Best Practices for Multifamily Digital Marketing

As someone who has spent years working on paid media strategies, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t when it comes to driving the highest-quality leads and achieving long-term profitability. With so many channels and strategies available, it’s crucial to prioritize the ones that deliver the most value while aligning with your property’s goals.

Here’s a comprehensive guide to the best avenues for multifamily marketing, including how to target the right audience, which marketing channels to prioritize, and best practices for optimizing your budget and results.

Core Marketing Goals for Apartment Communities

Before diving into specific strategies, it’s important to understand the core goals that drive apartment marketing efforts:

1. Maximizing Occupancy: The ultimate objective for any apartment community is to keep occupancy rates as high as possible, generally between 94-96%. At this level, properties can effectively balance profitability with the ability to raise rents, while still maintaining a buffer for vacancies caused by natural tenant turnover.
2. Reducing Vacancy Rates: Vacancy rates directly impact profitability. Every unoccupied unit represents lost revenue. Depending on the property, turnover rates can be high, with many communities seeing 40-50% tenant turnover annually. This means a constant effort is required to refill vacant units—half your property may need new tenants in a given year, underscoring the importance of a solid marketing strategy.
3. Sustaining Rent Levels: While filling vacancies quickly is essential, it’s equally important to maintain rental rates at profitable levels. This becomes especially challenging during lease-ups when there is pressure to fill units quickly. However, pricing strategy plays a critical role—pricing too aggressively can lead to turnover issues during lease renewals.

Internet Listing Services (ILS) vs. Direct Marketing

When it comes to advertising apartment communities, marketers typically have two main choices: using Internet Listing Services (ILS) like Zillow and Apartments.com, or taking control of their marketing by driving direct traffic through Google Ads, social media, and other channels.

Internet Listing Services (ILS):  

For smaller, independently owned apartment communities, ILS platforms can be a tempting option. These platforms act as a one-stop-shop for prospective renters, much like AutoTrader does for the automotive industry. They allow you to list your property and benefit from the platform’s traffic and search visibility. However, ILS platforms have their downsides. Chief among them is that you’re not only promoting your property but often competing against other properties in the same area on the same page. This can dilute the effectiveness of your efforts, and you may end up paying to advertise your competitors alongside your own property.

Direct Marketing:  

I always recommend apartment communities take control of their traffic by driving leads directly to their own website. By investing in Google Ads, YouTube, or social media, you can send traffic straight to your property’s landing page, collect data, build remarketing audiences, and have full control over the lead flow. When a prospect visits your website directly, they aren’t distracted by competitors’ listings, and you have the added advantage of being able to follow up with them through remarketing ads across multiple platforms.

Moreover, driving traffic to your own website gives you the ability to use data-driven insights to optimize campaigns, refine targeting, and improve ROI. In contrast, relying too heavily on ILS platforms means relinquishing control and being dependent on a third party for your leads.

Multifamily PPC Strategies: Google Ads & Microsoft Ads

For apartment and multifamily communities, paid search is one of the most effective lead generation channels. It provides an opportunity to capture high-intent leads—people actively searching for a place to live.

1. Google Search Ads:  

Google Search ads remain the most valuable traffic source for multifamily marketers. When someone types in a search query like “one-bedroom apartment in downtown Austin” or “luxury apartments near me,” you’re capturing an audience that is ready to take action. You can control which keywords you bid on, target users with precise location data, and ensure that your ads show up at the moment people are actively searching for apartments.

   – Keyword Strategy: When running Google Ads campaigns, it’s essential to balance broad and specific keyword targeting. General keywords like “apartments near me” generate significant traffic but can be less focused. On the other hand, more specific terms such as “luxury two-bedroom apartment in Dallas” target renters further along in their search journey, making them more likely to convert.

2. Call-Only Ads:  

Call-only ads are an underutilized gem in apartment marketing. These ads display a phone number as the primary call-to-action, encouraging prospects to directly call your leasing office. Since over 70% of apartment searches happen on mobile devices, giving prospects the ability to quickly contact you via phone is a great way to generate high-quality leads.

   – Why Call-Only Ads Work: Phone calls typically convert better than form submissions, particularly in the apartment industry, where renters want immediate answers to questions about availability, pricing, and lease terms. By providing a simple “click-to-call” option, you’re removing friction in the lead generation process.

3. Bing Ads:  

While Google dominates search, don’t overlook Microsoft’s Bing Ads. Bing represents about 17-20% of search volume, and its CPCs are generally lower than Google’s. For apartment communities with larger budgets, including Bing as part of your paid search strategy can be an efficient way to complement your Google Ads campaigns and capture additional leads at a lower cost.

Expanding into Video Marketing with YouTube

In the realm of digital marketing, video is becoming increasingly important. YouTube, owned by Google, is a powerful channel for multifamily properties looking to expand their reach. What’s exciting about YouTube advertising is the ability to leverage custom intent targeting, allowing you to serve video ads to people who have recently searched for relevant keywords on Google.

Targeting Keywords on YouTube: One of the biggest misconceptions about YouTube is that it’s primarily a top-of-funnel awareness tool. While that used to be the case, the platform’s evolution now allows for precise keyword targeting. This means that if someone searches for “one-bedroom apartments in Atlanta” on Google but doesn’t click on your ad, you can follow up with a video ad on YouTube. This keeps your property top-of-mind at a relatively low cost, as YouTube CPCs tend to be lower than Google’s.

Remarketing with Video: Another benefit of driving traffic to your own website is the ability to create remarketing audiences. Using YouTube, you can serve video ads to people who have already visited your property’s website, further encouraging them to take action.

Content Creation for YouTube

When it comes to YouTube advertising, content is king. But the idea of creating video content can be daunting for property managers who may not know where to start. Here are a couple of approaches to consider:

High-Quality Video Production: The best-case scenario is to invest in professional video production. Hire a company to shoot your property’s key features, such as the gym, pool, rooftop deck, and floor plans. This gives you high-quality footage that you can then edit into multiple short video ads showcasing different aspects of your property. These videos can be used across YouTube, social media, and your website.

DIY Solutions: If professional production isn’t in the budget, platforms like YouTube Video Builder allow you to create simple videos using existing images and text overlays. While this option won’t deliver the same level of polish, it’s still a viable way to get your property in front of potential renters.

Social Media Advertising: A Word on Facebook & Instagram

Facebook and Instagram can still play a role in your apartment marketing efforts, but it’s important to recognize their limitations, particularly for housing ads. Due to housing laws and platform restrictions, targeting capabilities on Facebook have been severely restricted in recent years. For example, you can no longer target based on income level or location radius for housing ads. As a result, Facebook’s targeting for apartment communities is less precise than Google’s.

That said, remarketing on Facebook and Instagram can still be highly effective. You can create custom audiences based on users who have visited your website and show them ads that drive them back to your site.

Segmentation, Targeting, and Budget Allocation

When setting up campaigns, segmentation and targeting are critical to success. One common mistake I see is combining multiple floor plans (e.g., studios, one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms) into a single campaign. This leads to wasted ad spend because the targeting isn’t specific enough. Each floor plan type should have its own campaign with distinct budget allocations. For example, if two-bedroom units tend to lease more slowly than studios, allocate more budget toward promoting two-bedrooms.

Another common error is using broad targeting options for remarketing campaigns. Instead of creating a single “all users” audience, segment your audiences based on how they interacted with your website. For example:

All Users: People who visited your website but didn’t take any action.

Qualified Users: People who spent a significant amount of time on your site or viewed specific pages (e.g., floor plans or pricing).

Converters: Users who completed a lead form or called the leasing office.

This approach allows you to serve more relevant ads to different segments of your audience, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Track

To ensure your campaigns are delivering value, you’ll need to track several key performance indicators (KPIs). Here are the most important ones to monitor:

1. Cost per Conversion (CPL): For paid search campaigns, aim to keep your

 cost per lead (CPL) under $40. The national benchmark is around $70, but with effective targeting and budget allocation, you should be able to achieve a CPL well below that.

2. Click-Through Rate (CTR): Your CTR measures how often people click on your ads. A strong CTR for apartment marketing is around 8%, compared to the national average of 4%. Higher CTRs indicate that your ads are relevant to your audience and are likely driving quality traffic.

3. Cost per Click (CPC): Aim to keep your CPC under $3.50, though this can vary depending on your market. Larger metro areas tend to have higher CPCs, while smaller markets can often achieve lower costs.

4. Conversion Rate: The goal should be a conversion rate of 10% or higher, meaning at least 10% of people who click on your ad go on to complete a lead form or make a call.

5. Impression Share: While not as crucial as the other metrics, impression share can give you insight into how often your ads are being shown relative to your competition. In most markets, a 10% impression share is common, but in highly competitive markets, increasing this percentage can require significantly more budget.

SEO and Long-Term Lead Generation

While paid search is an excellent way to generate immediate leads, SEO is your long-term strategy. Organic traffic is the most valuable traffic you can get because it tends to convert three times better than paid search traffic. Here’s why:

– Higher Engagement: Users who find your site organically through Google tend to be further along in their decision-making process, making them more likely to convert.

– Cost-Effective: Organic traffic is essentially free once your website starts ranking well for relevant keywords, and it can help reduce your reliance on paid advertising over time.

To build organic traffic, focus on optimizing your website for relevant search terms, ensuring your site is mobile-friendly, and investing in technical SEO to improve site speed and usability.

Balancing Occupancy and Rental Rates

One of the biggest challenges in multifamily marketing is balancing the need to fill vacancies quickly while maintaining rental rates. During lease-ups, there’s often pressure to offer concessions or discounts to attract tenants, but this can backfire if you set expectations too low.

In the lease-up phase, it’s common to run aggressive marketing campaigns and offer promotions to quickly fill units. However, once occupancy stabilizes, you can scale back your paid media spend and focus more on long-term SEO growth. The goal is to fill your property as quickly as possible without compromising on rent. Ideally, by the time lease renewals come around, your organic traffic will be robust enough to sustain occupancy without relying on heavy paid media spend.

Conclusion

Mastering multifamily marketing requires a strategic approach that blends short-term lead generation with long-term growth. By leveraging paid media through Google Ads, YouTube, and remarketing, while investing in SEO for long-term traffic, you can maintain high occupancy rates, generate quality leads, and sustain rental growth.

With the right balance of targeting, budget allocation, and KPI tracking, apartment communities can ensure they’re always attracting the right renters while optimizing marketing spend for maximum ROI.