Creative Apartment Advertising Ideas

First impressions last — and in the dynamic world of multifamily housing, a creative apartment advertising strategy is what ensures you make a great first impression. A fresh and imaginative approach is what puts your property in front of your target audience as they scroll through their feed.

In this blog post, we explore five creative advertising ideas that will spark curiosity for your property and leave a lasting impact on prospective residents.

Tap Into TikTok Ads

TikTok videos are short, authentic, and informative, making them a powerful marketing asset to introduce a lease-up or expand the reach of an existing brand. Post-pandemic, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms. At the beginning of 2023, eMarketer reported that users aged 25 to 54 spent more time on TikTok than any other social media platform. While creating organic content is great for building your brand on the platform, paid ads offer a more reliable way to reach in-market renters.

Here are two quick tips to take your TikTok ads to the next level:

• Experiment with different video approaches. With TikTok expanding its video lengths from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, video marketers now have more freedom in showcasing their properties. While featuring the property itself has proven to be effective, try featuring faces and sharing helpful tips. Study metrics like video watch time, ad click-through rates, and website conversion rates to determine which video creative resonates the most and double down on top-performing strategies.
• Maximize available ad targeting dimensions. Every penny spent on advertising should reach your target audience. Thankfully, the TikTok ad platform gives you plenty of ad-targeting dimensions to help you achieve this. Behavior targeting, interest targeting, and hashtag targeting capture audiences interested in multifamily housing in your local area. As with other social media platforms, you can also harness the power of custom audiences to build segments off your website traffic and engagement.

Target with Keywords in YouTube Ads Campaigns

Promoting video ads on YouTube enables you to reach a high-intent audience through keyword targeting. In addition to targeting strategies like data segments and demographics, YouTube offers advertisers the ability to build audiences based on users’ Google search activity. By using words or phrases for targeting, you can show your ad to people proven to be already interested in apartments in your local area.

Here are some best practices for YouTube advertising:

• Leverage learnings from Google Ads. Assess what keywords and ad campaigns are the most successful in Google Ads and leverage these same targeting strategies when creating YouTube Ads. Are neighborhood keywords driving the most high-quality traffic? Incorporate them in your YouTube ads targeting strategy to reach renters across a variety of channels and mediums.
• Leverage brand names as keywords. Using your company or property name can be effective as well, especially when there’s prior interest already. This may also be useful for those large brand awareness campaigns where you’re directing your audience to specific pages on your site. Lastly, if your company or property name is a common term, doing brand keyword targeting coupled with your industry keywords helps you reach your specific audience.

Get Ahead of the Competition and Advertise on Connected TV

Traditional TV viewership might be on the decline, but Connected TV media time is on the rise. Overlooked by many in the multifamily marketing industry, Connected TV advertising can be a great opportunity to reach your audience on a less competitive playing field. With an expected daily 2 hours spent with CTV this 2024, you’ll be ahead of the competition if you start advertising on this channel in the coming years.

Here are a few more reasons why you should add CTV to your marketing strategy:

• Advertising on a bigger screen allows for more room for creativity. Advertising on CTV lets you explore formats that may not be possible on smaller screens or static ad platforms. This also means you’re able to highlight your property’s features and floorplans without being restricted to smaller video dimensions.
• It prepares you for a cookie-less future. Cookies are going away but hard data such as IP address and device IDs are not. With CTV, you won’t be as reliant on cookies, but you still have data to ensure you’re still spending ad money on the correct audience.
• Reach a more detailed target audience who are more likely to finish watching your video ads. One of the metrics most video marketers are worried about is the completion rate. Sometimes, even the most creative videos only get viewed for a few seconds. CTV ads are non-skippable, so completion rates tend to be higher than other video platforms. The bigger screen also results in 62% ad recall, which is around 15% higher than ads seen on smartphones or computers.

Promote “Tour Your Way” Options in Ads

People love having options, especially when shopping for a big purchase. This is especially true when it comes to touring your community. 

Incorporating an option to “Tour Your Way” in ads puts your property top-of-mind for renters who want to tour your property but live out-of-state or are too busy to tour during business hours.

Here are two creative ways to promote flexible tour options in your ads:

• Use guided tours as video ad creative. There’s no better way to showcase what your property can offer than with a guided tour video ad. If your community has a pre-recorded tour that they have sent to prospective renters, this could be a good resource to source video clips that can be used in ads. This kind of ad can be used as a teaser to get a prospect to watch a full pre-recorded guided tour video or schedule an in-person tour. Include features unique to your property and features that have proven to have the highest conversion rates for your current residents for the best results.
• Create floorplan-specific video ads. Unless you are marketing a lease-up, you likely have specific floorplans that you are trying to fill vacancies for at any given time. One way to ensure you reach the prospects you need is to create floorplan-specific video ads and target renters searching for these floorplans with keyword targeting on YouTube or Display Retargeting campaigns that leverage website data to target prospects who’ve visited floorplan pages on your site.

Make Your Ads Interactive

With the Internet exposing your potential residents to a multitude of distractions, from competitor listings to other interesting stuff online, it’s important that you capture their attention by preparing ads that give them a reason to engage. One great way to do that is through interactive ads.

With HTML5 display ads, you’re now able to create interactive ads that deliver a unique experience to your target audience, giving them more incentive to stay on an ad and engage with your brand.

Adding to the previous suggestion of creating floorplan-specific ads, interactive ads can also be utilized to deliver a clickable ad that lets them explore your floorplan or other unique features. You can also create animated display ads that showcase your property “in action.” The possibilities are endless!

Check out how interactive ads can work for your property with our Premium Ad Design service.

Develop A More Imaginative Approach to Your Advertising Strategy

In the fast-paced world of real estate, where first impressions linger, and competition is fierce, a creative apartment advertising strategy lets you stand out from the sea of generic ads on multiple platforms. Your creative idea is what turns a potential resident’s casual scroll into an engagement and, hopefully, a new lead.

We’ve explored five creative apartment advertising ideas designed to leave a lasting impact on your potential renters. Partnered with other tried-and-true digital marketing strategies, these ideas can help ensure you have a winning strategy for the new year.

Read these blogs next for more multifamily marketing inspiration.

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