Improving Your ROI With Smart Apartment Advertising

With many apartment communities on a strict advertising budget, it’s great to know many avenues of low cost or free apartment advertising exist to help housing leasing managers meet today’s multifamily rental demands, – that is, if you really believe that anything can actually be free in multifamily property management.

There is a lot you can do for little to no money, except for what it requires of someone’s time and effort, and many of these things are quick and easy to do. For example, take that resident retention flyer for apartment renters you usually print to post around your multifamily community and also embed it as an e-flyer to send via email, then turn around and use the HTML code to post it as a Craigslist apartment rental ad and then share it as an image on your social media sites.

Using an apartment marketing piece in this multipurpose way is easy when you use an automated software platform built especially for the multifamily industry to produce file types that work across multiple media channels. The key is taking one property management ad and hitting your audiences from a variety of angles in as little time as possible. After all, the more manpower it takes to create a rental housing ad the more costly free apartment advertising becomes to your bottom line.

Effective Craigslist Ads Push a Renter’s Hot Buttons

Craigslist is not only free, but also the most popular online rental housing listing service where renters search for apartments, among other things such as jobs, cars, other goods for sale and services. In a matter of minutes, property managers can post high quality leasing content with enticing photos of your multi housing community to reach over 60 million visitors to the site.

Craigslist hosts 700 local sites in 70 countries, so the reach to prospective apartment renters is far and wide, yet local. Since Craigslist is one of the most popular places for apartment advertising of your multifamily vacancies, you need to make sure your free apartment advertising is effective at grabbing shoppers or it will cost you in wasted time and manpower.

What makes an effective housing ad?

Using emotional marketing language and community lifestyle images that answer a renter’s needs. But first of all your multi housing marketing ad has to be found in the masses of free apartment rental advertising hosted by Craigslist every day. Lead rental prospects to your multifamily housing message by loading up on visual ads about your community location, selling propositions for your rental housing amenities and pepper your text with preferred employer keywords.

Social Media Is a Mecca for Free Apartment Advertising

The popularity of social media shows that renters want a place to share their personal stories and photos. Studies show that people living in your apartment community even become addicted to sharing their thoughts and news with the world as well as being curious about what others are thinking and feeling.

Social media not only gives you a space to post your free apartment marketing and advertising, but it also provides a social outlet for prospective renters to get to know your multifamily community on a personal level if you let them see the kind of culture and lifestyle amenities you offer.

Rental housing prospects spend a lot of time daily on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter sharing what they’re doing, what they’re liking, and where they’re going. Show how your property management team provides residents with an exciting place to live and post your apartment marketing flyers worth sharing with their friends and family, and all you have to do is guide them to share and give you more free apartment advertising through their social network.

Step one to social media success is building your rental audience by spreading the word through smart apartment marketing collateral that you’re in business and looking for followers. Take the lessons you learn from Facebook and write a community leasing blog, participate in home and housing themes on Pinterest, get followers for rental news on Twitter and share apartment living ideas on the popular Google + platform to freely deliver more multifamily content and develop social media relationships that promote your apartment community.

Instagram Is Ideal for Posting Multifamily Property Photos

Post your multifamily community photos on the wildly popular photo-sharing social media site Instagram as another effort in getting free apartment advertising.

Instagram has 130 million users with 16 billion images shared. It’s another free apartment advertising avenue for displaying your beautiful property management photography of model units, the community curb appeal and landscaping, community amenities and the unique selling points that make your multi housing asset worth checking out today. Follow your sister apartment communities in support and always “like” or comment on their posts so they will return the favor. Follow, like, comment, post and engage with your apartment community followers to nurture relationships that lead to friends and family referrals.

However, Instagram needs an intriguing story to go along with your digital ad images. Capture your apartment community’s features, faces and fun resident event ideas and share with the world, renters and potential rental prospects. Instagram has easy video posting features, so the video you create for Youtube, your property management website, and apartment community Facebook page can now be posted across one more online venue. When words alone won’t work, digital photo ads with a call to action will.

Have You Claimed Your Property’s Yelp Page?

Yelp is another excellent source for free apartment advertising where you can garner resident reviews and recommendations and contribute to the conversation with unique housing community messages.

Keep in mind that Yelp is a place where property managers are more wide open for all comments, positive and negative. This is the case for all social media sites, but Yelp encourages resident testimonials, reviews and comments from its users, so be prepared to always show your best multi family housing skills in everything you do because word of mouth travels fast.

As listed on their site, Yelp helps turn visitors into paying customers and offers the apartment management company a variety of tools to facilitate this. You can create a Yelp Deal where if prospective renters see your apartment flyer and buy your deal, you get paid – this could be a great way to advertise leasing specials. Create and claim your property business page on Yelp so you can add photos of your apartment community, a detailed description of leasing availability, and multi housing property advertising collateral. The website offers stats and charts to measure your apartment property’s page performance.

Go to Yelp today and make sure the apartment community website page has been claimed and that the public information is filled with your property management flyers and marketing photos, community leasing keywords and links to your apartment marketing newsletters that advertise rental concessions, specials and reasons for prospects to tour today.

Follow the Terms of Use when creating apartment marketing flyers and rental housing messages requesting reviews or testimonials from your renewing resident fans. Add a statement to your marketing, something like “If your experience is anything less than 5-star worthy call us now so we can resolve it”, to encourage immediate resolution in person. Grievances are best handled offline when possible. Statistics show customers respond to positive peer reviews more often than standard corporate apartment advertising.

Apartments Can Be YouTube Superstars

Take a tour around your apartment community with a view through a video camera lens and make a list of interesting things you see. What makes for a good virtual apartment rental video?

Apartment renters with pets will respond to dogs playing around your community, shots of a nearby off-leash park or community event for pet owners that demonstrate you are pet friendly. Expand on that idea and see where the camera takes you. Is there a beautiful view from your community rooftop, a sunrise or sunset that shines on your property, or something as simple as a butterfly flirting around your resident pea patch garden? Post free apartment advertising with videos you can make with a little creative editing — rolling slides of your building photography, graphic images of digital advertising messages and catchy apartment marketing slogans all bound together with transitions and music.

For some renters, watching online videos has become a part of everyday life, and when people find one they like, they tend to forward it to share with others. In some cases, apartment videos can go viral if they are clever and interesting.

Prospects searching for an apartment need to see photos of potential rental homes in order to help them decide whether it’s worth touring in person, but just think how a video can take that a step further and provide even more compelling moving images that spur renters into action. Add movement by grouping static digital ads together with transitions.

Whether you create a DIY video or hire a professional, video makes a rental home come alive, if done right, and can be posted online for immediate free apartment advertising.