Digital Leasing: 3 Issues with Your Multifamily Website

Too often, the strategy behind a multifamily marketing website is an afterthought. Even though your project’s website is statistically the first and primary way someone is going to learn about your project, developers frequently think of their website as (only) a digital brochure.

Instead, your website should be used as a digital marketing tool to deliver useful content, build audiences of potential tenants, and re-engage with them over the long-term.

In this article we'll outline 3 ways your project website can add value to your apartment project by being used as a dynamic marketing tool.

1. You’re not building (or measuring) awareness.

Your website is the best place to build awareness of your project and it’s brand, hands down.

In today’s digital-driven world, brand awareness is something that’s traditionally been hard to measure. However, many of the big digital marketing platforms (Facebook, Google, etc.) provide tools to help quantify traffic to your website, and then use this traffic to build targeted audiences of people interested in your project.

These tools (often provided for free) are a great way to both measure the success of your digital and non-digital marketing campaigns, and also as a tool to re-engage with interested in tenants.

The next time you’re building a site, think beyond the aesthetics and design, and about how your site can actually boost your marketing reach and KPIs.

2. You’re not re-engaging with interested potential tenants.

As I just mentioned, your website can help you build targeted audiences of people interested in your project. The next step is using those audiences for remarketing.

In short, your website can track visits to your website and then, using free tools provided by various ad networks (Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc..), these visitors can be turned into audiences.

Audiences can be built for various marketing campaigns you decide to run, and allow you to segment visitors based on their interests.

Then, with these audiences built, you have the ability to remarket to each group! You can continue to interact and provide useful content to people you know are already interested in your project, and continue to build that relationship.

Retargeting is a huge and untapped opportunity for real estate marketing. Data shows that visitors who are retargeted are 43% more likely to convert, compared to simple one and done digital marketing campaigns.

Furthermore, the data you collect can be valuable over the long-term of the project. Not only can it help you with immediate goals like leasing and awareness, but can also be used for future projects or marketing campaigns.

3. You’re not creating content that motivates leasing.

Having a website doesn’t check the box for “digital marketing.”

Your website is a place for people to connect to your project online, but once they’re on the site, you should be delivering them useful content to build trust and add value. You want them to think of your project as something more than your sales pitch.

To do this, create content useful for potential tenants. Content like neighborhood guides, maps, reviews of local bars and restaurants, and a calendar of local events are a great way to build a relationship that goes beyond lessor and lessee.

When done well, these pieces of content can be created as individual marketing campaigns, and used to both build your marketing audiences and in remarketing campaigns.

The St. James, a district and apartment project in the UK, does a great job with their content marketing. They offer several “guides” to visitors exploring their neighborhood in more detail, and have an itinerary tool providing visitors with a custom plan of destinations based on their interest.

These pieces of content allow the St. James to promote their project, build a deeper trusting relationship with their visitors, and capture email addresses from people interested in their project, useful for remarketing campaigns.

Websites don't equal strategy!

It’s easy to see how building a website can be confused with having a digital marketing strategy. A website is certainly a piece to the digital marketing puzzle, but if you’re not connecting the dots between your website and your measurable marketing goals, you’re missing the value entirely.

As always, please reach out to if you have any questions on what’s discussed here. I always look forward to those conversations!