So much focus and effort are put into stabilizing a property or reaching its projected range of occupancy. Multifamily marketing and leasing teams invest in a wide variety of apartment marketing tools to help get prospective residents interested in learning more about the community.
Once your property is stabilized a lot of your efforts should pivot to resident experience and engagement. Resident loyalty can be a complicated endeavor. However, by creatively using existing dynamic apartment marketing tools, such as video, your team can solidify that loyalty in a simple, authentic way.
Communication
So much focus is put on advertising for apartments and the subsequent communication necessary to get a prospective resident through the lead-to-lease funnel. And those creative leasing strategies and communications are critical to filling units. However, once the resident is firmly moved in, the effort put into communication shouldn’t slip. But it shouldn’t lessen in authenticity or personalization.
Video is most likely part of our multifamily digital marketing plan. If not, we need to send you to a few other blogs. For now, let’s assume your outreach marketing ideas for apartments include video. When it comes to building and managing those relationships, using video is such a great way to communicate.
Using video, you can communicate with residents in a much more personal and personalized way than sending a text, an email, or a push notification to the resident app. Video is simple, easy, and humanizes the message. That’s particularly important if it’s a difficult message to send. If it’s a change, a new rule, or a new policy that may not be entirely welcome, have someone in front of the camera delivering that message. It better portrays empathy and understanding. It will also be better received than an email or a note slid under everyone’s door.
Showcase Your Residents and Your Events
On top of communicating with them, use video to showcase your residents and the fun or incredible things they are doing together or as solo endeavors. Take a second and highlight a resident who just hosted an amazing fundraising event. Or maybe one of them completed their first marathon or Ironman. Shooting a video showcasing that resident is a really impactful way to make your resident feel special and appreciated. It also opens up doors for other residents who are doing great things and want to share. Using that apartment marketing tool, you open up a chain of communication with your resident.
Anytime you do an event, capture video. Share posts and those videos on social media channels, share with your residents. Use video to highlight the fun things the community is doing and the residents who were there. These are great for Instagram story ideas for apartments. If you’re digging in your fall marketing ideas for apartments and have a flag football game or a park clean-up, take a video!
Don’t be shy about asking residents to be on camera. Ask them to do a quick interview where they can weigh in on how well the cooking class went or how rewarding the volunteer experience was. That sort of event testimonial will have even more residents showing up to the next event. Speaking of testimonials…
Feature Residents in Testimonials
One of the best types of videos that can increase the loyalty of current residents and be a great apartment marketing tool? Resident testimonials. If you have a few residents totally bought in on the community, they are active and really love where they live, ask if you can interview them. Capture and showcase that sentiment to put on the website or on social media channels. Maybe surprise them with an apartment giveaway or a gift card to a local restaurant as a thank you. This will make the resident feel more ownership, feel more involved, more bought in, and really help to create that loyalty among residents.
In the end, we can’t promise that these ideas will keep your best residents 100% of the time. Things like home buying, new jobs, kids, or any other life event are going to happen. However, you can be fairly certain that effective communication, finding ways to highlight your residents and events, and featuring residents in testimonials can go a long way to solidifying resident loyalty. The best part? All of those ideas are made easier and more impactful by using apartment marketing tools already at your disposal – mainly video.
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