Beginner’s Guide to Apartment Marketing
March 1, 2018 11:00 am Leave your thoughtsAs a property manager you’ve got to wear a lot of hats: leasing office, groundskeeper, bookkeeper, handyman, security guard, and more! The idea of adding another one (that of marketer) on can be very intimidating! To make your life easier, Market Apartments has come up with a simple, beginner’s guide to multifamily apartment marketing.
What is apartment marketing??
Likely, your biggest goal as a property manager is to increase occupancy. Because of this, you’ll need to do two things: retain your good residents, and increase leases for empty units. How do you keep the good ones and entice the new ones?? Marketing! Things like social media, content marketing, SEO, and property website design will help with both of these objectives.
Why do I need apartment marketing?
Over 90% of potential renters admit to finding their apartment online. Without digital marketing, your property is relying on just 10% of the market!! Any good business owner will tell you that it’s time to start utilizing digital marketing. Start small. We recommend focusing on four areas: a strong website, good SEO, at least one social media account, and a blog.
Website Design
Good web design takes time and care, and unless you’re a master programmer (add that to the list of many “hats” worn by property managers), you’ll likely need to hire a digital marketing firm to create your website for you. To maximize your website for your current residents (who likely are surrounded by technology and expect certain things out of your property website), consider including the following to your site:
- A resident portal where residents can pay rent, submit comments, and leave online reviews!
- Beautiful photography
- Dynamic floorplans and virtual tours
SEO
Having a stunning design and compelling content does not mean anything if Internet users cannot find you, and for the purposes of the internet, this means ranking on page 1 of Google. Considering how many millions and millions of apartment websites are out there, this may seem impossible.
But don’t worry! That’s what apartment marketing firms are here for! Learning to rank well on Google is both a science and an art, but basic things like keywords, backlinks, and meta descriptions can go a long way for rankings.
Keywords
Establishing a few, well-crafted keywords to insert in your content helps keep your site focused and lets Google know what your site is promoting. Keywords are generally separated into two categories: long tail and short tail. Since this is our Beginner’s Guide, we’ll keep it brief and give short explanations. “Long tail” keywords are made up of 3-5 words and reflect popular key terms that residents are searching.
For instance, a long tail keyword might be “luxury 2 bedroom apartments.” Short tail or “head” keywords tend to be broader, but come with more competition, such as “apartments” or “apartments in Utah.” These searches are very popular, so a lot of residents will search for them, but also more websites will be using them. You want to make use of both short and long tail.
There are several helpful tools out there to help you in researching the most useful keywords. We highly recommend this Moz keyword explorer site to help you decide which keywords you’d like to use.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links that point “back” to other sites, and can be found anywhere on that site. Fostering relationships with other businesses and companies helps you establish backlinks. For instance, we recently worked with a pet-friendly property that put on a fundraiser for a local pet shop. The event was hugely successful in that it attracted potential residents, showed off their amenities, but also garnered a lot of backlinks. News centers that covered the event put links to the apartments’ website, as well as the pet shop.
Finding backlinks does not have to be that involved. If you focus on producing quality, shareable content, you’ll attract the attention of other sites that are always looking to share data.
Here’s our advice: research the types of sites you’d like to see give you backlinks and create content along the lines of which they are sharing.
Social Media
Keeping a social media account can go a long way for increasing visibility of your website. More accounts will help with backlinks, content, and SEO rankings. We suggest to start with a Facebook account, as residents can leave positive reviews for your property, and it’s easy to keep up with posting a few times a week. Facebook also lets you schedule posts in advance.
Content Marketing: Keeping a Blog
Did you know that apartments that blog receive 67% more leads than those who do not? We attribute this increase in sales to the advice that “content is king.” When you blog, you get your apartment’s name out there. When you blog well, you’re likely to be shared, reblogged, and talked about. Consider the blog for the Villas at San Mateo. They tailor their content to their residents (in this case residents over 55 years old). They post relevant, interesting information in an easily digestible way.
Of course, the best advice we can give for apartment marketing is to hire a professional! Apartment marketers (good ones, anyway) have been studying and practicing these things for years. They know the latest updates from Google and the quickest fixes to online issues. Contact us today for a FREE consultation about your apartment web design, social media, online listings, rankings, SEO, and more!
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Categorised in: Apartment Marketing
This post was written by Market Apartments
