With budgeting season ramping up and as your teams dig in to understand what they’ve gotten from their marketing spend, we wanted to shine a light on what should be your top marketing tool: your website. Live websites have become an absolute essential for properties in order to both generate and convert leads into leases.
But why do we consider your website to be your primary marketing tool? Here’s our 5 reasons:
Your website is your digital leasing office and for many potential renters, your website will be their first encounter with your property. Based on statistics, a website visitor will assess the visual appeal of your website in a whopping 50 milliseconds. Just like an interview or a first date, first impressions matter. It can be the difference between a renter deciding to take a look around your website or bolting to a neighboring properties’ website.
Give your website a personality and visual appeal that matches your brand. To ensure you know how to execute on your digital relationships and understand what good branding is, let’s start with understanding what a good friend looks like:
A good friend… is reliable, trustworthy, and honest.
A good friend… is clear about who they are, acts in a consistent manner according to their beliefs and values.
A good friend… is thoughtful, and anticipates your needs, even before you can articulate it.
Now, replace the word friend with brand:
A good brand… is reliable, trustworthy, and honest.
A good brand… Is clear about who they are, acts in a consistent manner according to their beliefs and values.
A good brand… Is thoughtful, and anticipates your needs, even before you can articulate it.
A solid property brand embodies the qualities of a solid friend. Let your website reflect this as it is going to leave an important impression no matter what.
When we say digital leasing office, we mean it. Your leads will most likely touch your website at least once during their search for a new home. In fact, the 2022 Grace Hill Renter Preferences Survey stated that 83% of prospective renters visit property or company websites. Your website must be set up and prepared to take on the responsibility of a 24/7 digital leasing office.
Make form-fills and calls-to-action accessible at multiple locations on the website. Ensure the site answers standard questions about the property, including location, available units, amenities, pricing and more. Have a Chatbot on your site to answer any additional questions or capture leads, too. For lease-ups, include a landing page for waitlists on new supply. It still gives a taste of the brand but collects leads ahead of time.
All in all, let your website, as much as possible, embody and reflect the setting that your leasing office would.
From virtual tours to interactive floor plan browsers and neighborhood explorers, you can empower renters to interactively explore your neighborhoods, properties, buildings, floors, and available unit floor plans directly from your website. This gives renters the ability to envision themselves living in your community.
NOTE: Make sure the visual does, indeed, match the reality. There will be friction in your conversion rates if a potential renter shows up for a tour and sees something different than they envisioned.
This is crucial for any marketing professional in multifamily. Your website can help you track how your other marketing efforts are performing in garnering website traffic and leads. From ILS listings to organic social media to paid search and social ads, your website will give you a better idea as to how to spend your marketing dollars for the best return. If you haven’t set up GA4 (Google’s new website analytics platform) on your website yet, read more about it here.
More than likely, your competing properties and apartment communities have their own website, showcasing their available units and communities. Your website is an opportunity to make the case as to why your community is better than the others. Having a website for your own properties, especially one that is attractive, engaging and appealing, is an effective way to establish a competitive advantage.
Property websites are obviously essential. But they do so much more for your property than just capture leads. Websites, in all ways, are your primary marketing tool. This means it needs to be done right and done well to maximize the value they deliver to prospective renters and the return they provide to your assets.
If you’re wondering whether your website is delivering the value and results your properties need, chat with us about ResMan Websites powered by Razz here.
If you’re interested in ResMan as a software provider for your daily operations, book a demo to see the product up close.
