3 Keys to Rethinking the Multifamily Website

The Website is a Lead Generator

Properties and Property Management Companies no longer own the information about a community, your residents do – they are the ones talking about it daily with their friends, family, and co-workers, they write reviews about it, they post photos of to Instagram, they edit the details on Google. All of this information is consumed by the vast majority of prospects before they get to your website.

Most multifamily website templates contain multiple pages with dense content describing the community. This approach is one of selling, aiming to convince the website visitor that they should live at that community. But that is no longer the role of a multifamily website. Because the prospect 1. views your marketing messages about the property skeptically and 2. has already consumed most of the information about your property, you need to get out of their way. As the saying goes, less is more.

The only information that the property owns about its community is pricing and availability. The role, then, of the multifamily website is to provide pricing and availability and then to provide opportunities for the prospect to connect with you.

Not all Website Visitors are Committed

Most multifamily website templates assume that the visitor is ready to either apply or tour. But the decision about where to lease is often a long one that requires research, comparisons, conversations, etc. Therefore, if your goal is to create a connection with a website visitor and if many of them are not ready to commit, you have to provide opportunities for them to connect with you without making a commitment.

Lead generation calls-to-action should target specific parts of the journey – apply now and schedule a tour are at the very end. You should get creative with other softer lead generation opportunities.

Build in Automation to Nudge Prospects

No technology today can replace the effectiveness of one-to-one interactions between the prospect and the property team. However, in between those interactions, automated campaigns can nudge the prospect along toward the next phase of the journey. These automated campaigns should take into consideration how the lead was generated and target them with valuable content that gets them closer to a leasing decision.