We often discuss apartment marketing and leasing. Spending a few minutes considering how the prospects develop is a useful exercise for designing a marketing and leasing strategy.

Where do resident prospects come from in the market place?

• The Internet is the first main source of potential renters. This is more complicated than the service providers in the area describe. Few renters simply look at the Internet sources, choose an apartment and rent. Certainly, the entirely Internet focused renter should not be ignored, but the view should be more wholistic.
• Many renters come to us from word of mouth recommendation of their friends, associates, and fellow workers.
• A large portion find properties by looking physically in the area that interests them.
• Another portion are driven by access to shopping, entertainment, or employment.
• Still others are neighborhood focused driven by neighborhood reputation, school quality, or socio economic strata of a given area.

For the more geographically driven of the above groups property frontage and visibility can be important. Outdoor signage, advertising in local venues, or local market flyers can push prospective renters to the property.

Having identified in broad brush terms, let’s discuss sources and some of the numbers bandied about regarding them. The U.S. federal Department of Commerce attributes 40% of drop in visits to signage. Signage has seen steady growth as the Internet has strengthened and as print advertising has waned. In fact, at this point, newspapers are not effective by almost all accounts marketing apartments. Internet stats say 72% of out town move ins come from the Internet and over 50% of in town. Craigslist gets credit for about 14% of the total new renter prospects. Statistics on referral traffic are difficult to nail down, but they are clearly so effective that almost all properties have good referral programs. Partnerships with major employers are a standard rental unit leasing approach validating the value of understanding who local employers are.

As rental property owners and managers, developing an approach supported by a strong property marketing website that advertises the community as well as the property characteristics is step 1. Next, an integrated Internet marketing plan (depending on property size) that includes Craigslist and potentially other paid sources and possibly pay per click. A well planned signage plan on and off the property may be needed. These all need to be combined with flyers at local businesses and employers, major employer partnerships, strong referral plans, and so on. Depending on the properties visibility, location strength, and size these can be added, expanded, or left off the plan as appropriate. In all cases, understanding the traffic volume required is a key part of achieving your renting goals in combination with your marketing and leasing plan.