogs, you have heard us talk about this approach before. And there is a reason why we talk about it so much; it is a critical approach to take in your multifamily marketing strategy. Think about a cocktail party: you would not spend all of your time talking about yourself at the party, but rather you engage others in conversation, ask about them, and get to know them. It should be the same with your brand.
Brands should spend about 80% of their time conversing with others by posting content focused on their audience, and only 20% advertising themselves. That way, they are mixing aggregated and personal content, and are not turning off their audiences by talking about themselves too much.
For example, instead of promoting your apartment complex with the phrase, “Our apartments have luxury finishes,” say, “Live the life of luxury you have always dreamed of.” This draws the customer in without talking about yourself.
5. Failing to promote your content
No one will see your content if you do not promote it. Marketers often forget to utilize multifamily SEO tactics, which increase the chances of their content being found by their target audience.
Remember the keywords we talked about? Make sure to use proper multifamily SEO keywords in your title, headings, and content to help readers find your site. Promotion can also be done through social media. However, make sure you alter your content for each social site so it can perform at its best.
Another way to promote is through email. After you have compiled an accurate email list of leads and residents, send them links to blogs and other updated content. Do not forget to add a “share” button to social media pages to optimize sharing!
6. Not utilizing resources and tools
Wanting to have the best marketing technology can sometimes outshine the importance of having resourceful employees. Most marketers decide to burden current employees with the task of managing digital channels on these technologies, leading to confused workers and poor-quality content.
By hiring a specific team with the proper skills to execute digital campaigns, you will see a tangible difference in your technological investment. A great place to start organizing your campaign is with the tool Buffer, a software application for web and mobile that manages multiple social media accounts and allows you to schedule posts in advance for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
However, make sure you are not solely fixated on technology. Customer experience is especially reliant on positive human interaction, and no technology can compare with that.
7. Failing to organize your lists
List segmentation is a powerful tool used to group your contacts into different segments based on a particular similarity, such as demographics, industry, page views, or psychographics. If your property chooses not to segment its lists, you run the risk of sending irrelevant content to all of your prospects. If your prospective residents repeatedly see content that is not relatable, you may lose leads.
Increase your chances of converting leads to leases by implementing list segmentation before you push out content. Your prospects will find your information much more engaging, and you can increase email click-through rates by 16%.
8. Separating multifamily marketing and sales teams
Keeping multifamily marketing and sales teams divided on digital campaigns causes them to compete for the same audience and lose out on utilizing each other. It also creates inconsistencies throughout the property.
Rather, include both teams on all projects related to your multifamily marketing ideas and campaign. By doing this, your teams will be able to work and communicate on the same level so your campaign is consistent. You may even increase the chances of cross-promoting the other team’s work.
9. Not consulting the experts
Trying to control all aspects of multifamily marketing is a heavy load to carry. Without the right resources or strategy, it is easy to fall behind in such a fast-paced environment. Your finances may also take a hit, as your ROI is dependent on successful apartment marketing campaigns.
Do not be afraid to consult the experts. Professionals trained in apartment marketing will help you develop a better campaign, and can give your company a competitive advantage by introducing you to the latest and greatest digital strategies. Not to mention, your ROI will increase and you will attract even more potential customers.
Avoiding these errors when developing a multifamily marketing strategy will improve your overall lead attraction, ROI, and future digital campaigns.
