Digital Marketing Strategy for Lease-Up Properties

Marketing is vital to establish the community brand, drive lead conversion rates and boost speed toward full occupancy during the lease-up phase.

Launching a new property can be a daunting task for developers and investors because lease-ups often require more logistics and strategies than taking over an established community.

A new multifamily development’s success hinges on new tenants signing as many leases as possible as quickly as possible for cash flow, financing, and stabilization for longevity.

The time period between construction and building delivery requires an occupancy projection of 90-95% to be stabilized, depending on the property phase timeline and project requirements.

Attracting the right tenants is essential because the first residents will generally set the tone and reputation for a new community.

Having the right digital marketing strategy can address the unique marketing challenges as owners attempt to fill the property with new qualified residents.

According to Yardi Matrix’s Summer 2019 U.S. Multifamily Outlook, new lease-Up properties across the country were around 300,000 units in 2019.

There is lots of competition in the most saturated markets like major cities that have the highest earners and student population along with lots of beautiful communities with super luxurious and high-tech amenities to attract renters.

However, even a building with the perfect modern curb appeal with a central location, trendiest decor, and superb amenities could have trouble reaching lease-up goals if they do not focus on developing an effective digital strategy from the start.

Create Local Buzz about the New Community

A robust branding and market strategy will make the property memorable with a strong grassroots campaign begin an interactive buyer journey.

Digital assets will get renters interested in your community because they have been exposed to messaging that helps them feel, touch and experience their future home.

Being prepared during the construction phase and several months in advance of the leasing launch will generate buzz and even allow you to pre-lease apartments way before the doors have even opened.

The most important goal is to increase your online visibility with a location-specific digital marketing strategy on search engines and social media.

This will include doing keyword research and competitive analysis to optimize the local search terms made by prospective renters.

Building brand awareness is key for tech-savvy fast-moving clients who expect immediate and relevant local information and is hyper-personalized messaging in prime markets where the competition can be fierce.

Establishing the Property Brand

The first steps of the marketing plan involve creating your brand presence with your building or community’s name, address, phone number, and website all registered with major business directories online and your social media accounts.

Hopefully, you have established a property name that is unique, but also simple enough to pronounce easily.

It’s also important to Google all name variations to avoid duplicating an existing property within the same geo-location or sub-market.

Also, try to stay away from a name that could be possibly offensive, as words and terms can have many meanings.

After you’ve covered that – it’s time to register your domain name, build a website, create architect rendering and concept floorplans, and start building the property business profiles online.

Consistency is key here because these online citations on Google My Business and Bing Business are the beginning of building your property’s relationship with the public – so keep the descriptions throughout the web.

Business profiles will have a clear description of your business, unique building features, and amenities, links, photos, and video, and office/tour hours (if applicable).

When your a new property just breaking ground, you may not have photos but that is when high-quality renderings and even rendered video presentations become important for the very first impressions of the development.

Testing your design concepts with brand colors, logo and graphic assets with on-site signage and pre-leasing collateral mockups with a designer  is also a good idea during this preliminary phase.

When building the property’s web presence on Google, Bing, Yelp and other search engines is important to provide the most accurate information across the board which will allow happy residents to leave reviews for your properties.

And we know what you’re thinking … what if they leave a bad review.

The key here is to maintain a high response rate and great customer service from the get-go to reduce the probability of this occurring from building opening to full occupancy and onward.

Lease-up Social Media & Email Marketing

Using social media to build brand awareness allows you to connect with the target audience on their favorite platforms and visit groups and pages where they spend most of their time.

Running a preliminary ad campaign with retargeting through email subscriptions and Facebook likes can help you reach prospective renters and build a following.

Create engaging posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with videos, local community announcements, holiday greetings, leasing specials and more will attract attention for brand recognition.

Posting about local events, sports teams, and neighboring businesses with tagging, hashtags, and relevant reposts will create awareness about the new property with less resistance with retargeting efforts.

Reaching a larger audience on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest will require a designer to create beautiful visuals assets, Facebook Live videos, Instagram Stories, to grab the audience’s immediate attention and keep them following along.

Being involved with cross-promotion and outreach, with local sponsorships and housing fairs for students (if that’s applicable to your market) with great signage and digital creatives is a great way to push occupancy efforts.

Many visitors of your social profiles often will visit your website during the development stages, this could be awesome to generate email sign-up for updates about your construction journey in a newsletter with links to social media posts or a blog.

At Betty of Boston, we often build email autoresponders that create automated emails once someone opts-in to a newsletter form.  The focus should always be your customer’s experience because that is what drives conversions with digital advertising campaigns.

When to Start a Digital Marketing Campaign for Lease-ups

A more intensive digital marketing campaign usually starts 6 to 9 months or even sooner, depending on development size, in advance of building an opening to drive pre-leasing activity.

It’s good to keep in mind, a landing/sales funnel page or intro website can attract renters who are specifically looking for brand new buildings and present the features and the amenities offered, location, and construction timeline.

There are definitely people who will rent with just a floor plan or a hard-hat tour.

In campaigns created by Betty of Boston, we focus on creating optimized websites with the best copy and media elements, targeted search engine and social media marketing campaigns.

A real estate campaign will require the use of A/B testing and remarketing to generate leads by email or phone call from the most qualified prospects.

With Google Ads, we often use dynamic ads with a customized bidding strategy and real-time analytics to attract the audience at the right place and time.

Marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixels are closely monitored to see where visitors are coming from, who they are, what they are clicking and the conversion strategies that need improvement.

Syndicating the property listings with floor plans, photos and unit info on Craigslist, Zillow, and other apartment listing networks will expose your apartments to a huge base of prospective renters and is one of the best ways to get website traffic and calls quickly.

Betty of Boston can help you create a targeted and custom digital content strategy with tracking metrics and analytics tracking to see exactly which digital methods are driving the most leads and conversions to leases.

Lease-up Property Management and CRM Systems

Organizing your leasing operations with a property management system that is automated and convenient for prospective renters is the best way to screen applicants without delay and get leases signed quickly.

Your leasing team whether it be a single property manager or a team of leasing agents will need to have skills related to listening, empathy, persistence and creating sales.

The leasing team’s success will be driven by an excellent CRM system (customer relationship management software) that can streamline the renter journey from lead to close.

The operation to achieve full occupancy is strengthened by an impressive follow-up process, tour protocol, and closing strategy to effectively lease-up property quickly.

Keeping engaging with current renters is important as well – with portal reminders and notices, customized email messages for holidays and birthdays, and welcome packages with items and offers from local businesses is a great way to build report.

Keep in mind, these activities can lead to future referrals and good reviews for the property.

There are several property management solutions out there but we highly recommend Appfolio.

Many clients also used Buildium, Yardi, Onsite, and others that have the capability of creating a portal for tenants to pay rent and put in requests and a backend for property managers to handle the financial, marketing and maintenance operations.

Continuing the momentum with marketing, leasing processing, and management will lead to success for the future.

Lease-ups require a lot of patience, focus and as well as expertise to develop the best marketing plan for your new property.

Contact us today to reach your market, establish your property brand or improve existing operations and marketing strategy.