Digital Marketing Mistakes in Multifamily Housing and How to Avoid Them

The multifamily market is competitive. If your metrics just aren’t cutting it, it might be time to start looking for answers—and evaluating your marketing strategy for common digital marketing mistakes is a good place to start. 

While marketing may seem like a small detail compared to day-to-day operations and maintaining resident happiness, it’s actually an integral component of keeping things running smoothly in your community. Marketing attracts prospective residents, helps to increase resident retention, and increases your brand recognition in the broader community for a plethora of invaluable benefits. But if you already know the importance of marketing and aren’t seeing the payoff, you could be falling victim to a few common pitfalls.

Learn more about the biggest digital marketing mistakes multifamily communities are making with their digital marketing efforts and how you can avoid them for more effective strategies.

Not Prioritizing Branding & Design 

While your logo, website, and brand colors may seem like a small detail, it’s actually a factor that makes a big impact. Your branding should appear on every piece of marketing material you create, from flyers to direct mail postcards to your social media profiles. It’s an effective way for you to increase your brand awareness, drive recognition, and start to build a relationship with your current and prospective residents.

Instead of using a generic design, consider creating a logo and community branding that is influenced by your community’s design aesthetic. If you have a sleek and modern space, your logo should match. If your community is bright and colorful, on the other hand, consider branding that is more playful and fun. No matter which approach you choose, you should be consistent with using it across all of your marketing from emails to social media to your website to ensure a cohesive, professional, and polished look that will instantly set you apart from your competitors.

Not Creating a Strong Digital Presence 

While the multifamily industry can sometimes be viewed as “old-school,” it’s important for communities to stay on top of their digital presence to attract renters. Nearly half of all renters are millennials and nearly 30% are of Gen Z. These digitally native groups were raised with the internet, smartphones, and social media at their fingertips. As a result, their natural inclination is to start their search for everything—including their next home—online. 

From apartment listing services like Apartments.com to Instagram and TikTok profiles, crafting a strong and recognizable point of view for your community across digital channels is pivotal to attracting prospective residents—but simply creating profiles isn’t enough. Sharing unique content regularly across these different marketing channels shows everything that your community has to offer. Engaging videos, social media series that you post regularly every week, and well-designed websites are all can’t-miss elements of a comprehensive and effective marketing strategy. Don’t undervalue the impact they can make on your lease-up rates and resident retention.

Targeting the Wrong Audience

The digital world is vast. But just because someone is a user on Instagram or visited your website, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the right person to target as a prospective resident. Defining your ideal audience is one of the first steps you should take to create a well-rounded and effective marketing strategy.

No matter how amazing your marketing is, if you’re targeting the wrong audience, you’ll never be effective. If your community is filled with young, single renters, for example, but your marketing efforts are targeting families, you’ll likely not be able to see the results you’re looking for.

Defining your target audience includes identifying demographic information like age, gender, and income, but also their psychographics, like their values, priorities, and hobbies. To get started, take a look at your existing residents and the apartment’s location. There’s a good chance that patterns will start to stand out. Maybe your community is filled with young professionals climbing the corporate ladder of companies headquartered nearby. Maybe it’s popular among empty-nesters or retirees. Whatever the case, create an avatar of the people that you’re trying to reach with your marketing efforts so you can better define what success looks like.

Using the Wrong Channels to Communicate

Once you’ve defined the right audience, it’s time to also evaluate which marketing channels you’re using. Younger demographics tend to gravitate toward social media like TikTok and Instagram, while older audiences use channels like Facebook. Email marketing is a great tool you can use to reach a wide range of audiences, always consider tailoring your messaging to the things your audience cares about. 

If you have a lot of corporate employees, a communal workspace like a business center could be a key selling point. For young families, on the other hand, an outdoor playground would be a must-have amenity for prospects. Think strategically about who you’re talking to, how to reach them, and exactly what to say to make your marketing more effective and to avoid any major digital marketing mistakes. 

If you’re ready to level up and want to avoid the common pitfalls that multifamily communities make with their marketing, it could be time to enlist the experts. At zipcode creative, we’ve worked with communities all over the country to totally transform their branding approach.

Get in touch today to learn more! 

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