Topics: Marketing Toolkit, Property Marketing
In today’s crowded market, advertising your student housing property is an absolute necessity. Effective rental property marketing puts important information in front of your target audience and propels them to action. However, we suggest advertising only if you have crystal-clear marketing goals and a properly designed marketing strategy.
Our student housing property marketing series has touched on what a state-of-the-art student housing property marketing campaign consists of and has provided an overview of how to create a successful marketing campaign for your student housing property step-by-step. Today we take a deep dive into the nitty gritty of developing, establishing and refining your property marketing goals.
Well-defined marketing goals are essential for effective advertising. Here’s our proven three stage process for establishing marketing goals that will enable you to run a successful leasing campaign:
#1 Develop Your Property Marketing Goals
To begin the process of uncovering your marketing goals, ask yourself these four questions:
- How would you describe your management company or property to someone who has no knowledge of its existence?
- If your ideal renter came away with just two thoughts about your management company or property, what would you want them to be?
- What are your favorite things about your management company or property? What sets it apart from other management companies or properties?
- What style do you envision representing your business or property? What adjectives do you hope to communicate?
+ Download the “Uncovering Your Marketing Goals” Worksheet
#2 Establish Your Property Marketing Goals
S - Specific
Drill down into your goals. What are you looking to accomplish with your marketing? Be exacting with a specific purpose. Your purpose could be as simple as "within six months, we want 25 lease applications completed."
M - Measurable
How will you measure the results of your student housing leasing campaign? What tools do you have in place? As the old cliché says, “what gets measured gets done.” By creating specific goals and ensuring you have tools to measure your results, you know what success will look like.
A - Attainable
As you are establishing your marketing goals, you must be realistic. For example, if you have an average of 100 monthly website visitors, you should not expect to multiply that by 100x overnight. Set realistic goals and benchmarks so that you can attain the goals you are establishing.
R - Relevant
Relevancy is another key factor that cannot be overlooked. Make sure your goals are in line with what you can measure. For example, if you are looking for leasing application completions, make sure you allow for lease application form completions to be tracked through the conversion tracking methods you have set up on your site. If you do not, pick another measure or put the appropriate tool in place.
T - Time-bound
Establishing deadlines for accomplishing your goals is equally important. A timeline will help you and your team visualize your destination clearly and ensure that you know when you need to arrive. Just remember, real results take time.
+ Download the “S.M.A.R.T. Marketing Goals” Worksheet
#3 Refine Your Property Marketing Goals
In addition to established S.M.A.R.T. goals, we have one more exercise to get you closer to setting those crystal-clear marketing goals: The Journey to Change principles. The Journey to Change process will dig deeper into your marketing strategy and the steps you need to take to reach your goals.
Let’s get started.
Define the problem.
- Examine your existing marketing strategy or lack there-of.
- What’s working?
- What’s not working?
- Strengths? Weakness?
- How do you measure up to your competitors in the market?
Define the desired outcome.
- What are your goals?
- Awareness: Are you looking to amplify your property awareness in the market?
- Considerations: Are you looking to win over (with features and benefits) lease applicants who know what they want?
- Conversions: Are you looking for engagements (lease applications)?
- How much is your outcome worth? (For example, one completed lease application equals a value of $24,000 gross profit for the property.)
Outline actions to attain goals.
- What steps are you taking to reach your goals? Paid digital campaign, print campaign, campus advertising and so on?
- How much are you investing to attain these goals?
- What is your time commitment?
What are the criteria for success?
- Are you looking to attain specific results? This might be a specific number of website visitors, lease application form fill-outs, or social media followers.
- Put an amount to your success criteria based on the data you currently have on hand. Every successful marketing plan needs a North Star. Define your North Star so that your marketing team can surround that goal and make it happen.
+ Download the “Journey to Change” Worksheet
We hope these tools will help you develop appropriate marketing goals so that you can create a successful property marketing campaign. If you invest in the process, choose the right partners to help get you there, and commit to your goals, you will meet them!
+ See samples of successful full-funnel integrated marketing campaigns.
Would you like to learn more about how to create a successful property marketing campaign for student housing?
Here at MSSmedia, we’ve been providing Education, Government, Real Estate & Lifestyle clients with succinct, optimized, and successful marketing solutions for more than 15 years. Consider MSSmedia a full-service, one-stop shop for all your Media and Public Relations needs. Your goals are our motivation. And our mission is to propel your message, further and faster, to achieve the outcomes you’re looking for. If you found this blog post helpful, please share!
