4 Ways to Fire Up Your 2022 Multifamily Marketing Efforts

In 2021, between Facebook rebranding, Instagram repositioning for video, and QR codes making a comeback, multifamily marketers had their hands full with social media. Outside the social silo, marketers also were challenged with the arrival and management of countless marketing tech options for email, CRM, CXM, plus software solutions for reputation management and digital platforms for detailed reporting.

Not only are tools and technologies rapidly evolving, but so are customer preferences. According to the 2020 NMCH/Kingsley Apartment Resident Preferences report, more than 70% of consumers would use text messaging on a community website in their next apartment search while nearly 50% of consumers would use a leasing chatbot.

What’s next for 2022? Only time will tell. Yet, as the marketing ecosystem continues to grow and diversify, we recognize a few key opportunities for multifamily marketers to fire up their efforts.

1. Plant in the Time of Plenty and Weed Where Necessary

According to the 2021 Freddie Mac Midyear Multifamily Outlook, as economic conditions improved so have expectations for the apartment market. In short, rents are up, vacancy is down, and investment activity is surging. Now is the time to look holistically at your marketing approach. What’s working? What’s not? Where’s the rub? As with many multifamily companies, the Fogelman marketing team cross-pollinates with operations, customer service and experience, business management, and legal. We’ve made a concerted effort during this season of plenty to audit touchpoints across all teams, evaluate recurring challenges, and uncover opportunities for low-hanging fruit. Instead of piecemealing tech implementations together in a time of need, we now have a plan to prioritize the tools and technology that make a long-lasting business impact. In the world of multifamily marketing, it’s all too easy to point to what competitors are leveraging or trip up on what’s shiny right now. In our experience, planting now and developing a rubric, based on time criticality, business needs, and customer demand, qualifies your marketing tools and helps weed out inefficient, redundant, or “not right now” tools.

2. Your Customer’s Journey = Your Marketing Team’s North Star

At Fogelman, our guiding principle is “the customer is at the heart of everything we do.” Think about your specific resident and prospect. Are they a busy parent who prefers texting for quick answers, between the hours of 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., after the kids have gone to bed? Or is it a Gen Zer who is motivated by perks and prefers to watch a short-form Q&A video a la TikTok? Start with a visual representation of your ideal customers and map their journey through each step to leasing. Do customers first find your community through a news story, a referral site, or a direct search? What actions do they take next in moving down the sales funnel: signing up for your email newsletter, chatting with a lease bot, or popping around your social pages? The journey map is the story of how the customer experiences your brand across all digital and on-site touchpoints and offers a strategic approach to better understanding customer expectations while optimizing customer experience for retention. In mapping from awareness to advocacy with your advertising, technology, and service teams, you can see the gaps and points of friction.

3. Digital First ≠ Digital Only

Yet, digital first doesn’t mean digital only. Where face-to-face human interaction was once the only key component to resident and prospect communications, our audiences now prefer the ease of access to virtual, digital, and self-service tools, including texts, chatbots, and 3D virtual and self-guided tours, plus, the face-to-face and over-the-phone human interaction, when necessary. Both experiences are required to seamlessly blend together. With amenity spaces opening up and resident events kicking off again in 2022, we foresee an increased opportunity to create meaningful IRL (in real life) experiences. While amazing spaces and places are a solid starting point for face-to-face interaction, the shared connection between residents and the larger community is truly the secret sauce for stellar engagement.

4. Measurement Matters Now More Than Ever

Algorithm changes aside, multifamily marketers will be challenged next year with planning their work, working their plans, and then measuring and analyzing the metrics that truly matter to the business—leads, leases, and, ultimately, retention.