The Future of Property Marketing: AI and Automation

13 March 2024

As supply drives greater competition in the multifamily market and rents soften, multifamily marketing leaders are turning to new technology to create efficiencies and greater performance when faced with limited budgets.

Nearly half (43%) of multifamily marketing leaders surveyed found Delivering the Same Marketing Performance With a Smaller Budget to be one of the most challenging aspects of their job. When asked where they saw the biggest room for improvement, this group mentioned embracing automation and AI as a top priority.

While this new tech is transforming property management processes at a rapid rate, it’s still in its infancy. In this blog post, we explore five ways marketing automation and AI is poised to disrupt the industry.

Automated Lead Generation and Nurturing

Automation is revolutionizing the lead generation and nurturing process, enabling marketers to build their lead pipeline faster and more cost-effectively. Instead of manual and time-consuming processes, marketing leaders can utilize automated systems to identify and qualify leads efficiently. Self-scheduling applications, gated virtual tours, and chatbots integrate seamlessly into your website, can engage with potential residents, answer queries, and guide them through the application process. This not only streamlines operations but ensures a prompt and personalized experience for prospects.

Personalization at Scale

One of the challenges facing multifamily marketing leaders is delivering personalized experiences to a diverse audience at scale. Technology, like AI chat experiences, gives property management teams the ability to provide customized answers to inquiries faster, more consistently, and with greater detail than before. As marketing leaders lean into marketing automation within their lead management platforms, new doors open up to streamline the email and text follow-up process with Lead Nurturing.

With machine learning algorithms, property management companies can develop the ability to analyze vast amounts of data to understand resident preferences, enabling them to tailor marketing messages, promotions, and even property offerings on a granular level. These insights could be applied to increase the performance of marketing activities while moving prospects through the leasing journey faster.

Predictive Analytics for Strategic Decision-Making

The future of property marketing demands a data-driven approach. Predictive analytics powered by AI can provide invaluable insights into market trends, resident behavior, and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. By analyzing historical data, AI algorithms can forecast future trends, enabling marketing leaders to make informed decisions and allocate resources strategically. This proactive approach ensures that your marketing efforts stay ahead of the curve.

Streamlined Ad and Content Creation

New generative AI technology is making the content creation process easier and faster by automating the ideation phase of content creation. From generating catchy headlines to suggesting optimal posting times based on user behavior patterns, AI can significantly reduce the time and effort required for content creation. Tools like these can help onsite teams tackle tasks that require content at scale, like maintaining social media profiles, posting to a Google Business Profile consistently, producing content for websites, email messaging, and more. This not only enhances efficiency but also ensures that your marketing materials remain fresh, relevant, and aligned with the preferences of your target audience.

Ad Optimization for High-Performance KPIs

As giants in the marketing technology space, ad platforms like Google, Meta, and TikTok, among others, are leading the charge in adopting AI and Automation into their platforms. With the advancement of new features like Smart Bidding and Responsive Ads in Google Ads, automated event tracking in GA4, and conversion-focused ad objectives in Meta and TikTok, there are now more tools to optimize ad performance with AI. These tools provide savvy advertisers with the opportunity to create more targeted and high-performing campaigns within the same budget by leveraging their immense user data and tried and true machine learning algorithms.

Embrace the Future

As we stand at the forefront of a tech-driven revolution in multifamily marketing, the opportunities presented by AI and automation are too compelling to ignore. The landscape is evolving, and embracing these innovations isn’t just about staying relevant; it’s about making profound improvements to processes to set marketing teams up to meet the growing demands of the industry. Adopting AI and automation will position your property management company for success in a competitive market where speed to lead, a personalized prospect experience, and insights into the customer journey are critical.