Without website traffic, nothing happens.
Why? Traffic is the starting point of your resident's lifecycle. Traffic → Website Engagement → Lead → Tour → Application → Qualified → Lease → Satisfaction → Renewal.
When you don't have enough traffic—or when the traffic you get to your apartment's website doesn't convert to leads and leases—it impacts your entire operation.
To improve your apartment's performance, you must first improve the quality of your website traffic.
That's where digital advertising comes in, and we'll discuss how later in this article. But first, let's revisit how traffic determines performance.
What happens when you don't have enough traffic to your apartment's website?
If website traffic is low:
- You get fewer leads because leads only come after a visitor engages with the content on your website.
- Without leads, you get fewer tours.
- With fewer tours, you'll struggle to get applications for vacant units on time.
- With more units sitting vacant longer, occupancy struggles.
- Because occupancy struggles, you're forced to make more concessions to get units rented.
- You miss revenue targets.
- (And, it goes without saying, morale is low and there's dysfunction between owners, regionals, and site staff.)
None of this should come as a surprise. The multifamily industry knows the importance of website traffic. Many apartment marketers solely think about how much traffic they're generating!
But just generating more traffic cannot fix all of these problems. You can push your marketing budgets toward multiple traffic-generating sources, see more website visitors, and still experience many of the same operational issues.
The difference between traffic that strengthens your operation and traffic that weakens it is its quality, not quantity.
That's where digital advertising comes in.
Digital ads are the best source of quality traffic for multifamily.
Digital ads are the most proven method of producing quality traffic—website visitors who are most likely to become leads and sign a lease. Here are three ways digital ads work to increase your traffic quantity and quality:
1. Digital ads reach renters where they're searching for apartments.
With so many apartment communities offering similar floorplans, amenities, and pricing—even within your metro—your ability to compete for traffic hinges on your visibility within platforms renters frequent during their search. Think Google (Search, Maps, YouTube, and its entire display network) and Meta (Facebook News Feed, Instagram, Reels). Digital ads ensure your apartments have enough visibility to drive more awareness and visits to your website.
2. Digital ads target high-intent renters.
A digital ad about an apartment community doesn't appear on the screen of a casual internet browser. No, it only appears for individuals actively searching for an apartment community—and not just any apartment community, but one that matches their needs, as clarified by the keywords in their search. Because of this, any individual who clicks on an ad and visits your community's website is doing so with a higher intention. Because your community fits their needs, they are more likely to engage, schedule a tour, and apply.
3. Digital ads' real-time adaptability makes meeting leasing needs simple.
Beyond reaching an audience of prospective renters with a higher intent to lease an apartment, digital ads give apartment marketers an advantage no other source can offer: real-time adaptability. Demand and occupancy constantly change, so not only do apartment marketers need that ability to pull a lever and increase (or even decrease) traffic when they need it, but they also need a method for showing renters the most relevant information. For example, if you have a vacancy tied to a particular floorplan, you can change your digital ads to feature just that floorplan and create more urgency for it.
This is why digital advertising is essential for multifamily marketing. They drive the type of qualified traffic every community needs to ignite their operation in a positive way. And it's incredible how much of a difference qualified website traffic makes to your apartment's operation.
What happens when digital ads produce quality traffic to your apartment's website?
When traffic is more qualified:
- You get more qualified leads because most website visitors were already interested in your apartments before engaging with your website. Your website and its content just confirmed their interest.
- You have more tours with prospects more likely to close, touring becomes enjoyable again, and agents can be guides, not salespeople.
- With more qualified leads and better closing rates on tours come fewer vacant units.
- With fewer units vacant, occupancy stabilizes, and there's not as much need to generate demand so that marketing expenses can be decreased, and higher rent prices are justified.
- With your operation firing on all cylinders, you can spend more time and effort enriching the resident experience and earning more renewals.
Do you want more qualified traffic to your apartment's website?
If you're ready, start here:
- Our Beginner's Guide to Digital Advertising for Apartments introduces the fundamentals of digital ads so that you can begin implementing (or improving) them in your multifamily marketing plan.
- If you need further help, Predictive Advertising is our automated, multifamily-specific digital ad solution. By leveraging your community's unique supply and demand data and making daily adjustments to spending and campaigns, our software delivers the right amount of qualified traffic to your website, reducing vacancies faster and positively impacting every area of your operation.