Author: Stacey Feeney

Pet-Friendly Apartment Marketing Strategies & Campaigns

Written by Stacey Feeney on May 23, 2022. Posted in All Articles, Marketing.

If you’re a pet-friendly apartment community, you already know: it’s a big draw for many of your residents. Capitalize on this special offering, and build up your residents’ confidence in your community’s pet friendliness through both creating a pet’s paradise (and marketing it like the total gold mine it is). With more than one-third of all American households owning a dog, and over two-thirds of households owning a pet of any kind, it’s no wonder that being a pet-friendly community will work out in your favor. The benefits of pet-friendly apartments are clearly there, for both the manager and the resident: You can improve your reputation, broaden your audience, make a little extra money with pet rent, and encourage more lease renewals.

Start seeing the locals “sniff out” your apartments (and settle in) in no time.

Step 1: Show You’re Pet-friendly

SHOW, DON’T TELL

You can say that you’re pet-friendly until you’re blue in the face, but ultimately, you need to show it. Make sure that every pet amenity is exactly what your residents (including Fluffy) need.

PRIMP YOUR PET AREAS

Make sure your dog park is totally inviting: complete your dog park package with a dog waste bag dispenser and waste receptacles. This not only encourages your residents to pick up after Fido, it also gives them a specific place to put that “pile.” Once the day at the park is complete, is your dog wash area ready for use? Advertise it! Make sure every resident knows that there’s a self-serve dog wash area just for your furry friends.

At every turn, it’s important to remind your residents how much you love their pets. Have pet treats at the front desk; you can even give out pet birthday treats. The residents will be honored that you thought of their little companion, and will probably brag about it to their friends!

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

Even if it’s clear that you’ve got all the pet-friendly amenities, keep up that energy. Did you put a water bowl out for thirsty visitors near the front desk? Do you have a few veterinary offices you can recommend on hand? Keep up and make sure you stay at the top of your game with your pet-friendly reputation.

Step 2: Create a Pet-Friendly Marketing Campaign

SHOW YOU’RE PET-FRIENDLY IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Everyone loves puppies and kittens. Photos of them are no different. Posting photos of your four-legged residents can attract new leads to your apartment community (just because they’re cute) and it can help show off how pet-friendly you are. You can schedule in a “pet of the week” or “pet of the month” feature into your social media calendar, and ask a few questions of your furry friend:

What’s your name and how long have you been living here?
How old are you?
What’s your favorite treat and your favorite activity?
What do you like most about living in our community?
What’s your human’s name?

You can either create a drawing for “pet of the month” or you can request the publication of the photo and answers in exchange for a special pet treat. Be sure to capture a photo of the pet in their apartment, in the dog park, or looking out the window of the community, to fully paint the pet-friendly picture for those scrolling through social media. Additionally, make sure you grab a testimonial from the owner about the pet amenities in your apartment community.

Additional social media pet-friendly apartment marketing ideas:

IG Stories: Create engaging Instagram stories with multiple choice “Guess the Name of this Furry Resident!” or other fun guessing games
IG Reels: Create fun, easy videos with trending audio clips to show off your cutest residents out “in the wild” in your amenities (with the owner’s permission, of course)
IG Saved Stories: Save IG stories in one spot on your instagram, labeled: “Pets at ______ Apartments” so visitors to your instagram page can always find it
Hashtags: Use hashtags #petfriendly #furryfriends #petfriendlyapartments to be easily found
Share testimonials from pet owners about the amenities at least once per month.

If you’re running out of ideas, look up trending instagram ideas, and see how you can apply that to your next pet-themed post!

GET “PET-FRIENDLY” IN PRINT

As for print marketing: keep it general, but informative—market the pet-friendly amenities that you have, and be sure to include photos of each amenity. Include at least one testimonial that speaks to your apartment community’s pet-friendliness. Along with testimonials and amenity descriptions (along with stating whether there is pet rent or a pet deposit, or any breed restrictions) make sure you have a photo of pets in your community, either with their owners or out in the dog park. Showing your pet friendliness in action is key.

Additional pet-friendly apartment print marketing ideas:

Create eye-catching signage with all your brand guidelines incorporated: font, colors, style, logo in the corner, and don’t forget to announce it from the rooftops. Simply: “WE’RE a PET FRIENDLY community!” That should say it all.
Make a mailer/postcard featuring your pet-friendly amenities prominently (and proudly)!

ADVERTISE SPECIAL OFFERS FOR PET OWNERS

If you’re able, offer a leasing special for your pet rent or pet deposits. This can be especially helpful if you’re trying to grow that aspect of your community. People with pets will certainly be appreciative, and once they become residents, they’ll appreciate your community even more. (And they’ll tell their friends. Organic reach is a beautiful thing.)

DON’T SLEEP ON DIGITAL DESIGN

Your website should have plenty of opportunities to be found in SEO results for “pet-friendly apartments [City State].” This is what pet-owners will be searching for, and it’s best if you know how to appear in the first few results of those keywords. Use “pet-friendly apartment” and “pet-friendly” and “pet deposit” throughout your website, but especially in headings, special text (bold, italics, bullet points) and in photo captions and meta tags. If possible, creating an entire page for it will garner some additional attention from website crawlers as well.

Your email subscribers/leads will need to be reminded that you’re pet-friendly. Feature it in every email, whether it’s a brief mention of an upcoming event, a link to your latest social post about pets, or a reminder that you love pets in your community. Set yourself apart.

Additional digital marketing tips for your pet-friendly apartments:

Make pet-friendly themed ad sets (and consider making a specific pet-friendly landing page with all the deets). Need help with PPC? Ask zipcode.
Make sure your pet residents make an appearance in your promo videos.

Step 3: Test Your Pet-Friendly Results

SURVEY SAYS

Sometimes you only know what is going wrong with your community’s amenities because of complaints. Surveys can help you address issues before they become a bigger problem. How pet friendly your community is may be no different. Send out a survey to all the registered pet owners in your building/community. Ask them a handful of questions:

How often do you use our dog park? (Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Usually, Always)
How often do you use our dog wash facility? (Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Usually, Always)
Do you find our community to be pet-friendly? (Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Usually, Always)
Is there any way we can improve our pet friendliness?

Just a few tailored questions can give you better insight into what your next steps should be.

CREATE COMMUNITY

If you’ve found that your residents need to make more friends, start brainstorming pet-friendly events and put them on the calendar! Advertise a matching dress-up contest. Host an adoption event. Partner with local pet shops for giveaways. Host an outdoor movie night, showing Lady & The Tramp or another pet classic. Bonus points if you do a raffle giveaway at the end or during an intermission!

All told, pets are part of our families. And families need homes—it should be your apartment community. Make it easy for current and prospective residents to choose you, because you’re the ones that offer the most for their whole family.

It’s important to build a pet-friendly marketing campaign to capitalize on more residents and more leases signed; employ a multi-faceted approach for your pet-friendly apartment marketing, from added brochures to special social media features to custom designed a-frame signs. At a loss? Contact the pros at zipcode creative if you need a boost creating your next campaign!

Pup Culture campaign is ©Fairfield Residential | Work executed by Stacey Feeney, owner of zipcode creative, while under creative direction and employment at Fairfield Residential.

Web Forms for Multifamily Lead Capture

Written by Stacey Feeney on May 23, 2022. Posted in All Articles, Marketing.

Get web visitors to convert by thinking more strategically about your forms.

In a sea of competition, sometimes it can be tough to generate those leads you’re looking for. If you’re getting good website traffic, but your visitors aren’t converting into leads, it might be time to start digging into the “why.”

One often overlooked—but incredibly impactful—part of your website is the way you’ve designed your web forms. If you’re asking web visitors to enter their information to sign up for a tour, join your newsletter, or get in touch with your leasing team, take a closer look at the form design to determine if it could be the culprit in your low conversion rates. Capturing leads on your website is an important way to get prospective residents’ information—and making those forms as seamless and easy-to-use as possible is integral to high conversion rates.

Learn more about web form design and how to be sure you’re using best practices throughout your community’s website.

Why Web Forms are a Must for Multifamily Communities

Instead of just having hundreds of anonymous website visitors, web forms allow you to collect leads’ information, like their name and email address, so you can engage with your target audience in a more dynamic way. You can use forms in many places on your website, from the contact page to the homepage to specific landing pages.

No matter where you use the forms, once a visitor fills it out, they’ve converted into a lead. As a result, you’ll be able to market more effectively to them, from sending marketing emails to having your leasing team reach out about scheduling tours.

Steps to Creating a High-Converting Form

Whether you need to redo your existing forms or are implementing them for the first time, all it takes is five simple steps.

Look at Form Placement on the Page
If you have existing forms that aren’t performing, the first thing you need to do is look at where they are on the webpage. For the best performance, forms should always be above the fold—this means that the visitor shouldn’t have to scroll at all to see the form on the page. Instead, it should be one of the first things they see—if not the first—as soon as they land on the site. That way, it’s top of mind and they’re more likely to engage and enter their info right away.
Optimize for Mobile Visitors
Roughly half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. To capture this audience, it’s important to think about your form design not only from a desktop perspective but from a mobile one, too. Because smartphone screens are smaller, you should remove any unnecessary fields from the form, making it as short as possible. Be sure the form is also responsive, so it automatically adjusts to the visitor’s screen size. And remember: when it comes to forms, simpler is always better.
Consider a Pop-Up
Pop-up forms, on average, have over a 3% higher conversion rate than static forms. These eye-catching alternatives draw the visitor’s attention and are often easier to fill out than other forms, making the barrier to entry much lower. You can even offer incentives, like discounted rent or free amenity fees, for those who act fast and enter their info into the pop-up to increase engagement even further.
Create a Strong Call-to-Action
Calls-to-action, or CTAs, are integral across your website—but they’re even more important on your forms. Creating a clear next step for visitors will make them more likely to engage, upping your conversion rate and increasing the odds that you’ll be able to connect with prospective residents.Like with CTAs in other places on your site, infuse your CTA with urgency. Use words like “now” or “today” and consider adding personalized words like “you” or “our.” This will help build a stronger relationship with the reader and make them more likely to submit.
A/B Test a Few Options
When it comes to digital marketing, there’s no more powerful tool than A/B testing. Creating two different versions of your forms and assessing which performs better allows you to get into the heads of your target audience. You can test everything from the colors and style of the form to the CTA to the available form fields. Just be sure not to only test one variable at a time, or you can skew your results.By following these steps, you’ll be able to transform your forms from clunky and ineffective to lead-capturing powerhouses. But if you feel like you need a little added help, let zipcode creative take the lead. From building community websites from scratch to overhauling the design and user experience, we’re seasoned at working in the multifamily space to help our clients increase conversions, lease-up faster, and cultivate amazing brand recognition.

Get in touch today to take the first step!

Print Marketing’s Not Dead!

Written by Stacey Feeney on May 12, 2022. Posted in All Articles, Marketing.

Is print marketing still relevant, or is it completely dead? Depending on your target resident and the marketing goals you’ve put in place, it could be your best-kept secret. If your ideal resident is able to hold something in their hands, understand what you offer, AND be attracted to your multifamily dwelling with a print marketing piece you’ve created, congratulations–you’ve created better brand (and more consistent) brand recognition. You’ve successfully catered to your target resident, especially if they’re visual learners or have become tired of screens.

Be Seen

GET PHYSICAL
Remember when email was new-ish? And it was exciting to hear “You’ve Got Mail”? And now we’re all out here trying to zero our inbox and swim through the spam to find that one important email we missed. Digital fatigue is setting in and hitting hard. In our highly-technological and digital world, it’s time to focus on the physical, tangible things prospects and customers can hold on to. Take up literal space and start showing off your print marketing while you have their attention.

SET YOUR SIGHTS STRAIGHT
In a sea of digital ads, streaming television shows, 15-second reels, and even shorter attention spans, you want to be visible. Visibility doesn’t count for much when your company has a single instagram post that’s mindlessly scrolled by. Start thinking “old-school” and diversify your marketing efforts for print too. When you create print marketing pieces, whether it’s a direct-mail postcard, a brochure, or a full-on welcome packet, you’ve just guaranteed your prospective (or even current) resident’s full attention. They can’t read your print marketing piece and scroll their phone at the exact same time. They can’t look through your welcome packet and online shop at the exact same time. This is an all-eyes-on-you situation. Make the most of it!

BEFORE THEY FORGET
Finally, you’re in your prospective resident’s hands and sights, whether from the mailbox or straight from the customer service desk. It can sit on their counter, be placed in their planner, they can send a picture of it to a friend, they can use it as a bookmark. All-in-all, it’s a physical reminder of what they still need to do. And it will nag (in the nicest way) at them until they make a decision one way or the other. You want your customer to say “Oh, yeah, I need to schedule a tour with them! I should do that right now before I forget. Again.”

Grab the Bull By the Horns

IT’S OUR BRAND
It’s time to get their attention. Make the print marketing piece beautiful. Ensure that it has everything that your branding requires for colors, fonts and logos so that it’s clearly your apartment community brand. Every piece of print marketing that you send out should be a perfect extension of your branding, every time. And if you’re able, spring for good paper (Soft Touch coating, anyone?) We’re living in a material world—make the most of it.

OFFER TIME
Once you have their attention with all that lovely branding, it’s time to create an offer they can’t refuse. It’s especially impactful if you require them to “bring this card with you” to get a free gift, rent concession, or any other offer you have in mind. This means they’ll have to hang onto the print marketing piece (be it postcard or brochure) until they follow through on your call to action.

Make It Clear

WORDS MATTER
And now that you might have their attention, it’s time to take a look at what you need to make sure your print marketing says (and doesn’t say). This is a place to SAY NO to:

- Typos
- boring content
- unclear copy
- complicated offerings (or worse: too many words)

KEEP IT SIMPLE
Keep it simple. Get good copy. If you can, have a professional create the copy for you (we do that!), so you know it’s a slam dunk. Be highly selective with anything you place on your print marketing to make sure it gets attention and keeps attention. And don’t forget to always always always include contact information and a call to action. No matter what. Put a “Call us!” or “Book a tour!” or “Lease Today!” Your ideal resident has the info they wanted, and now you get to tell them what to do next. Don’t waste that opportunity.

Pictures are Everything

BIGGEST AND BEST
If your words and offers haven’t captured them, time to pull out all the stops. (You really should be focusing on all of the above, regardless: branding, words, offers, and photos.) Use your professional photography to show off your best amenities. Pick your biggest attractions, and focus on those. You have limited space, and you want the biggest bang for your buck—whether that means showing off a sparkling pool or placing your open concept kitchens on full display. Above all, make sure that your choice of photos and words align with your ideal renter. And for any print marketing materials you’ll have in stock for a while (like brochures) avoid seasonal themes or limited-time offers. That’s exactly how to keep print alive.

Print marketing isn’t dead—at least not on our watch. Sending your ideal resident home with a document or packet helps answer questions. It reminds them of deadlines and fees. Most importantly: it helps encourage them to seal the deal. More questions answered, more leases signed. Ready to make your print marketing work for you? Get in touch

Areum business card design is ©Fairfield Residential | Work executed by Stacey Feeney, owner of zipcode creative, while under creative direction and employment at Fairfield Residential.

Blogs are Beneficial for Property Management Companies Too!

Written by Stacey Feeney on May 12, 2022. Posted in All Articles, Marketing.

While blogging might seem like something for big brands and influencers, it’s actually an effective way for any business to connect with its audience. Blogs offer property management companies a place to share long-form content that showcases your expertise, allows you to show off your communities, amenities, and neighborhoods, and connect with prospective and current residents.

4 Reasons to Start a Multifamily Blog

Starting a blog isn’t just for show. Over time, it will help you generate more leads, lease-up faster, and establish yourself as a multifamily authority in your region(s).

Increase Website Traffic
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a major factor that will help you increase web traffic. And one of the easiest ways to increase your site’s SEO value? A blog. Blogs are so effective, in fact, that businesses with blogs attract 55% more traffic than those that don’t.

Optimizing your website for SEO allows search engines to more easily find your communities. Creating valuable content that answers prospective residents’ questions about your property management company and about the multifamily industry, renting, or your neighborhoods will not only establish you as an expert but also make your site more likely to pop up in search results to drive brand visibility.

Generate More Leads
As your website has more and more leads, it will also increase your brand awareness and your opportunity to generate leads. Brands that prioritize blogging receive 13 times the ROI than companies that did not, making it an effective and worthwhile investment for multifamily developers and property managers.

As more inbound traffic comes to your site, your conversion rates will naturally rise, too. When writing your blog posts, be sure to include strong calls-to-action, offer readers exclusive and informational content, and even offer perks or discounts like rent incentives or referral programs. Adding all of these elements to your blog will help you increase your lead database for a larger group of prospective residents you can market to in the future.

Showcase Your Expertise in the Industry
A blog is an amazing opportunity to show off your knowledge. From discussing emerging apartment community trends to showcasing resident programming or upgrades, it is a one-stop shop for you to demonstrate your insights across multifamily topics. From industry trends to neighborhood round-ups, you can feature any type of content that establishes you as an expert in the multifamily space.

Don’t feel limited by text. A blog can be a multimedia platform that hosts photos, videos, and text—or all three in a single post. Use your creativity to come up with original angles and new ways of sharing information to keep your audience engaged and excited.

Keep Residents Informed
While blogs are effective for attracting new residents, they’re also an amazing way to stay connected with your current residents at the property website level. Use an apartment community-specific blog to promote upcoming resident events, community updates, or important news. You can even use it to spotlight popular businesses in your area, create neighborhood guides, or showcase staff or residents. Once you’ve published these posts, you can even send them out to your residents in a monthly newsletter or share them on your social media channels to generate additional page views, ensuring that the content ends up right in your residents’ inboxes.

How to Start a Multifamily Blog

Starting a blog is as easy as three simple steps.

Choose Your Blog Platform
To start your blog, you must first decide where you will host your content. If your community already has a website, it’s often easiest to use the same platform for your blog content. Sites like WordPress or Webflow are user-friendly and affordable options if your current site isn’t capable of hosting a blog.
Choose Blog Topics
Once you have your blog set up, come up with five to seven different content buckets. These could include things like resident life, community events, or industry trends. Brainstorm a few different blog ideas within each of these buckets to give you a solid foundation to start with. From there, you can keep a running list of blog topics to ensure you always have something in the queue when it’s time to write your next post. You can even consider adding a once-a-month brainstorm session to make sure it remains a priority throughout the year.
Write Your First Post
Once the backend of your blog is all set up, it’s time to start writing! First, determine the main objective of your blog, whether that’s driving site traffic, increasing leads, or simply engaging existing residents. You should also choose how often you’ll post. Consistency is much more important than frequency, so pick a cadence and try to stick to it as much as possible. Finally, you’ll want to decide what action you want readers to take at the end of every post, whether that’s subscribing to your newsletter or signing up for a leasing tour.

Once you’ve answered all of these questions, you can start writing. Focus on creating unique content that adds value for your readers. Be sure to also use your brand voice and incorporate photos and info about your communities when relevant to help promote what you have to offer.

If you need help getting your blog up and running, consult the experts. At zipcode creative, we’re experienced in all facets of multifamily marketing—including blogging—and can help you with everything from the backend set-up to your content strategy and even copywriting each post. Reach out to our team today to get started!

Rebranding Apartments? Ask These 5 Questions First.

Written by Stacey Feeney on April 29, 2022. Posted in All Articles, Branding.

Rebranding apartments can be a huge undertaking in terms of time and money. If the rebrand is done successfully, you can enjoy lasting effects, such as better visual and verbal branding alignment, along with improved brand recognition from your current and prospective residents.

However, before you launch a rebrand, it’s important to get to the heart of the reasons behind the “need” for a rebrand. Ask Yourself: Why is a rebrand necessary? What will the rebrand do for our apartment community? How will this rebrand be accomplished (who will do it, and in what way, with what funds?)

To get those answers, there are a number of more specific questions you should put to you and other decision makers that are requesting the rebrand.

Question #1: Do we need a fresh start?

NEW COMPANY TAKEOVER
Is your property management company taking over an existing community? Consider this your opportunity to start fresh and announce “new management” from every angle of your branding. Out with the old and in with the new; leave every bit of the old brand in the dust and make a new name for the community.

REMODELING: OUTSIDE AND IN
If you’ve spent significant time and money remodeling your apartments, it’s a perfect time to re-brand and show off all your assets. Rethink your mission. Revamp your marketing materials. Find a way to match the rebrand to the remodel—a complete refresh, with those updated units front-and-center.

A SHIFTING TARGET
Has your target resident or current resident profile changed? If yes, then it’s definitely time to reassess how you meet the needs by offering a solution; and if within changing the way you solve your resident’s problems, you determine you’re in need of a rebrand, keep plugging away at the process. Another way to approach the shifting target: Have your company’s goals shifted? Are you trying to solve a different problem or reach a different resident group? Are you trying to improve the quality of leads (and residents) you get rather than the quantity? If you’re nodding right now, it may be time to lean into a different approach to get a different outcome.

EXAMPLE:
Your brand was formerly targeted for middle-class families, but you’re finding the neighborhood has changed, and the population in the area is now upper-class individuals. Your apartment community branding may need to evolve and shift to match any new goals you create for your community.

Question #2: Have our competitors updated?

Is our logo looking old-fashioned? Are our methods out of touch with today’s (or our target) audience of residents? Do we have a good way to stay front-and-center or top-of-mind with those we need to matter to? There are a lot of ways to approach this question. But the end result must tell you whether you are okay staying the way you are, or if you must evolve in order to stay relevant.

This can be a slippery slope, however. Trying to keep up with “the Joneses” (the competition in this case) may put you in an awkward position of scrambling to rebrand just because it seems like the right thing to do. Take your time to get the rebrand right. Keep asking the important questions that will give you the answers to an effective rebrand rather than a compulsory one. Only you and your company can determine how and when a rebrand should occur, while you keep an eye on the competition.

EXAMPLE:
You can throw a rock in any direction and hit competing apartments that have a modern look and feel with distinct storytelling capabilities thanks to (what seems to be) a successful rebrand. Your logo has been around since the beginning, and most of your content doesn’t feel consistent with the rest of your verbal or visual branding. It’s probably time to rethink your approach.

Question #3: Does our brand tell the story we want it to tell?

Perhaps your brand has been around for a while. Does it still tell the same story it has always told? Are your residents tired of that story and ready for change? In order to determine what story your brand is telling, take a look at your original brand guidelines. (Tell us you have one, please.)

Your brand story should answer a handful of questions. Yes, more questions. Hang in there with us. The questions it should answer (accurately and the way that you want):

- Who you are
- What you do
- Who you do it for
- Why you do it
- How you do it

Once you answer these questions, determine whether they measure up to the way you are being perceived. Do they align? Or is there more work to be done in getting closer to telling “the truth” of your multifamily community’s brand? Yes? Keep reading.

EXAMPLE:
Your brand is one of historic value, with locals creating a community that is welcoming for all. While this is heartwarming, good, and was perhaps successful in the past, you detect that your current and prospective residents don’t connect with this family-run/family-owned business angle any more. It’s probably time to tell a new story–one they haven’t heard before.

Question #4: What’s next after this rebrand?

A rebrand can either be a means to an end or it can be the “end” itself—the rebrand can either function as a stepping stone to get where you want to be, or it can be the ultimate goal in terms of your branding. With this in mind, you can either spend a significant amount of time completely zeroing in on how you want your brand to be for the long haul, or you can make more room for evolution, with an idea for where you may want to go after the initial rebrand.

EXAMPLE:
It’s possible that the goals for your community are so different from your current approach (for example, changing to a luxury apartment complex from something approachable and affordable) that you will need to take a few steps to complete the rebrand from start to finish. Find the right middle ground so that you can make your rebrand believable at each point, rather than slapping a different logo on a brand that has no trust or audience.

Question #5: How will we accomplish this rebrand?

This might be the most important question you ask. The persons responsible for taking on your community’s rebrand should have a combination of leadership skills, determination, and vision for your multifamily apartment. Beyond selecting who will handle the rebrand, you should also be asking how they will get it done. A good rebrand will include visual elements (such as logo designs) and just as important, verbal elements: messaging and positioning through professional copywriting.

EXAMPLE:
You have a team that wants a rebrand but no one has time to accomplish it, much less lead the charge. It’s probably a good idea to partner with someone (like zipcode creative) to get focused and ultimately: get rebranded.

Rebrands require time and money (like a lot of things) but the success of a rebrand can well make up for the residents you can retain or attract. Just start by asking the right questions first.

If you need a partner in your rebrand strategy, talk to us.

Writing a Call-to-Action: Everything You Need to Know

Written by Stacey Feeney on April 27, 2022. Posted in All Articles, Writing. 2 Comments on Writing a Call-to-Action: Everything You Need to Know

If you have a marketing strategy, a distribution plan, and your community branding all ready to go, you’re well on your way to having your marketing department up and running. But while you’re looking at the bigger picture, be sure not to overlook the smaller details that make a big difference, like call-to-action.

What is a Call-to-Action?

A call-to-action, or CTA, is an element of any piece of marketing material that tells the reader what to do next or moves them toward a particular action. A call-to-action can come in many different formats, depending on the collateral, including:

A button
A hyperlink
Plain text

No matter which form your CTA takes, it’s important to include it in every single piece of marketing you create. From direct mail postcards to your website to social media, you always want your audience to have a clear understanding of what they should do next. A few examples include:

Learn More
Check Availability
Schedule a Tour
Lease Today
Click Here

What you use as your CTA depends on the context, the materials, and the objective, but there are a few best practices that remain the same. Learn how to craft a compelling call-to-action to help increase your conversions and get your audience to move through the sales funnel.

How to Write a Call-to-Action

Though a call-to-action is typically short, that doesn’t mean they’re easy to write. Writing a CTA requires blending the right words, a sense of urgency, and clarity to get users to click.

Keep it action-oriented
The perfect call-to-action makes it clear exactly what the user should do—which usually requires some strong verbs and action-oriented language. Though you don’t want to sound bossy, a well-written CTA is very strongly ordering them to do a certain action. For example:

Download Now
Sign Up Today
Book an Appointment
Contact Us

Each of these CTAs begins with a strong verb so they’re super clear and concise.

Create a sense of urgency
When you’re writing your CTAs, you’ll also want to try to add a sense of urgency. There’s nothing that people hate more than missing out on a good deal or opportunity, so your CTA should make them feel like they have to act fast to get in on the action. Urgent CTAs are especially relevant when you’re running leasing incentives or referral promotions because they have a firm end date. Try a call-to-action like:

Book Now
Visit Us Today
Get a Month Free

Using time-oriented words like “now” and “today” helps infuse these CTAs with a subtle sense of urgency that can help prompt a higher conversion rate.

Keep it short
When writing CTAs, readability reigns supreme. You want to be sure that your call-to-action is short, clear, and concise so people know at a glance exactly what you want them to do. While two- or three-word CTAs are ideal—especially when using buttons or hyperlinks—you don’t want them to be any longer than about 10 words. Otherwise, it’s harder for readers to get a fast and clear understanding of what their next action should be, which will lead to lower performance.

On the flip side, don’t prioritize a shorter CTA over clarity. CTAs like “Go,” “Next,” or “Click here,” are ambiguous and vague, so you’ll want to avoid making them too short. It’s all about striking the right balance.

Prioritize a single CTA
While it can be tempting to throw a bunch of CTAs on one piece of marketing collateral, picking one call-to-action is vital to your marketing success. Giving your audience too many choices can cause confusion—and confusion leads to a lack of action. Pick your top-priority next step, whether that’s visiting your website, booking a tour, or downloading a brochure, and only use that CTA on your piece of collateral. That way, you’re driving everyone to the same place for more conversions and higher-performing content.

Consider Your Button Design
For digital marketing assets, like paid ads or marketing emails, you’ll also need to think about the design of your CTA buttons. Be sure the text is large and legible, so it stands out on the page. Consider the button shape—often a rectangle or rounded rectangle—the button color, and the placement. All of these factors can impact the performance, so consider A/B testing a few different options to see what works best with your target audience.

Now that you know a few CTA best practices, try implementing them across your marketing materials and watch the increased conversions roll in.

We know that crafting the perfect call-to-action can be tricky. If you’re struggling to get it just right, it may be time to enlist some help. At zipcode creatives, we have experience in marketing strategy, copywriting, and design for the multifamily industry. From helping you get your email marketing off the ground to redesigning your website to writing a high-converting call-to-action, we’re here to help.

Avaire Email Image is ©Fairfield Residential | Work executed by Stacey Feeney, owner of zipcode creative, while under creative direction and employment at Fairfield Residential.