14 Ways to Build Your Multifamily Brand to Reach More Prospects

Brands are built on trust. You consistently deliver the experience that your customer expects; they reward you by coming back for more.

When you look at the multifamily industry, you'll see that brands are built at the asset level – each community is marketed with its own unique name, vibe, and character.

However, when you compare that to renter behavior and how people actually shop for apartments, you'll also see that it takes shoppers a while to narrow down the individual assets that they think are their best fit.

That "brand awareness gap" leaves plenty of room for ILSs, locators, and other third parties to step in to better serve the prospect during their search for a new place.

In short, if you have more than one property in any given market and you're marketing your properties "as usual," there's a really good chance you're undermining your digital marketing efforts by competing against yourself. Why give yourself more work building a dozen different businesses when you could be doing marketing for all 12 of your properties in Houston or Atlanta at the same time?

You can't stop doing marketing for each property, but there are HUGE benefits to pooling your marketing efforts for sister properties in the same market. You'll see:

• More referrals and leads from word-of-mouth
• Better rankings in search results
• More cost-effective ad campaigns
• More qualified email leads
• Shortened leasing cycles

But how can you do this? There are lots of things you can do and examples (especially outside the industry) where you can pull inspiration. Here are 14 specific ideas that you can start to implement today:

• Start a local running club. Rotate the starting point between different properties.
• Organize a neighborhood volunteer day. Invite residents from all your properties, along with anyone else who wants to help.
• Offer flexible lease options, including a free transfer to any property in your portfolio. Build connectivity between properties.
• Send an email introducing your brand to every lead coming from an ILS. Show why your brand is better. Link out to all your local properties.
• Be your own ILS. Build landing pages that showcase all your pet-friendly communities in the region.
• Curate a local discount program with retailers around town. Make the deals available to residents of all of your communities.
• Name your properties consistently. It's really hard to build a brand off of one physical location.
• Make all of your availability easily accessible to leasing agents across the portfolio. Build incentives if they refer a lease to a sister property.
• Use one memorable phone number or text code. Promote it everywhere. Point it to a central call center. After some simple fact-finding, have your call center reps direct the prospect to the top 2-3 properties that would be the best fit for their needs. (Be your own locator.)
• Create a recognizable signature item at your properties or in your common spaces. Post Properties used tulips.
• Make your virtual events available for residents at every property.
• Organize sand volleyball or flag football teams for your local social club. Encourage residents from all your communities to join the team. Pay for their drinks and tacos after the games.
• Start a podcast about your city. Be your own first sponsor.
• Collect leads on your corporate website or regional landing pages with quizzes or pop-ups. Send weekly emails highlighting your best deals and units you’re trying to move that match those prospects’ preferences.

You don’t have to do all of these ideas. And you'll probably have better ideas that are a better fit for your audience. Pick one or two and test them out. Learn from there. Keep at it.

That brand awareness gap makes an already painful apartment hunting process that much more so for our prospects. At the same time, it effectively pushes our brands further away from the customer. The familiar names where prospects know to start aren't property managers; they're names like Google, Zillow, and Apartments.com.

The companies who build their marketing organizations to focus on the portfolio brand ultimately will win more customers with less overall effort and lower advertising expenses.

Building a successful brand is hard enough. Let's not make it harder than it needs to be by duplicating efforts over and over again. Close that gap, you'll close more leases ... because you'll be the go-to brand in your market.