Digital Marketing for Apartment Complexes: Unlocking Strategies To Fill Your Properties
If you own or manage an apartment community, picture this:
- Your calendar is completely booked with tours of your facilities.
- Thousands of potential renters visit your website each month.
- You convert leads from your site every day.
- You have a waiting list of people who want to live in your space.
- There’s buzz around town that your apartments are the place to be.
- You close deals at a fantastic cost per conversion.
- You work with a digital marketing agency that provides complete clarity about your online performance.
It doesn’t have to just be a dream! With digital strategies from The Houston Marketing Agency, you can make all this happen and more.
We’re a Marketing Agency Specializing in Apartment Communities
We provide full-service digital marketing for apartments, backed by years of experience that have shown us what delivers results.
Reach out for a free, no-obligation consultation and discover how we can help your business thrive.
The Holistic Playbook for a High-Performing Apartment Company Digital Marketing Campaign
As a top Houston Marketing Agency, we have clear processes and strategies to get our clients results.
We’ll focus on three essential aspects of your digital marketing journey:
- Utilizing data analytics to track your campaign’s performance
- Attracting inbound traffic to your website
- Turning that traffic into loyal customers
While this may seem pretty straightforward, you should keep in mind that your results should be trackable to really get you to the next level.
Can you confidently answer these questions about your apartment company’s digital marketing efforts?
- What is your website’s current conversion rate?
- How many organic visitors did your site receive from Google last month?
- What is your cost per qualified lead from Google Ads?
You might not have all the answers right now, but we’re here to help you figure it out. While we’re a digital marketing agency, we also see ourselves as a “data agency” offering digital marketing reporting for apartment managers. This allows us to pinpoint what’s working and what isn’t so we can craft a tailored, comprehensive, and high-performing campaign for your business.
Phase 1: Build Robust Data Analytics
Trackable KPIs
Your ability to attract potential renters and fill your apartment buildings should all come down to the data. If you don’t have reliable data analytics tracking or are relying on intuition or guesswork, your marketing decisions won’t be as effective.
Important KPIs that your apartment company should be tracking include:
- Average rent
- Occupancy rate
- Lease renewal rate
- Renter satisfaction
- Maintenance costs
- Property inventory
These may not be tied directly to digital marketing, but they’re important to your bottom line. Other key digital marketing KPIs may include:
- Number of website visitors by channel
- Cost per channel
- Cost per website visitor
- Cost per lead
- Cost per qualified lead
- Cost per conversion
Data Fidelity
Sadly, many digital marketing agencies don’t give data accuracy the attention it deserves. We’ve taken over campaigns from other agencies and freelancers and discovered several issues with the data, such as:
- Double-counting conversions
- Tracking irrelevant actions, like a Google Maps “direction request” to your apartment building
- Failing to track every stage of the funnel, making it difficult to analyze drop-off and conversion rates
At The Houston Marketing Agency, we prioritize precise data tracking that is fully aligned with the digital marketing objectives of your apartment community.
Phase 2: Maximize Affordable Inbound Traffic
With today’s high demand for housing, new apartment complexes are being built at an increasing rate. The New York Times reports that over two million new units are expected by 2028. If you don’t have the right digital marketing to help your apartments stand out, you could easily be lost in the crowd.
Simply knowing that people are searching for apartments in your area isn’t enough — you need to understand the why behind it. Access to this data enables you to fine-tune your digital marketing campaign, concentrating on the strategies that drive inbound traffic at the lowest cost.
Here are some key areas we’ll focus on for your apartment company’s digital marketing campaign.
When you tell a person to look up something online, what phrase do you use?
So it makes perfect sense to start with Google for our apartment digital marketing analytics.
The search data above shows that 3.6 million people are looking for “apartments near me” or some variation of that term every month.
If we go more local and examine the searches for “apartments in Houston,” the numbers are still quite large: 165,000 per month, which is almost 2 million searches each year.
There are also other groups of people searching for various apartment features they want. Here’s a small sampling of current data.
Why is it crucial to understand these types of searches?
Because you want your apartment building’s digital marketing strategy to leverage what people in your area are actively searching for. If you have what they want but aren’t promoting that with organic and paid traffic, you’re missing valuable opportunities to attract potential renters.
Organic
You can rank organically in two places on Google for keywords like “apartments near me.”
The first is the Google Local Pack.
How can you get your apartment complex to rank here and appear at the top of page one on Google?
Local SEO is complex and involves several factors, but the basic formula is straightforward:
- Keep your Google Business Profile optimized and well-reviewed.
- Include plenty of localized content on your website.
The organic results will appear just below the Google Local Pack on the search results page.
How can you secure a top ranking for Houston apartment organic results?
Begin by:
- Creating a content-rich, comprehensive website
- Optimizing on-page SEO elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and more
Paid
Paid traffic is essential to an apartment company’s digital marketing strategy, but not all channels yield the same results. An experienced digital marketing agency can help you select options with the highest return on investment.
Google Ads
Google Ads is a paid platform that may allow you to get to those top spots on the search results page. When managed effectively by your digital marketing agency, your sponsored ads will attract clicks from your target audience, driving traffic to your site and increasing the potential for conversions.
There are different types of Google Ads we can test to assess campaign performance, including:
- Search
- Performance Max
- Display
- And more
YouTube Ads
Your potential renters need to see apartment spaces for themselves. But before you even get them on the books for a tour, you can offer a taste of what your company has to offer with high-quality videos of units, pools, storage, parking, and any other amenities you provide.
Statistics show that YouTube currently has around 2.49 billion active users per month, so if you aren’t tapping into this market you may not be reaching a huge part of your customer base.
Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok Ads
Social media should be a big part of your apartment company’s digital marketing strategy. While there may be some overlap between age groups across various platforms, here’s a general breakdown:
- Facebook is popular among Baby Boomers and Gen X.
- Instagram is favored by both Gen X and Millennials.
- TikTok is mainly preferred by Millennials and Gen Z.
Who is the target demographic of your apartment building? If you’re looking to attract an older crowd that may be looking to downsize, advertise on Facebook. If your units are full of younger people who are just getting started in life, finding new renters through TikTok may be the way to go. Discuss your goals with The Houston Marketing Agency and we’ll give you our expert recommendations.
Phase 3: Increase Conversion Rates
The strategies we’ve discussed so far focus on driving traffic to your website—but that’s only the first step.
A crucial part of your strategy should be turning those visitors into renters and building long-term loyalty.
Let’s discuss some practical ways you may be able to make that happen so you can have people looking like this.
Use CRO Best Practices
Conversion rate optimization includes a range of strategies, such as:
- Making sure your website is mobile-friendly and user-friendly
- Using high-quality, original images and videos
- Showcasing reviews and testimonials on your site
While we can’t cover every tactic we use in this guide, here are some key strategies apartment managers can employ to improve conversion rates.
Split Test Landing Pages
Conducting split tests is the fastest way to find out if changes to your website’s copy, design, or other on-page elements boost conversion rates.
Here’s how we do it:
- Landing Page A acts as the control page.
- Landing Page B is the test page, where you alter one element of Landing Page A.
- For instance, you could change the button text from “Find Out More” to “Take a Tour.”
By comparing the performance of the control page with the test page, you’ll pinpoint which elements drive more user engagement. Continuously applying this process can help boost conversions.
Clear CTAs
When someone visits your apartment building’s website, it’s crucial to have clear Calls to Action (CTAs) visible throughout.
Some examples include:
- Check availability
- Schedule a tour
- Fill out an application
- And more
Optimizing the Funnel
Users go through multiple stages on their journey from being a curious searcher to signing a lease, and you’ll often encounter several drop-offs as they hesitate to take the next step.
You can use your digital marketing campaign to address these trends by:
- Identifying where drop-offs happen
- Optimizing these points through data-driven testing
- Monitoring performance
- Continuously testing for improvements
Increase LTV on Autopilot
Once someone signs a lease for one of your units, that doesn’t mean your work with them is done. With effective digital marketing, you can retain them as a renter for years to come, encourage them to upgrade to a larger unit, and enroll them in a referral program.
Here are just a few digital marketing strategies you can use to boost your customers’ lifetime value (LTV):
- Offer discounts on monthly rent for referrals.
- Conduct periodic digital surveys to find out where you can make improvements.
- Keep extensive data to target renters for upgrades through email campaigns.
- Leverage digital technologies to simplify processes and enhance communication with tenants.
Digital Marketing for Apartments Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
The Houston Digital Marketing Agency is committed to helping both local and national brands steadily grow their customer base, no matter the industry.
We’re excited to make your apartment complex thrive with our tailored digital marketing services. And, if we don’t improve your performance within three months, we offer a 100% refund.
What are you waiting for? Contact us today and learn how to get started.