Top Student Housing Marketing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

In a recent webinar hosted by Student Housing Business, Conversion Logix’s Student Housing Marketing Expert, Kat Callender, joined Alaina Jackson (Director of Sales and Marketing at PeakMade), Cristina Pfeffer (Marketing Director at Scion Group), and John Barr (Director of Leasing and innovation at Dinnerstein Companies) for an insightful discussion about overcoming common industry marketing pitfalls. Read on for a recap of the discussion and our key takeaways for developing more effective marketing campaigns.

Understanding Gen Z’s Evolving Search Habits

To remain relevant in today’s market, Student Housing marketers should consider diversifying their search strategy. While Google Ads is still a pivotal part of these marketing leaders’ campaigns, the panelists shared insights into how the search marketing landscape is evolving and where marketers need to start shifting their focus.

The main takeaway – Gen Z renters and their parents aren’t limiting their research to Google; a portion of this audience is searching on other search engines such as Bing, vetting brands on Instagram, and some are even turning to AI platforms such as ChatGPT. 

During the webinar, Cristina shared that they have been testing Bing Ads across a sample of Scion’s properties and seeing great leads and conversions come through from that strategy. 

Equally important to developing a competitive search strategy is considering what students are looking for when they search for a housing solution. John mentioned that transparency is critical in this market. His team recognized that Gen Z values clear and upfront information about pricing and fees and worked to include itemized breakdowns of community fees across his property websites to increase conversions.

Key recommendations:

• Expand search advertising strategies to Bing and other alternative search platforms.
• Stay up-to-date on how AI search is changing the search landscape, and work with your marketing partners to learn how you can improve your visibility.
• Clearly display detailed pricing and fees on your websites to build trust and deliver on Gen Z’s preference for authenticity and transparency.

Maximizing Marketing Budgets

Marketing budgets are often under scrutiny, requiring marketers to constantly reevaluate their strategies to maximize their ad dollars. Utilizing lead attribution tools can ensure that every marketing dollar is well spent. Alaina mentioned how important it is to leverage technology to track lead touchpoints to understand the highest-performing channels and tactics. By incorporating better attribution data, marketers can avoid making costly mistakes such as investing in underperforming strategies for too long or missing out on opportunities to turn up the dial on lead-generating strategies. 

In addition to deploying more sophisticated tracking, Alaina suggests thinking outside of the ILS and pay-per-click advertising tactics to include email and text message marketing in your strategy. She mentioned seeing a resurgence in engagement with direct marketing tactics like email and that her team has experimented with custom HTML designs to increase the effectiveness of this strategy. 

Key recommendations:

• Invest in lead attribution technology to help you identify the strategies with the greatest ROI.
• Incorporate email marketing strategies alongside paid media efforts to increase engagement and maximize your marketing investments.

Strategic University-Level Targeting

Successful student housing marketing hinges on understanding university-specific dynamics. Enrollment data and demographic shifts, particularly with international versus domestic student populations, greatly influence marketing effectiveness. Marketers need to stay closely connected with university administration to gain insights and tailor their campaigns accordingly.

John mentioned that in markets where international student enrollment is common, they have utilized marketing strategies that are popular outside of the U.S. For example, when Chinese student enrollment was strong in California markets, they looked into WeChat, among other tactics. In markets where international enrollment is cooling down, marketers may want to turn to local and domestic strategies to adapt.

Additionally, overlooking the impact of university policies can be a mistake. For example, some universities require underclassmen to stay on campus for a couple of years. In these cases, Cristina suggested adding location-targeting strategies like geo-fencing to hone in on upperclassmen targeting. Alaina also mentioned that targeting feeder schools is an overlooked strategy that can be effective for targeting incoming upperclassmen in these markets.

Key recommendations:

• Develop strong relationships with university administration to understand how student enrollment is changing and anticipate demographic shifts.
• Create targeted marketing campaigns for specific student segments, such as upperclassmen and graduate students.

Capturing Attention in Competitive Markets

Retargeting is a critical strategy for maintaining student attention. Repeated engagement through retargeting ads (on platforms like YouTube, Meta, Instagram, and Display) significantly increases conversion rates. Additionally, despite the dominance of digital, personal interactions and guerrilla marketing efforts remain highly impactful. John explained that with the prevalence of AI, we are seeing a “disconnection with connection.” As important as AI and automation are to providing speed and scale, it can’t replace the human-to-human engagement that comes from boots-on-the-ground tactics like events and on-campus promotion. John suggests adding more human-to-human touchpoints in addition to AI and automation to help your communities stand out in the market.

Key recommendations:

• Incorporate retargeting advertising strategies to nurture prospective renters and ensure your brand stays top-of-mind during leasing season.
• Add a human touch element into your strategy to differentiate in a market where AI and automation are becoming increasingly common.

Managing Online Reputation

One common mistake property management companies make when managing student housing properties is neglecting reputation management. A strong online reputation can make or break marketing success, especially among Gen Z, these digital natives vet reviews and read comments before making a purchase decision. To account for this, onsite teams should respond thoughtfully and promptly to any feedback, demonstrating authenticity and genuine care. Negative comments can also be left outside of review sites and across social posts and ads. Monitoring these can be important for ensuring your marketing efforts are improving your brand reputation. 

Key recommendations:

• Monitor review platforms and social commentary and address comments and reviews to prevent negative reviews from sinking your branding efforts.
• Pay attention to comments on ads. Advertisers can moderate and delete comments left on ads to improve the results of their paid marketing efforts.

Measuring Success Beyond Immediate Metrics

Not all marketing success is immediately evident through direct conversions. Sometimes, indirect metrics—such as increased website traffic or stronger organic search performance—indicate a campaign’s success. When evaluating an underperforming marketing channel, don’t rely solely on direct attribution. 

Prospects often engage in a multi-touch “research journey,” bouncing between your website, social media, reviews, and third-party platforms before converting. Removing a channel like YouTube or Instagram Stories may not immediately show a drop in conversions, but you may see an unexpected decline in traffic or engagement shortly after—revealing its true value as a supporting touchpoint. 

To make a fair assessment, give new strategies at least 90 days to mature, as most campaigns don’t show strong performance until the second or third month.

Key recommendations:

• When testing the effectiveness of brand awareness campaigns or new channels, give your ads time to run and impact actions further down the funnel before you discount to avoid miscalculating their impact.
• Check to see how your organic search traffic and direct webpage visits fare after you launch campaigns. When brand strategies are effective, it is common to see these KPIs lift as people come back to search for a brand they saw in an ad online.

Final Insights from Industry Experts

At the end of the webinar, the speakers shared one piece of advice they wanted student housing markers to walk away with. Here is what they said:

• Alaina Jackson: “Don’t underestimate personal touch. We now have AI automation. We have all these cool innovative things we are using in this space. But I think it is just as important to do those back to the basic things when it comes to leasing, building rapport when you’re touring people, making sure, you know, that you know who your residents are and that they know who you are.”

• Christina Pepper: “Be flexible. Know that this leasing season is not like last, and next season is probably not gonna be like this season. And so be able to adapt and evolve with the platforms, with your team, and not just you as your marketing team. Get your sales team involved. Get your leasing team involved. Get your site and operations team involved. Make sure that you’re all really aligned.”

• John Barr: “Investing in your online reputation is so imperative. You spend more money when you don’t and when it’s not good. So, you might as well just make it a priority today so it’s not a problem for you tomorrow.  We have people dedicated to that, and because we make it a priority, it pays off for us in the long run. Our renewal percentage is the most I’ve ever had in my career, and when you have that, that’s fewer new people that you have to bring in.”

If the webinar made one thing clear, it’s that success in student housing marketing comes from striking the right balance between innovation and human-focused approaches. It’s about blending automation with authenticity, leveraging data without losing the personal touch, and being adaptable in the face of an ever-changing leasing landscape.

Ready to fine-tune your strategy? Start by identifying one marketing “mistake” you might be making and implementing one of the panel’s recommended fixes. Small adjustments today can lead to stronger leasing performance tomorrow.

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