Stop Making Your Marketing Strategy About You. It’s About Them!

The best marketers know that a customer-focused marketing strategy is the key to success. But what does this really mean? And what does it look like in multifamily? Simply put, you should stop thinking about your apartment community’s needs and start thinking about your potential renter’s needs. 

We’ve come up with three key areas to look at when transforming your marketing strategy. We’ll show you how to:

How to Develop a Renter-Focused Marketing Strategy

Defining your renter persona starts with identifying who they are demographically. You’ll want to start by gathering any data or insights you have on them. 

You can use:

Then, use this information to start building out who your ideal renter is. This is where it’s important to pinpoint which generation of renters you serve. More often than not – your community will target just one. 

Each generation is different; they each have defining values, morals, and characteristics which influence their desires and, ultimately, their decisions. If you want to learn more about creating generational renter personas, check out our ebook. It also has a super helpful template for creating your very own persona.

Map Out the Renter’s Journey and Plan Your Marketing Strategy With Them in Mind

Using the insights and information you gathered about your renter persona, start mapping out their wants and needs in each stage of their journey – AKA your marketing funnel. The funnel stages you’ll want to focus on are as follows: awareness, consideration, decision, and retention.

Awareness

In this stage, potential renters most likely don’t know you who you are or what you offer. In some cases, they might not even realize they need to search for apartments yet. They might know the location they want and the budget they’re working with, but they still need to conduct a search. This is your chance to provide relevant content that is genuinely valuable and helpful to them at this point in their journey. 

For example, maybe a Gen Z or millennial renter is searching for “best bars in [area]”. You could create a blog post titled “3 Best Bars Near [name of your apartment community]”. This will be helpful to them and will put you on their radar.

Consideration

Potential renters will now start searching for and comparing apartments, keeping in mind their preferences on location and amenities. Thinking about your target persona, ask yourself these questions:

Now, using the answers to these questions, think about what channels are appropriate based on the renter’s needs. Some strategies you might consider:

Here’s an example of a great Google My Business post that boosts organic traffic and  genuinely appeals to renters in this stage of their journey:

Notice how this post describes the apartment community’s location and boasts of the nearby restaurants and nightlife. This is something a renter would find important in the consideration stage when comparing locations of apartments.

Decision

In this phase, renters are likely torn between two to four properties. You need to stand out. Before making their decision, renters tour apartments, read reviews, and most importantly, respond to being marketed to. That’s why, in this stage, it’s important to provide help and direction every step of the way, while showing them you have what they’re looking for.

Here are some strategies for this stage of the renter’s journey:

Retention

Some people forget about this stage, but it’s just as important to stay customer-focused even after they’ve made the decision and become your customer. Renters are no different! 

Here are some strategies for retaining and keeping your residents happy:

Wrapping Up Your Marketing Strategy

You can’t market to people to fill your needs – you have to market to people to fill their needs. And when the process is all over, when they’ve gone from lead to fully leased, your efforts don’t stop there. 

Identifying your target renter and mapping out their journey according to what their needs are is just the tip of the iceberg. Implementing great marketing strategies in each of these stages – ones that offer true value to your prospects – is most important, and we hope this post helped you get a head start on that.