Before turning a digital advertisement on, every marketer should consider the answer to this question:
"What geographic location are you targeting?"
If you're marketing for Coca-Cola, with products shippable everywhere that anyone can consume, all you'd have to select is "All Countries and Territories" with little concern. (They have it easy over there.)
In multifamily marketing, the answer isn't as simple. Your apartments can't be moved, so narrowing the location where your ad is shown makes sense. That's geotargeting in a nutshell.
The tricky part with geotargeting is deciding where to narrow the location where an ad is shown—because it's so easy to get wrong. Does your choice actually help attract renters? Even more importantly, does it make sure you’re not unfairly excluding certain groups of people?
This guide will help you use geotargeting for apartments the right way.
What is geotargeting for apartments?
Every digital advertisement targets a location because location-based targeting is necessary. The question is where. Geotargeting for apartments involves defining the geographic area(s) where you want your community's ads to appear.
Geotargeting is not the same as geofencing, although these terms are often used interchangeably because both are location-targeting strategies. Geofencing involves drawing a tight boundary around a specific location—like a building—and triggering ads when users enter that boundary (if their location settings are enabled on their device).
Geotargeting, on the other hand, is broader and less precise. For example, if you’re running digital ads for an apartment community in Seattle, you would use a geotargeting strategy to show your ads only to people in and around the Seattle metro area, as determined by their IP address.
Geotargeting is a powerful—and necessary—tactic for apartment marketers for a few key reasons:
1. Your property has a fixed location.
Your apartment community isn’t moving. If your property is in Seattle, why waste ad spend showing it to renters in Nebraska? Focusing on your specific area ensures your ads are more relevant and prioritizes quality over quantity.
2. Renters typically move locally.
Most renters don’t relocate across states or even cities—they tend to move within a short distance from their homes. By targeting prospective renters who live near your property, you’ll reach an audience with higher intent to lease.
3. Ads work more efficiently.
Without geotargeting, your ads risk becoming inefficient by targeting everyone—and, in doing so, no one in particular. This means fewer qualified website visitors, fewer high-intent leads, and a much higher cost to acquire them.
What are apartment marketers (and vendors) doing wrong with geotargeting?
Not to spoil the rest of this guide, but geotargeting (the right way) for apartments isn't complicated. Yet both in-house apartment marketers and vendors make pivotal mistakes when selecting where to show a community's ads, almost setting them up to fail.
There are two common examples we've seen where geotargeting went wrong:
Using geotargeting as the only targeting tactic.
On the surface, targeting the Greater Seattle metro area makes sense if your community is in Seattle.
However, geotargeting alone is not the only way to achieve this. If that were the case, you're telling whichever advertising platform you use that you want your ad to appear to everyone in that location.
Why this doesn't work: Ultimately, showing an ad to a broad audience—even if the location of where it's shown is narrow—will produce a lot of impressions to users who have no active interest in your apartments or renting in general. This results in lower ad click-through rates, higher ad costs, and minimal leasing impact.
For geotargeting to work, you must ensure your ads appear to users within your defined location who are actively looking for an apartment. That also means informing Google or Meta of locations where you want to be excluded from your geotargeting strategy. We'll explain this later in our how-to section.
Being overly precise with geotargeting.
One often recommended method of geotargeting is to focus on high-intent locations, such as specific employers, schools, or attractions near your apartments—especially if most of your community's renters are associated with those places.
This strategy seems reasonable. But, how some have tried achieving this with their geotargeting campaigns has led to more problems than results.
Why this doesn't work: Well, several reasons.
- This means that anytime a user enters those preset boundaries, whether they are participating in an apartment search or not, they can be targeted by this community's ads if the ads themselves are not high-intent enough. (This is one potential reason why multifamily marketers and vendors should avoid geofencing as a location-targeting technique.)
- There may be a long-term play with targeting renters currently living in another apartment. Still, the reality is that there's likely a reason why they're living at that property instead of the one advertising to them.
However, the most impactful faux pas in being too narrow with geotargeting is that the community's ads would ultimately risk compliance with Fair Housing Laws.
If you're targeting small areas, whether specific properties or your community's nearby neighborhood, you're inevitably (though perhaps unintentionally) narrowing your ad's visibility to specific demographics over others.
How to Set Up Geotargeting for Apartments
If you want to get better-qualified website traffic and leads and use your advertising budget effectively, do these two things when using geotargeting in your apartment's digital ads:
1. Set a geotargeting radius that covers the metropolitan area your apartment community is in.
Make your targeting radius sufficient to cover your apartment community's metropolitan area without grabbing traffic from another metro.
For example, if your apartment community is in Seattle, you could safely expand to a targeting radius of up to 100 miles, covering the metro area and outlying smaller cities like Tacoma or Bellevue, whose renters may have fewer options and would be more inclined to move into the Seattle metro.
However, expanding a geotargeting radius of that distance wouldn't make as much sense if your apartments are in Houston. You'd get lower-qualified traffic from other metros, like San Antonio, which has hundreds of apartment properties for prospective renters to choose from. Use your best discretion.
This approach achieves three essential goals:
- Targeting high-intent renters: You’re focusing on prospective renters who are more likely to move within the defined area but also expanding to include renters looking to move into your city.
- Comprehensive coverage: This range automatically includes major employers, schools, competitors, and other attractions within the area, so you don’t need multiple geotargeting campaigns to achieve this.
- Fair Housing compliance: A broader radius ensures inclusivity and compliance by covering a diverse range of renters based on race, age, sex, income level, etc.
Pro Tip: In Google Ads, you'll have to choose whether you want your geotargeting ads to target individuals by 'Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations' (users who qualify to see your ad by being currently in the location you're targeting) or 'Presence or Interest' (users who qualify to see your ad by either being currently in the location you're targeting or interested in that location). Choose 'Presence.' That option ensures your ads aren't displayed outside the radius set around your community.
2. Pair geotargeting with keyword targeting.
As stated before, geotargeting doesn't work on its own.
The next step is to pair your geotargeting strategy (the location where you want your apartment's ads to show) with your keyword targeting strategy (the search terms that high-intent renters use in their search)—especially when those keywords specifically call out places of interest near your location.
For example:
- If your apartment community is in Seattle and you’re geotargeting a 100-mile radius around your community’s location, a prospect within that zone who searches "studio apartments for rent near me" could see your ad. "Near me" ties the keyword to their current location.
- If they search "apartments for rent near University of Washington," your ad could also appear if you're targeting that keyword.
When your geotargeting strategy aligns with your keyword targeting strategy, you narrow your audience to only the highest-intent renters. This improves lead quality and increases the likelihood of conversions, making your ads more efficient and impactful.
Conclusion
Okay, you've made it here. You know that geotargeting is a necessary and effective tactic for ensuring that your apartment's digital ads are shown to high-intent renters near your community's location. You also know that this tactic can often be used incorrectly.
Regarding the question, 'How do you do geotargeting for apartments correctly?' Focus on setting a radius around your community that sufficiently covers its metropolitan area's location and surrounding areas without grabbing traffic from other metros, and match that targeted location with the keywords you're targeting with your digital ads.
And here's the secret: We also use geotargeting in our multifamily-specific digital advertising solution in this way.
Predictive Advertising automatically drives more qualified traffic to your community's website, producing the right leads at the right time. Ready to make your PPC strategy do the same? Schedule a demo now.