Marketing goals provide the direction of your marketing campaign for your community. Without goals, it is impossible to know what needs to be done. Goals need to be not only long-term but short term, specific, realistic and provide aspirations for what you want to achieve through your marketing efforts. Once the goals are established, you need to create specific steps, objectives and strategies to help reach your goals. 

First, what is Marketing?  Many people confuse marketing with the leasing because both involve the act of interesting customers so that they rent your apartments. Leasing occurs when the customer rents at your community. Marketing, however, is the art of grabbing the potential renter’s attention, which will, hopefully, lead to a move in. The goal of marketing is to leave an impression on the consumers, making your community more recognizable and memorable to them than any other properties in the market. The key to marketing is providing knowledge about your apartments, management team and lifestyle you provide to the prospective resident.  

Basic Elements of Your Marketing Plan:

  • Marketing Budget
  • Identify your target market
  • Identify unique aspects of apartments and community
  • Compare your community with competition in the market
  • Communicate your message about your community
  • Choose methods of distribution
  • Tracking results


Before creating your marketing plan, you must refer to your budget or create a budget specific to this plan.  Most communities do not have unlimited financial resources and must be careful on how the time and money is spent.  Start with overall budget amount and then break it down into line items identifying the various types of marketing. This means that you have to decide which method of marketing will bring you the most attention from prospective residents.  Your marketing budget has to include the cost for each type of marketing, advertising or campaign including the frequency which will drive the total expense for that line item.

Your Target Market is not solely based on your income requirements.  Since marketing is based on what will bring the prospect to your community, it is only natural to consider the prospects’ needs and wants. Remember, your prospects are your target audience, and you must understand and determine how your community addresses their needs and desires directly before you can begin creating your marketing plan.  By identifying what you have to offer and who finds that valuable, you determine your target market.

Points to consider:

  • What does the prospect want?
  • What does the prospect need?
  • What is something that will benefit them?
  • What makes the prospect want to rent from you?
  • Determine who your target audience is and why they would rent from you.


Before you can begin to market your apartment community, you must define what your apartment community offers and how your residents will benefit from living at your community.  Start with a defining what you offer and what that entails. Outline specific characteristics along with the pros and cons of those characteristics. Outline how it can benefit the prospect and what your community and team can provide the prospect once they become a resident.  Identify unique aspects of apartments and community that are desirable and make you stand out from your competition. 

It is impossible to please everyone, but some marketers insist on trying. There is a common fear of excluding potential residents without broad marketing campaigns. In reality, however, targeted marketing campaigns are more effective at drawing in your prospective resident. Understanding specific customers and meeting their needs will increase your community’s appeal and fill vacants faster than marketing that is aimed at everyone.

Tips to remember:

  • Know all aspects of your community including the apartment features and benefits, the community’s amenities, location advantages and services that you or a strategic partner agency provides to enhance the lifestyle of your residents.
  • What does your community offer the prospect that is appealing enough to convert the prospect into a resident?
  • Define your community’s qualities and benefits.
  • Identify what makes your community stand out from other communities in the market.
  • Compare your community with your competition


When communicating with prospects through marketing efforts, the message shouldn’t be all about the rent or about the rental program associated with you community; it should be about the value and service you offer. Only 1/3 of customers completely base their decisions on the rate, even in the affordable and low income markets. Most prospects are looking for value. In order to sell your value to customers, you need to understand what it is they value.  Once you have established the value of your community, you need to follow a few basic guidelines.

  • Link your community’s strengths with value for prospects and residents.
  • Have confidence in your community and the positive impact you make on your residents’ lives.
  • Sell the lifestyle of living at your community.
  • Offer extraordinary service.


Market funnels are traditional tools used by marketers. The marketing funnel contains the stages that a prospect takes on the way to leasing an apartment at your community.  The funnel may vary slightly, but there are basic stages in the AIDA funnel that remain the same. These stages are awareness, interest, desire, and action.

Awareness

The first stage of the marketing funnel is Awareness. This is the stage where the prospect is first exposed to your community. There are many different ways that a prospect can become aware of your community. For example, word of mouth creates awareness. Other methods include discovery through communications and successful marketing. Awareness can lead to the next stage of the funnel, which is why you must do everything that you can to ensure that awareness is always a positive experience. Pleasant leasing experiences will create positive word of mouth, and effective marketing will generate positive attention.

Interest

The second stage of the marketing funnel is interest. When awareness is positive, interest will develop. This occurs when the prospect actively shows interest in renting at your community. There are specific strategies that will help develop interest and move the prospect along to the next stage of the funnel. Specifically, you need a value proposition for the product.

Create a value proposition:

  • Advertise benefits
  • Show advantages over competition
  • Show how living at your community will positively impact the prospect’s life


When you successfully engage interest, prospects will be able to reach the stage of desire.

Desire

Once a prospect has developed interest in your community, desire is not far behind. At this point, prospects aspire to rent at your community. The key to establishing desire is convincing prospects that your community will meet their needs.  During the telephone conversation and leasing visit, demonstrate to the prospect how your community will fit their needs. Once prospects experience desire, it is easier to convince them to take action.

Action

Action occurs when the prospect completes the application and/or puts a deposit down to reserve a specific apartment.  Prospects must be led to take action by the marketer, and there are different methods to improve the odds of customer action. These procedures are called calls to action. Calls to action motivate the prospect to act by contacting the apartment community.  Examples include: “Call today to reserve your apartment” or “Contact us for more information”, “Come see for yourself”.  Not including calls to action is the chief mistake that marketers make when using a marketing funnel.

There are many marketing avenues to consider when creating your outreach plan: Local Newspaper, Outreach, Resident Referrals, Television Ads, Radio Spots, Sign Spinners, Rental Magazines, Flyers etc.  Determining what type of marketing will work best for your community will depend on your target market.  But keep in mind that solid internet presence and using social media are essential to marketing success. Many marketers believe that our prospects and residents who live at Affordable and Low Income Communities do not use the internet to search for housing and therefore don’t put much focus on having an internet presence as part of their marketing plan.  It is believed that basically a digital divide exists in American society between higher-income and lower-income households because lower income households don’t have computers in their home and have limited access to the internet but a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life Project (2012) found that households with less than $30,000 annual income:

  • 41% have Broadband at home
  • 62% Use the  Internet
  • 86% Own a cellphone 
  • 43% Own a smart phone


Marketing success should not simply be assumed. True marketing success will be apparent in the metrics. Many marketers, however, do not bother to track metrics. This mistake prevents marketers from adjusting the marketing plan that would increase occupancy. The metrics that need to be monitored will vary with the media and platforms used. There are, however, basic metrics that typically need to be monitored.

  • Lead source
  • Leads per month
  • Move Ins per lead source
  • Conversion rate of lead to applicant and lead to move in
  • Denials and cancellations per source (may determine that source is not effective) 
  • Cost per lead
  • Cost per lease (most important in determining if source is truly effective)