I was recently invited to be a “pro” for an event at the local apartment association in my area, MHA. One of the recurring questions was, “What elements make up a successful marketing plan?”
For me, marketing apartments is a multi-step process. A successful marketing plan must understand the different steps, set goals for each step, and find ways to achieve those goals.
For this blog article, I’m going to focus on Print Advertising as one element of a marketing plan. Your apartment community may or may not have a Print Advertising element, but if it DOES, you’ll want to read this article.
What do you think the purpose of your print advertisement is? When I ask this question, most managers, leasing agents, marketers tell me, “the purpose of print advertising is to lease apartments.” To some extent, yes, however, the real goal of print advertising is to 1.) STAND OUT, 2.) BE MEMORABLE, 3.) GET YOUR PROSPECTS TO SEEK MORE INFO. (i.e. get your prospects to your website!)
(Picture provided by TMAN2003 on flickr through creative commons license.)
The end goal of ALL of your marketing & leasing efforts should be to lease apartments. Your Print advertising has to do the 3 things outlined above.
Have you looked at a FOR RENT Magazine or APARTMENT FINDER Magazine lately? (I am not affiliated with either FOR RENT or APARTMENT FINDER in any way.) In my area, there is probably 200 different choices of apartments in the magazine. As a prospect, the magazine is AWESOME, as it aggregates many of the available choices. However, from YOUR apartment’s standpoint, you should start thinking about HOW DO I 1.) STAND OUT, 2.) BE MEMORABLE, 3.) GET PROSPECTS TO SEEK MORE INFO. (i.e. get your prospects to your website!)
Last year, I did a focus group at an apartment complex and asked the renters, what they wanted to see out of advertisements. They came up with the typical list of about 10 items long, including pricing, location, amenities, etc. Makes sense. When you look at an apartment magazine, most of the ads have several bullet points highlighting what they feel is best about their apartment community.
During this same focus group, we asked the renters to leaf through an apartment magazine and pick out the advertisement that they were most drawn to. 100% of the focus group selected an ad that had nothing but a BIG fancy picture, the website, phone# and the name of the apartment community.
What we found: What people want and what they are drawn to (i.e. sticks out, is memorable, makes them seek out more information) are 2 DIFFERENT things. We then decided that the goal of our print advertising HAD to be 1.) STAND OUT, 2.) BE MEMORABLE, 3.) GET PROSPECTS TO SEEK MORE INFO. (i.e. get your prospects to your website!)
I’m not advocating that you take the pricing out of your print ads (maybe your pricing IS the memorable thing) - what I AM saying is that YOU must decide what the purpose of your print ad campaign is, and find ways to meet THAT goal. (And you can have more than 1 goal for an element.) Once you figure that out, go back and discuss ALL the elements of your marketing campaign, outline goals for each step, and try to meet THAT goal for THAT step. Don’t try to lease apartments when what you need to do is CAPTURE someone’s attention and get them to WANT to find out more about your apartment community.
Here are some sample goals that have worked in the past:
1.) Goal of print advertising is to drive people to our website.
2.) Goal of our website is to get prospects to pick up the phone and call us.
3.) Goal of the phone call is to get prospect to commit to a tour.
4.) Goal of the leasing tour is to get the prospect to lease the apartment.
Depending on your community, your marketing resources, you may have different elements, and different goals. Decide what those elements are, how to make them successful, and meet your marketing goals!
Don’t get it? RENT SODA. GET IT!
-Daisy Nguyen in Minneapolis, Minnesota MN
CEO
Business & Marketing Consulting to the Apartment Industry
Web: RentSoda.com Email: Daisy {at} RentSoda(.)com
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Forgive me, I’m reading this with my marketing analyst hat on.
Sure, a pretty ad is great, but there are important steps in defining your marketing plan before you get to the pretty part.
Don’t forget that a successful marketing plan needs to start with identifying your target audience and your position in the marketplace. Print covers many different resources including and beyond color guide ads (direct mail, classifieds, local newspaper, flyers, etc). Determining your budget and assessing the distribution of the source is important in deciding where to place your precious marketing dollars. And equally important is a solid plan to measure success and return on investment. What is the cost per lead & lease?
You’re right, the ad has to result in leases, but how many touch points are you requiring in order to execute a lease? Simplicity can be just as effective as StandOut. Consider answering 3 questions: 1) what am I selling, 2) who am I targeting, 3) how do we exchange the money?
Understanding your target audience AND the strengths of your sales team can really help determine what will make an add successful.
Janet:
I 100% agree! There are so many things to consider and work on to make a marketing campaign successful and result in leasing apartments. Setting goals, knowing strengths (and weaknesses), knowing the target market, and what you are selling (your product) are all elements that need further thought, careful consideration, and extensive planning! Thanks for you thoughtful post!
-Daisy
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Janet, I agree that you can never place too much importance on identifying your target market. However visually appealing your advert is, its effect will be negligible if it fails to capture the attention of your intended audience. If the target market is identified early in the planning stages of a campaign, it is much easier to create a simple advert that achieves maximum effect- and when it comes to adverts I really believe that simplicity is key.