
All You Need to Know About the Magic of Quidditch on College Campuses
Since the start of the pandemic, many college campuses have closed their doors, with two-thirds of universities shifting to remote or hybrid learning.
Many universities and colleges have maintained or strengthened restrictions on how many students can live on campus this year — while many have shut down completely. This has inspired some students to take a gap year or to live at home with their parents to save money until it’s safe to attend classes and live on campus again.
Despite these challenges, off-campus housing isn’t totally off the table for college students. Some are still living away from home, in off-campus houses and apartments, to experience more independence.
Although you can’t use typical in-person strategies like tabling at campus events or locations, college students are still spending a ton of time online. That’s why promoting your rental property through digital marketing is pivotal this year.
Here are the digital marketing strategies your leasing company needs to stay in front of college students during COVID and get people into your leasing office.
College students use social media more than any other generation, averaging 3 hours a day across all platforms.
Here’s how to use social media as a housing company to stay in front of college students and keep your sales up during COVID:
Other tools, like Hootsuite and Sprout Social, can show how your organic (as well as paid) social media campaigns are performing. And bringing analytics into the mix can give you a better picture of how traffic from your social channels is performing on your website, too.
With how often college students on social media, you may think of email as a thing of the past. But Gen Z and Millennials are still checking their emails frequently.
Reaching college students through their social media accounts isn’t the only way to get their attention. Here are a few email marketing tips you can use to bring attention to your current listings:
97% of people who visit a website for the first time don’t make a purchase. So even if students are visiting your website, chances are they’re not immediately calling the leasing office to schedule an appointment.
Retargeting can help you increase rental property awareness by reminding prospective students to come back to your site.
A student visiting your website for the first time could have a general interest in your apartment, but will need a reminder about your brand and listing once they’ve left the site. That’s where retargeting comes in.
Once a student leaves your website, they’ll be served relevant ads when they visit other websites. These subtle hints are designed to eventually lead that student back to your site and your listing.
Ready to implement your retargeting campaign? One of the most popular options is Google retargeting — which gives advertisers the chance to re-engage their website visitors by showing them ads as they browse other websites.
Another option is Facebook retargeting — which is similar to Google but keeps all ads within Facebook and their 2 billion active user network.
Display ads are video and image ads that show up on websites and social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook. Unlike retargeting ads, display ads show up before you visit a website, and no cookies are used for tracking.
Display ads bring in over $40 million a year. Research shows that the average internet user sees an average of 63 display ads per day.
Display ads can help you drive traffic to your website, and hopefully into your leasing office.
There are 3 main types of display ads:
Display advertising is a powerful way to showcase your housing community and target prospective renters through banner, video, and interactive ads.
Display ads also offer your brand the opportunity to reach users around the globe through high-traffic websites like Google and YouTube.
Using a lookalike audience lets you target ads to users with similar traits and interests to your current followers.
A lookalike audience can help you find prospects you wouldn’t have been able to reach before, like a friend or classmate of a current resident.
Facebook lets you do this by identifying common features and interests of your current followers with those who are similar to (or “look like”) them.
You can create over 500 different lookalike audiences from information like city, state, age, and gender. This can help expand your advertising reach by measuring the target groups that are likely to visit your website and sign up for housing.
There’s a lot of moving pieces in perfecting your marketing strategy. Putting together a plan that works for you can take time, but there are things you can do in the meantime.
You don’t have to wait to attract your next group of tenants. Check out our blog to see how you and your apartment housing property can help students now >