2024 is a brave new world for multifamily marketers. Amenities once considered luxuries have now become standard expectations for residents and new inventory hitting the market only intensifies competition among apartment communities.
How does the modern multifamily marketer go on the offensive and adapt to a changing digital adscape? By exploring emerging advertising opportunities.
Typically, emerging ad channels offer greater cost efficiency due to fewer competitors bidding for impressions. This is where forward-thinking marketers can gain a competitive advantage. Embracing new marketing technologies can help them reach prospects at highly relevant points in their search for their next residence.
Below are a few apartment marketing ideas for apartment marketers that will help amplify your brand and reach prospective renters.
Our brains are wired to retain audio-visual information much more effectively than text. According to Forrester Research "one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words". In a marketer's hierarchy of creative needs, video outranks both text and pictures, helping apartment communities advertise their amenities to prospects in a memorable format. Though video marketing is not necessarily a new method to reach prospective renters, it’s one of the most difficult creative for multifamily marketers to generate on a consistent basis.
Kate Good, Partner and SVP of Apartment Development for Hunington Residential in Houston recommends having a pipeline of videos that promote your apartment community.
During her speaking session "Lights, Camera, Acquisition" at AIM 2024, she attests that one of her video campaigns led someone to search online for their community which primed their algorithm to serve up additional videos highlighting various aspects of the Hunington property.
However, many multifamily marketers fail to deploy a video-first strategy due to budget restraints and limited resources. But fortunately for apartment communities, new AI technologies have made generating videos easier than ever.
The influx of AI tools is quickly transforming the creative industry. From ideating strategic marketing plans to wordsmithing templated emails for residents, AI is disrupting the creative fields in ways that empower multifamily marketers. And this includes video marketing.
Multifamily marketing agencies like ApartmentGeofencing.com are helping clients generate videos faster than ever. AI-powered video applications can scrape your website and social properties to quickly generate on-brand videos that multifamily marketers can then disseminate on their own website, social channels, websites, ILS, and even streaming TV!
This AI-generated video utilized Ai for its voiceover, scripting, and even editing!
However, relying on producing a single video won't suffice for an effective video-first strategy.
After 14 days, creative fatigue begins to take a toll on ad engagement and after 30 days, click-through rates begin to plateau. Having a fresh repository of videos helps re-spark intrigue in prospects who typically take about 2-3 months to research their next apartment.
With AI, multifamily marketers can generate evergreen videos highlighting amenity features and neighboring local attractions. But AI gives multifamily marketers the ability to create more timely messaging promoting seasonal move-in offers as well as highlighting upcoming community events to give prospects an authentic feel for an apartment community.
But to compound the effectiveness of video marketing, many multifamily marketers repurpose these videos for CTV advertising, also known as streaming TV.
Streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu have disrupted the cable industry. But with a myriad of streaming services, the average consumer is limiting the amount of streaming services they opt into ad-free, leaving companies like Netflix to explore ad-supported, lower-cost tiers to diversify their revenue.
According to Yahoo Finance, the average American has 4.5 streaming subscriptions amounting to approximately $1000/year. Due to subscription fatigue, consumers are more likely to consider ad-free tiers yielding an opportunity for multifamily marketers to reach prospective renters on common streaming apps such as Max, Paramount+, Hulu, and many more!
Streaming TV is still relatively new in advertising when compared to paid, SEO, email marketing, and other marketing methods. But, it’s not so new that it hasn’t been proven either. Part of what makes streaming TV so effective is that ads are unskippable. On average, our clients typically see a 98% completion rate. Viewing a highly relevant local video ad of a familiar property they’ve been researching online or in-person against a sea of nationally-branded ad campaigns is oftentimes a welcome interruption for prospects.
Reach prospective renters on their favorite streaming TV platforms for as little as $295/month. Book a demo today!
Some common objections we hear from multifamily marketers new to streaming TV include:
• Streaming TV ads don't offer the same tracking capabilities compared to digital/social ads
• Buying and optimizing ads in the programmatic ecosystem is difficult
• Videos formatted for streaming TV are expensive to produce and labor-intensive
• It will take a large investment to get our business on the big screen
✔️ The good news is that these misconceptions are keeping your competitors from exploring streaming TV.
✔️✔️ The better news is that leaves your business with an affordable ad channel to leverage (and one that is more accessible than ever with AI-video generation).
Another emerging technology that multifamily marketers can take advantage of is geofencing.
What is geofencing?
Geofencing is a location-based marketing tactic that collects a target audience based on their location history. With over 90% of mobile users owning a smartphone with GPS tracking capabilities, location-based marketing has evolved from an emerging technology to a more mainstream method to reach prospects. Using an anonymous Mobile Advertisement ID or MAID, multifamily marketers can safely target prospective renters without violating the Fair Housing Act.
How does geofencing work for multifamily communities and how can it be integrated with other apartment marketing ideas?
A geofence is a virtual perimeter drawn around a point of interest or POI. POIs can take the form of local retail shops, other apartment communities such as your neighboring competitor, as well as recreation hot spots or employment sites. When a prospect walks into a geofence, within as little as two hours, apartment communities can serve up mobile display banner ads or streaming TV ads showcasing their apartment community.
Geofencing campaigns are hyperlocal and highly relevant securing higher engagement rates than other advertising channels. According to PREDIK Data-Driven, the average click-through rate (CTR) for geofenced audiences is 7.5 percent while the average CTR for Facebook ads across all industries is 0.9 percent.
When a prospects walks into one of your geofences, apartment marketers can tantalize prospects to visit their property in two ways:
1. Via custom animated banner ads:
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2) Via streaming TV ads
Ever wish you could hire a research company to pinpoint prospect demographics based on real, historical data?
The easiest way to access prospect intelligence is by sourcing location-based analytics from foot traffic data. ApartmentGeofencing.com has partnered with Placer.ai to give apartment communities insight into where prospects live, work, and play. GeofenceiQ™ helps multifamily marketers identify popular hotspots for prospects. Understand prospect behavior based on real location-based historical data and deploy geofencing campaigns using a data-driven approach. Plus, GeofenceiQ helps identify feeder communities as well.
With tools like GeofenceiQ™, marketers can access detailed mobile location data to analyze renter behavior, competitor trends, and popular local hotspots. This data-driven approach allows marketers to target specific demographics, optimize advertising campaigns, and forecast potential locations for future development. By staying informed about innovative apartment marketing ideas, marketers can craft more effective strategies that attract and retain residents, ultimately driving higher occupancy rates and better ROI.
GeofenceiQ™ gives multifamily marketers insights into their favorite hotspots.
About ApartmentGeofencing.com
ApartmentGeofencing.com is purpose-built for forward-thinking multifamily marketers interested in generating demand for their properties using advanced marketing technology. We help multifamily marketers overcome creative needs and help them materialize their apartment marketing ideas to deploy omnichannel campaigns using geofencing technology, streaming TV, access prospect intelligence and AI video production. Our portfolio includes reputable property management companies such as Bozzuto, Avalon Bay, and Kairoi Residential. Our parent company Intrinsic Digital has made it to the renowned Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. To learn more about how to amplify reach for your apartment community, book a demo today.