by threshold | Feb 18, 2021 | Creative, Digital Marketing, General, Marketing, Tech/Web
With Active Living communities proliferating and the next generation of seniors entering retirement age, a new era of senior housing marketing is well underway. But old beliefs about seniors and their housing needs still impact how communities are developed and marketed. After all, it wasn’t long ago that “retirement homes” and “nursing homes” were considered the primary choices for seniors looking for apartment-style living options.
The misconceptions still lingering about the senior housing market don’t just influence how people outside the industry think about senior living, they also impact what senior housing developers, owners, and management firms believe about senior housing marketing best practices. That’s why we wanted to take the opportunity to explore some of the most common senior housing marketing misconceptions today. We’ll interrogate some commonly held assumptions and deconstruct them to arrive at the truth about marketing housing to seniors.
Misconception #1: All Senior Living Communities Have The Same Marketing Needs
Senior living is not a monolith, but marketing practices are still working to catch up with its modern evolutions. Today, there are many different types of senior housing communities, each with its own unique marketing needs and best practices. Active Living communities have very different marketing needs compared to Assisted Living, and Assisted Living has different needs than Memory Care. A hybrid community has different challenges still. A good senior apartment marketing plan takes the community’s unique offerings into account. This applies to strategies around branding, digital ad tactics, website design, SEO strategies, and lots more.
Some senior apartment marketing strategies (like SEO and ad targeting tactics n particular) will also differ between urban vs. suburban vs. rural communities. Further, each unique local market carries its own culture of expectations, trends, and competition. Gone are the days when seemingly all senior housing communities were out in the suburbs, away from the hubbub of city life.
These different needs also arise from different audiences across different community types. Adult children of the senior prospect often have a primary role in selecting Memory Care, for example, while the senior and other decision makers may divide responsibility for the housing decision more evenly for Assisted Living. When it comes to Active Living, adult children may assist in the housing choice, but often the senior prospect will make their decision independently. Messaging, brand voice, ad targeting, and other marketing factors should take these differences into account.
Misconception #2: Senior Apartment Marketing Needs to Be “Safe” or “Conservative”
Today’s generation of seniors (and their adult children) are just as fun-loving, bold, and free-spirited as anyone else. Marketing for seniors tends to be safe and conservative, but these tactics often verge on boring and unimaginative, which isn’t winning anyone over. In fact, avoiding the safe and conservative option in favor of the bold, out-of-the-box option can be a huge breath of fresh air for seniors who are bored of the same old, same old and looking for brands that truly resonate with their inner spirit.
Keep age in mind, but don’t be ageist when you do so. That means taking the time to think critically about what you think will resonate with your target audience and why. Take care to eschew assumptions that may stereotype seniors in condescending and inaccurate ways. Push yourself to be bold and engaging without necessarily being youthful; after all, no generation has a monopoly on fun, audacity, or spirit.
Misconception #3: Senior Housing Marketing Relies on Traditional/Print Tactics
The old practice of ignoring the digital sphere in favorite of traditional print marketing tactics no longer works for today’s senior apartment marketing audience. While this audience continues to find traditional marketing persuasive, that doesn’t mean you can neglect digital tactics entirely.
Contrary to common assumption, cutting-edge digital marketing campaigns will reach today’s generation of tech-savvy seniors and their adult children. It’s becoming essential for senior housing communities to think about SEO, website UX, virtual leasing, digital ad campaigns, and more.
Misconception #4: Senior Housing Is Only For Seniors
With age-restricted communities, it’s easy to focus on just the members of your marketing audience that fall into your resident age range. But while seniors are your residents, many seniors want to live in a community that welcomes their entire family and provides a place to share during visits. That’s why some senior housing communities feature amenities like children’s playgrounds. Keep in mind that the adult children of seniors will be a large part of your audience too, and this community will be a place they come when they visit their parent(s).
In other words, your marketing should invite your audience to imagine your community not just as an ideal place for seniors, but also for the whole family. That means family-friendly amenities, proximity to city centers and major highways, and spacious interiors with room to entertain can be well worth a shout-out on your digital ads, website design, and more.
by threshold | Jan 12, 2021 | Digital Marketing, Marketing, Tech/Web
With COVID-19’s disproportionately high impact on older generations, it goes without saying that the senior living industry has likewise felt the brunt of this pandemic. As we keep our eyes on industry trends, we’ve compiled a few takeaways for our senior living clients and their competitors as they navigate the effects of the pandemic on their brand reputation, lead traffic, and ultimately lease rates. These challenges aren’t felt universally or with the same severity for all communities within the senior living industry, but they may have long-lasting ramifications for brands in this vertical.
In this post, we’ll be breaking down what effects we’re seeing in the industry, what’s causing these effects, what can be done to mitigate them, and what we can expect moving forward. Looking for senior living marketing tips to help your community respond to the pandemic? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s get into it.
The Effects of COVID-19 On the Senior Living Industry
When it comes to the top Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) we use to measure marketing success for the real estate industry, the impact of the pandemic on senior living communities is similar to that seen by other segments of the housing industry: occupancy is down, costs are up, and brand reputation is less stable.
But these are the short-term effects of COVID-19. It remains to be seen how these shifts will ripple into the future. Senior living brands enjoy some security in the simple fact that aging is inevitable and the next wave of seniors will still need assisted living and memory care. However, at the present moment, long-term care facilities have been hit hardest by COVID’s effects, followed by assisted living communities. In Q2 of 2020, the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care reported that the average occupancy rate for senior housing properties dropped to a historic low of 84.9%.
Less clear is how the pandemic will effect the Active Living industry. The good news for this segment of senior living is that their KPIs have been less impacted than their assisted living and memory care counterparts. Occupancy at active/independent communities has remained relatively stable. Regardless, we may begin to see an increased effort among Active Living communities to distance themselves from the term “Senior Living” in order to skirt the perception of senior communities as risky places to live right now.
What’s Causing These Effects?
In addition to the direct, human impact of the coronavirus, the pandemic also impacts the senior living industry in indirect ways. For example, press coverage focusing on outbreaks or the risk of outbreak in these communities compounds the perception of all such facilities as unsafe places to live (or for one’s parents to live). This negative perception can extend even to those communities that have strong safety measures and have not suffered an outbreak.
After all, while we’ve all seen the headlines about outbreaks at senior care communities, the average person is less likely to look beyond the headline to fully ascertain the factors that are most likely to lead to outbreaks. This contributes to an imperfect understanding of the true level of risk, which is only exacerbated by the fact that scientists and the press alike have been playing catch up to understand how this virus spreads and impacts the body. All that uncertainty makes it hard for seniors and their adult children to feel confident in their housing choices, resulting in fewer leads and leases.
Furthermore, the recession kicked off by the pandemic is still building. Its impact will continue well beyond the current moment, likely for years to come. Since many seniors looking for independent or active living must sell their homes before making a move into a senior living community, a recession may inspire this group to delay this transition for as long as they’re able. In other words, this demographic may choose to age in place a bit longer, resulting in less demand for independent living.
As for memory care and assisted living, the recession may impact these sectors as well, although in different ways. It may impact how much seniors or their families are able to spend on their care. It will also likely mean that some families opt to (or are forced to) care for their senior family members themselves rather than paying for the extra care provided by an assisted living or memory care facility.
In addition, costs are up for senior living communities as they hire more specialized staff, buy more protective gear, and contend with increased demand for the supplies they need to serve their community. Additionally, while senior living has often relied on in-person tours and marketing, the pandemic has required communities to move more of their leasing efforts into the digital space, resulting in additional expenditures on technology like virtual tours, live chat bots, and more. Not only that, but seniors currently residing at these communities are looking for ways to stay connected with their families who may be unable to visit in person, so some communities are accommodating that with added digital amenities, resulting in additional up-front tech costs.
What Can We Do?
We’ve published a number of guides that can empower senior living brands with better marketing during the pandemic, including our blog post on How To Adapt Your Real Estate Marketing During COVID-19.
Additionally, we highly recommend our more recent guides covering Digital Apartment Marketing Tips During COVID and a Tour Guide Playbook with best practices for tours and lead nurturing during COVID.
In addition to what you’ll find in these guides, we have a few recommendations to add specifically for the senior living industry. The first is to explore Addressable Marketing campaigns using geofencing technology. Campaigns like these have the ability to target users at their household—like a direct mailer for the digital age—and can reach audiences based on factors like age, the number of members in their household, and a variety of interests.
Finally, your messaging around COVID is of paramount importance when it comes to nurturing the leads that do come in. This is likely to remain top-of-mind for a while, especially for the senior living industry, so any prospect who is unable to easily find information regarding COVID-19 on your website, GMB page, or by email is likely to take their search elsewhere. Be as transparent as you can about your respond to COVID-19. Make this information easy to find throughout your digital presence, including your website, GMB, and social accounts. Show that you are taking concrete measures to promote social distancing and minimize the risk of outbreaks.
Being up-front with this information may seem like it’s calling attention to the risk the pandemic has created, but that ship has already sailed; your prospects are thinking about COVID when they decide where to live, regardless of whether you bring up the topic yourself. The best you can do is help assuage their concerns by making it crystal clear that you are doing everything you can to keep seniors and their loved ones safe.
by threshold | Jan 6, 2021 | Creative, Design, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Tech/Web
For real estate developers, leasing and property management teams, apartment marketing agencies, and in-house real estate marketers alike, fair housing requirements have been an evolving consideration when it comes to how we do our jobs. With guidelines still emerging and clarifying, especially for the digital space, this topic can sometimes feel like a moving target. Regardless, it’s essential to put in the time and attention required to understand how legislation like the Fair Housing Act (FHA) works to reduce housing inequality across factors like race, disability, and national origin.
Our goal with this article is not to replace your legal counsel, but to provide our learnings and recommendations for FHA-compliant apartment marketing that supports a more equitable housing market. Our goal is to empower you with a better understanding of how you can not only act within the guidelines of FHA law, but more importantly, how you can avoid inequitable impact toward disadvantaged groups when you market your housing to your audience. After all, inequitable impact can occur more easily than you might think, and much of it is done unintentionally. But take heart, real estate marketers; a little extra effort and consideration can go a very long way.
So let’s start by introducing the Fair Housing Act, then we’ll discuss our recommendations and action items for marketers like you.
What is the Fair Housing Act?
The Fair Housing Act prohibits the making, printing, and publishing of advertisements that indicate a preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin.
It’s designed to not only outlaw explicit housing discrimination against these protected classes of people, but also to reduce housing inequality that may be caused in unintentional or subtle ways.
Housing Inequality refers to a disparity in housing availability and quality across variables like race, class, disability, and more. Housing inequality is typically a result of systemic factors both past and present, from Red-lining to wage inequality.
Housing inequality may include…
- less housing available to certain groups
- less affordable housing available than demand requires
- less access to local resources (e.g. schools, parks, transportation, social services) for certain groups due to where they predominantly live
- and more.
History of the Fair Housing Act
The FHA is considered amongst the last major acts of the ‘60s Civil Rights Movement. It was called for by civil rights activists of the 60’s including Martin Luther King, Jr., who demanded an end to redlining and other discriminatory housing practices that were preventing many Black and Latinx people from renting in certain neighborhoods. The act had been introduced to Congress when MLK was assassinated on April 4th, 1968, increasing pressure on Congress to pass the bill. It was then passed prior to MLK’s funeral.
But the FHA didn’t end housing inequality. While it has positively impacted many Black and brown renters and homeowners, a variety of systemic factors still result in housing inequality today. For example, the FHA did little to disrupt a trend of “white flight” between 1950 to 1980, when the Black population in America’s urban centers increased from 6.1M to 15.3M. During this time, whites moved out to the suburbs, taking many of the employment opportunities Black people needed into communities where they were not welcome.
Since its initial passing, a number of amendments and provisions have expanded the language of the FHA. Notably, in 1988, Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act, expanding the classes protected by the act to include disability and familial status (e.g. people currently pregnant or with children).
During the Obama administration, the AFFH (Affordably Furthering Fair Housing) provision of the FHA was introduced, which expanded both accountability and resources given to cities and regional governments receiving HUD (Dept. of Housing & Urban Development) funding. These rules and resources were designed to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing by incentivizing fair housing efforts at the governmental level. However, in 2020, the Trump administration amended this provision, rolling back most of the accountability and resources provided by the provision. This change makes it less likely for fair and affordable housing to be built, but it doesn’t ultimately impact a marketer’s responsibilities to either the FHA law or to ethical ideals.
Protected Classes Under the Fair Housing Act
Race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, and national origin are all protected classes under the FHA.
Many state and local laws have more expansive fair housing protections that prohibit housing discrimination based on additional protected classes, such as sexual orientation, marital status, source of income, and use of Housing Choice Vouchers.
In some cases, political affiliation may also be a protected class according to a webinar by the National Fair Housing Alliance.
Below are a few examples of who and what these protected classes cover and don’t cover.
What Counts As “Advertising” Under the Fair Housing Act
It’s important to realize that under the FHA, the definition of advertising is actually very broad. It includes…
- print and online advertisements
- print materials such as brochures or applications
- television and radio ads
- and even speech.
In other words, the FHA can cover messaging from a brand or people associated with the brand even across media that may not strictly be advertisements as typically defined. For example, expressing an illegal preference or limitation to one of your fellow agents, brokers, employees, prospective sellers, renters, or to any other person in connection with the sale or rental of your property is illegal under the FHA. Here are two examples of illegal advertising that you may not have realized were violations of the Fair Housing Act (examples provided by the Fair Housing Institute).
- A maintenance man tells a passer-by that “only real Americans” live in the apartment complex where he works.
- A rental office is decorated with many large pictures of the residents participating in the community’s facilities and amenities such as exercising in the weight room, swimming, and playing volleyball and tennis. However, all of the pictures are of white, young, “yuppies;” none of the pictures shows children, or persons of differing races or nationalities.
Best Practices for Fair Housing Compliant Marketing
FHA-Compliant Copywriting
When it comes to writing fair housing compliant copy for your apartment marketing materials, it’s important first and foremost to use inclusive language as often as possible. This includes the following:
- Use gender-neutral terms and pronouns as often as possible. (e.g. “partner” or “spouse” instead of “husband” or “wife;” “child” or “student” instead of “son or daughter;” “they/them” instead of “he or she/him or her;” etc.)
- Avoid mentioning specific religious holidays or practices
- Avoid mentioning specific national or regional origins
It’s also wise to eliminate the use of buzzwords like “Restricted,” “Exclusive,” or “Limited,” as these have been associated with discriminatory practices in the past. If tempted to use these sorts of buzzwords, consider similar words instead like “Luxurious,” “Deluxe,” “Quality,” or “Sophisticated.”
It’s also important to avoid the temptation to speak about who you see as the ideal resident of your community. For example, if you have a community with a playground, you might be tempted to say that your apartments are “perfect for families,” but this expresses an illegal discrimination or preference for one of the protected classes under the FHA. Instead of indicating who you think should live at your community, focus on the amenities, features, and local attractions your property offers. Always offer truthful information about the availability, price, amenities, and features of a housing unit and leave it up to your prospects to determine whether the community is right for them.
In addition, when writing copy for websites, social media posts, articles, and the like, consider how legible the copy will be to a person reading your content via a screen reader program rather than by sight alone. Use capitalization and punctuation in ways that make it easier for these screen reader programs to parse copy (e.g. capitalize each word in a hashtag as in #ScreenReader).
FHA-Compliant Design
When it comes to design, representing diversity should be a top priority whether you’re launching new ads or designing a website. Use photos of diverse groups of people from all protected classes whenever possible. If you have to depict just one or two people in a given image, consider depicting a person or people from another protected class in the next image. In general, your goal is to provide an overall impression of diversity for a user that encounters your brand assets. Don’t forget that diversity doesn’t just include racial diversity, it also includes things like gender, disability, and religious diversity.
It’s also wise to incorporate the Equal Housing Opportunity logo in your ads and on your website. While the Fair Housing Act itself does not require the use of Equal Opportunity logo in any ad, using the logo does show your company’s commitment to fair housing compliance.
Similarly, we recommend incorporating the Americans with Disabilities Act Icon wherever relevant, such as on a floor plans or community amenities page. Several federal laws require that private and federally-assisted housing be accessible to persons with disabilities. While this icon is not required on marketing materials, it acts as further evidence of your company’s commitment to fair housing compliance and encourages people with disabilities to apply to live at your community if they see the icon on your website or other assets.
For more resources on creating accessible design across digital and print marketing, we recommend looking into dedicated resources like W3’s Web Accessibility Initiative, UX Design’s post on Accessible Design, and Smashing Magazine’s article on Designing for Accessibility and Inclusion.
ADA-Compliant Websites and Accessibility
While the Americans With Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, it doesn’t provide much in the way of accessibility guidelines to determine how accessible a website is to people with various disabilities. To put it generally, everyone, including persons with disabilities, should be able to enjoy the “full and equal” use of your website; they should be able to access content, navigate your website smoothly, engage with different elements, etc.
When it comes to more concrete guidelines, U.S. courts and the Department of Justice have continually referenced the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA success criteria as the standard to gauge whether websites are accessible. The WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria are comprised of 38 requirements and you can learn more at W3’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview. Although there is a lot here to sift through, WCAG 3.0 is scheduled for release in 2021 and is intended to be a much more inclusive set of guidelines that are easier to understand and implement.
Using an accessibility widget is a great way to cover many of the WCAG guidelines for your website. An accessibility widget is a plugin that helps users with disabilities access the site and may allow users to adjust factors like contrast and font size, use keyboard navigation or page readers, and stop animations on the site. No plugin guarantees 100% coverage of the WCAG guidelines, but nevertheless, they are a great addition to your website.
FHA’s Impact on Digital Advertising for Apartments
Thanks to guidance from the Fair Housing Act and similar legislation, the housing industry has emerged as one of the first to receive official legal guidelines for digital advertising tactics. While traditional marketing has operated under clearer legislation, the digital space has long been a legal frontier as legislators, courts, and thought leaders work to catch up.
In 2019, platforms like Facebook and Google, who represent the lion’s share of digital advertising space, began making changes to their advertising options. To summarize, the platforms have now eliminated or adjusted a number of targeting options for ads falling into the categories of housing and finance in order to bring their platforms into better accordance with FHA and similar legislation. These changes—such as the removal of zip code targeting, age targeting, and targeting based on certain interests—reduce the possibility of inequitable impact across the protected classes under the FHA. You can learn more about Facebook’s targeting changes and Google’s targeting changes in our other posts, linked here.
What We Expect To See Next For Digital Marketing
These targeting changes on Facebook and Google are likely to act as forward momentum for similar such changes in the future. We expect cookie privacy and other privacy concerns to be a large part of the discussion in the coming years. We also expect other platforms beyond Facebook and Google to begin seeing regulation (if they don’t initiate changes proactively themselves).
by threshold | Dec 7, 2020 | Digital Marketing, Marketing, Tech/Web
There are a lot of best practices you can gather about digital apartment marketing before you ever launch your own campaigns. But the best campaigns are built on the foundation of testing and optimization. No two markets are exactly the same, so to learn what works for your real estate brand, you have to be willing to try, fail, and learn along the way. Luckily, A/B testing—AKA split testing—is a tried-and-true practice among marketers, and it’s built into many of the most popular advertising platforms. Plus, when done strategically, it saves you much more money than it costs, making it a no-brainer for most real estate marketing agencies and in-house apartment marketers.
So what exactly is A/B testing, how does it work, and how should you employ it for your apartment marketing campaigns? We’ll answer all that and more below.
What is A/B Testing?
A/B testing is a type of split testing in which two versions of a marketing element are run simultaneously to determine which performs better. For example, if you take an existing ad for your property, but swap out the headline for a new one, then run both the new and the old version at the same time (i.e. version A and version B) to see whether the new or the old headline earns better results, that’s an A/B test. While split testing refers to a test with more than one version, A/B testing is simply the term for a split test using exactly two versions. However, the term A/B testing has become so ubiquitous you might hear it used synonymously with “split testing.” In any case, the basic methodology is the same whether you’re using two versions or more.
Ad headlines aren’t the only thing you might A/B test. Email subject lines, landing pages, CTAs, and lots more can be A/B tested to fine-tune your approach to apartment marketing for your real estate brand.
Why is A/B Testing Important for Apartment Marketing?
We said it earlier, but it bears repeating: no two real estate markets are exactly the same. Your audience of potential residents might respond to one headline while another audience might ignore it. And while you might land on a decent marketing strategy by following best practices and common sense alone, you could be missing out on a lot of optimization if you never test your approach.
When real estate brands employ A/B testing, they give themselves the opportunity to understand how to put their marketing dollars toward the most cost-effective outcomes. For example, you might find that advertising “Get 2 Months Rent FREE” performs better than “Get Half-Off Rent for 4 Months,” earning you more leases even though the rent concession costs you just as much no matter how you phrase it. A/B testing can amplify—sometimes dramatically—the effectiveness of the same basic marketing campaign, simply by tweaking the messaging you use, the color of a CTA button, the header at the top of your landing page, or the subject line of your email.
How To Do A/B Testing for Apartment Marketing
Before you start A/B testing, though, it’s important to know some basic dos and don’ts. Otherwise, you can easily get results that are skewed, confusing, or just not very useful. There are a few essentials to keep in mind when setting up an A/B test.
First, it’s important that you pick only ONE variable to test at a time. If you run a version of a display ad with a different headline AND different photo selection, you won’t know whether the difference in performance is due to the headline messaging or the photo selection. Unclear results like this make it challenging to use what you’ve learned to optimize your results. While it can be tempting to test everything all at once in the hopes of expediting the learning process, you’ll actually slow yourself down because you’ll have to wade through unclear results that don’t offer actionable takeaways.
Secondly, it’s important that you split your sample groups evenly and randomly. Doing so ensures that one version’s higher performance isn’t simply due to it having more opportunity to excel than the other. For example, if one landing page is shown to prospects who have visited your site already and another version is shown to new visitors, you won’t know whether the difference in performance is due to the audience it was shown to or due to the landing page design itself. Randomizing and evenly segmenting the users who see version A vs. version B helps ensure that you can confidently attribute differences to the variable being tested and NOT to any variables that are not being tested.
On a similar note, avoid jumping to conclusions until versions A and B have both been shown to a good sample size. The sample size sufficient to draw reasonable insights can vary based on your goals and what’s being tested, but in general, the larger your sample size, the more confidently your can draw your conclusions and apply your learnings.
Finally, understand your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) before you start testing. Since there will likely be a variety of measurable differences among factors like CTR, impressions, time spent on page, percentage of new website visits, open rates, and so on, it’s important that you know which are most important in measuring success. For example, if what you want is more traffic to your site, measuring CTRs and new visitors to the site (through Google Analytics) are your key metrics to look at. If what you want is to raise awareness, impressions and views may be more important barometers of your success.
by threshold | Oct 13, 2020 | Culture, Marketing, Tech/Web
Updated 9/8/21 With the oldest representatives of Gen Z now 24 years old, this generation has already redefined the student housing market and is well on its way to doing the same for multifamily. As their coming of age continues to change the student housing and multifamily industries, here’s what you should know if you want to remain at the cutting edge of the industry and future-proof your marketing strategy. We’ll break down who Gen Z is, what motivates Gen Z’s housing choices, and how to market housing to Gen Z. Let’s dive in.
Who Is Gen Z?
First of all, let’s nail down some definitions. Although from a practical standpoint, generational boundaries are more of a guideline, the official birth years for Gen Z fall between 1997 and 2012. That means as of 2021, the oldest Gen Zers (or “Zoomers”) are now 24 years old. As a result, many Gen Zers are now becoming first-time renters in both the student housing and multi-family markets, and within the next decade, the entire generation will be 18 or older.
Besides their years of birth, Gen Z is defined by the digital and cultural trends that formed (and continue to inform) the zeitgeist of their formative years. This generation is dominated by digital natives—i.e. people who have not only never experienced a time without the internet, but who grew up using smartphones, social media, and other digital technologies and platforms. They are on track to be the most educated generation on average and tend to be socially conscious and climate conscious.
In terms of their values, Gen Z is considered to be similar to Millennials but antithetical to the Boomer generation. Many Gen Zers appear to reject the traditional values of the Boomer generation: for example, Gen Z is less likely to value buying a home, marrying young (or marrying at all), having children, achieving traditional career success, or conforming to traditionally-defined gender roles.
What Motivates Gen Z?
Gen Z’s digital and social sensibilities define their key motivations within the housing market. For example, it should come as no surprise that, even more than Millennials, the digital natives of Gen Z are motivated by smart home tech, access to high-speed internet, and a property’s digital presence. They prefer having the ability to learn about a property online without first having to visit in person and expect online options for lease applications, rent payments, and maintenance requests. In a similar vein, this group—accustomed to having so much of their life at their literal fingertips—appreciates convenience and will choose housing options that cater to it.
Beyond their digital expectations, Gen Z is also highly motivated by affordability. As this generation enters the market during one of America’s most staggering recessions, when tuition costs are higher than ever, and job security is hard to come by, they know they have to be frugal and cautious. For similar reasons, this generation values flexibility and efficiency. They want to get what they need without paying for extra; they want low utility costs and high value, and they want the freedom to change their housing when their needs change, especially during a time of instability.
Additionally, this climate-conscious generation is motivated by sustainability. They are early adopters of sustainable alternatives to everyday goods and services and likely to appreciate brands that they see as contributing to climate solutions rather than to climate problems.
How is Gen Z Changing the Housing Market?
As Gen Z enters the renting market, many developers and property management companies are beginning to see what is most important to these renters as well as what are some of the deal-breakers.
We’ve already seen a shift to online rent payment options, online leasing, and virtual tours. In addition to these changes, we’re beginning to see an incorporation of more smart-home technologies with new developments and upgrades to existing apartments. These changes speak to some of the shared values placed on digital convenience and tech-savvy by Gen Z and Millennials. While the latter have been shaping housing trends for over a decade, Gen Z will likely push these trends even further. In particular, smart-home technologies with phone compatibility are likely to be the next wave of upgrades. Some of the amenities we’re beginning to see in this area include:
- Smart thermostats
- Smart door locks and keyless entry (for apartments and amenity spaces)
- Package lockers
- Smart speakers (often given as leasing incentives)
- Smart lights
- Smart appliances
- App-based amenity reservation system
On the subject of sustainability, many developers are setting new standards with LEED certification. Since Gen Z values contributing to efforts that protect the environment, we may see an increase in LEED certified buildings and the marketing around these certifications to appeal to the interests of Gen Z renters. Other features and amenities we’re beginning to see in this area include:
- Vehicle recharging stations
- LED lighting
- On-site renewable energy
- Recycling options
- Daylighting
- High-efficiency appliances
- Community gardens
Another interesting trend that could emerge is co-living. While it’s still a niche industry, co-living may appeal to the convenience and affordability motivators for Gen Z. Younger renters are accustomed to and actively seek out living with a roommate. The housing affordability crisis of today may even motivate Gen Z renters to seek out co-living options in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic and any lingering cultural shift it may create.
How To Market Apartments to Gen Z
Whether you’re marketing student housing or multifamily apartments, appealing to a Gen Z audience requires more than just running some ads on Instagram or creating a TikTok for your property. While most apartment marketers and asset managers already know that social media presence is a must when marketing to Zoomers, there are additional factors you should take into account.
Branding & Positioning for Gen Z
Gen Z likes to see authenticity, social impact awareness, sustainability, and modernity from their brands, and apartments are no exception. For new developments, it’s easier to steer your branding in this direction, but for existing communities, it can be a challenge to adapt to these preferences after the fact. Consider drafting new brand messaging guidelines for everything from your social media posts to your website and ad copy, then update these digital assets accordingly. Gen Z can smell inauthenticity a mile away, so brand voices that are conversational, approachable, and down-to-earth tend to resonate better with this crowd. And after all, there’s something inherently appealing about a brand that appears to “cut through the bullshit” and deliver straightforward facts. While some existing brands can achieve this with just some well-placed tweaks, in some cases, a full rebrand could be the glow-up your community needs to attract Gen Z renters.
Gen Z also tends to prefer a brand look & feel that is colorful, playful, and simple. In general, think organic shapes, minimalist composition, and hand-drawn patterns and textures. By contrast, the ultra-luxe look & feel of metallic accents, moody lighting, and elegant or crisp lines don’t tend to play as well with this audience. That’s not a hard and fast rule though, so consider which of these elements, if any, will play well with your interior design and existing branding.
Digital Marketing for Gen Z
You already know that a social media presence and social media ads are a must for Gen Zers. To maximize your impact on these platforms, video is a must. TikTok videos, Instagram reels, and Instagram Stories are excellent ways to give quick video tours of your floor plans, show off resident events, introduce your on-site team members, and more.
In addition to these platforms, your website and Google My Business page are also key to earning leads and leases from Gen Z renters. You don’t have to have the fanciest website, but a modern feel with solid UX (including, at a bare minimum, no broken links) can go a long way. That goes double for a GMB page with updated info, a working link to your website, attractive community photos, and positive reviews.
And because most housing searches begin with a Google search, especially among the digital natives of Gen Z, Search Ads are a must if you want to reach your prospects when they are most ready to click and convert.
by threshold | Sep 22, 2020 | Creative, Design, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Tech/Web, Thought Leadership
Every good digital marketing plan for real estate must take into account the user experience on property websites. After all, a digital ad is only as good as the landing page it directs to, and a bad first impression can destroy your chances with a prospect. Real estate marketers today know they need to provide a great user experience on property websites, but they aren’t always sure how to improve UX or use strong UX design from the beginning.
If this sounds like you, don’t worry, we’re going to go through some UX tips for apartment websites. These tips range from quick fixes to broader strategies, but every one of them will help you build websites that meet user’s needs and encourage them to take the actions that are important for your bottom line.
Study User Behavior
First and foremost, you need to understand your users. Not just users in general, but your users; your audience’s browsing habits, goals, needs, motivators, and preferences. Each market is different and so is each person, but a few strategies can help you discover broad habits that your site should cater towards, like what information is important to your users and what device they usually use to search for housing or access your resident portal.
Conduct a Focus Group
A focus group survey can help you understand a lot about your audience. While the best focus groups require diligent survey design, the payoff can be massive.
When conducting focus groups, make sure to get as representative a sample as possible for your city, university, or age group. You might want to offer an incentive to attract more participants—for example, with a chance to win a gift card once the survey has been completed.
Avoid asking leading questions or limiting the answers your respondents can give. Keeping things open-ended is the best way to ensure you learn something you didn’t already know (or assume).
Use Scrollmaps
Scrollmaps are a tool you can use to study user behavior on a site that already exists. It shows you where users tend to linger on a page, where they tend to click, and which areas fail to hold their attention. This is a particularly useful tool if you want to identify areas for improvement on a website you’ve already built.
Scrollmaps can’t provide a full picture, however, because they don’t show you what your users would be doing if things were different. They can only show you what they are or aren’t doing right now. In other words, they’re better at identifying problems than solutions. Still, they can be a great place to start.
Study Your Google Analytics
For more insights into user behavior on already existing sites, Google Analytics is a fantastic resource. It allows you to see which pages have the highest bounce rate or lowest time spent on-page, which pages are most viewed and which are rarely seen. These insights can help you identify sections of your site that need improvement. Combined with the use of scrollmaps, this strategy can give you a lot of information about your current UX without having to ask users directly.
Consider Your Mobile User Experience
While many users’ housing searches take place primarily online, mobile phones and tablets still represent a significant portion of the traffic to your property website. In fact, a user is especially likely to encounter your property website on their phone during the discovery phase, when they’re forming their initial opinions and deciding which properties will move forward into their consideration phase. This means having a responsive website—one that’s optimized for a variety of screen sizes—is essential in making a good first impression.
If you’re not sure how to turn a website design that’s optimized for desktop into one that works on mobile, here are a few basic guidelines.
When it comes to website design for mobile:
- Stack content vertically instead of horizontally
- Use image carousels instead of images arranged in a grid pattern
- Implement expandable elements so users can expand and collapse information as they desire
- Use an expandable “hamburger” navigation menu that remains out-of-the-way when not in use
Address Long Loading Times
Nothing contributes to high bounce rates more than a slow load time. That’s because a slowly-loading page makes for a terrible user experience in a world grown accustomed to lightning-fast internet. Users just don’t have the time or patience to wait for your site to load, especially when they have other options available to them.
The best way to reduce page load times is to be aware of the common culprits—namely, video and images. When you have several large image or video files on a page, it takes much longer to load, even on the best internet available today. It’s best to keep each image or video under 500KB wherever possible.
That’s not your only option, though. Sometimes, you might need to include a large file (or several). In cases like these, you can instead defer certain elements from loading on the page until they’re needed, or until the rest of the page loads. For example, you can wait to load a video until a user scrolls to the section of the page it’s on.
Make Pages More Engaging
The longer a user spends on a page, the likelier they are to take a conversion action or become loyal to your brand. But you need to give them reasons to stick around, and that means offering a great experience while they’re there.
One of the best ways to improve website UX by making your pages more engaging is to incorporate great images and video onto as many pages as possible. Users like to have something visual to enhance their understanding of information and hold their focus.
For apartment websites, we highly recommend taking high-quality photos and video of your community and incorporating them throughout your webpages (not just on a gallery page). Virtual tours have become a must, and your homepage can be a great place to feature a professionally edited community tour video or even feature Matterports of your top floor plans.
Make Pages More Scannable
Much as website creators might want them to, users don’t read pages from start to finish. Instead, they scan pages for the information they need or content that engages their attention.
Work with user habits and not against them by making your pages easier to scan. This creates a better user experience on your property website and improves your chances of showing a user that your community is right for them.
Tips for making web pages more scannable include:
- Develop a clear hierarchy of information by using header tags, consistent font and formatting styles, and visual cues that help signal separate chunks of information (like font color, font weight, background color, and other design elements).
- Use headers that clearly signal the content they introduce (e.g. “Community Amenities” or “Amenities for an Active Lifestyle”).
- Avoid long blocks of text. Break up text into sections of about 100 words or less.
- Avoid repetition. Repetitiveness confuses the reader about where they can find the information they’re looking for. It can also seem spammy to users and search engines alike.
- Use bullets or lists when you can (like we just did).
Make In-Demand Pages Accessible
Some pages are more important than others, and you want to make sure your users can easily find and use the pages they need the most (and the pages you most want them to use). For apartment websites, that’s typically your application portal, contact page, and resident portal. It might also be a page housing your virtual tour or floor plan availability. There are a few things you can do to make these in-demand pages more accessible.
Firstly, let’s talk about accessibility in terms of how easy it is to find. Use clear Call-To-Action buttons at the tops of pages—especially your homepage—to direct users to what they need and where you want them to go. You might also use borders and contrasting colors in your navigation menu or headers to make links to these pages clearer and more attractive.
Making pages more accessible also means making them easier to use for as many users as possible, including those with disabilities. For example, make sure you use fonts that are large enough for all users to read. You should also avoid using colors that provide poor contrast with one another, especially for text and CTA buttons.
Don’t Forget About Micro-Copy
“Micro-copy” refers to those small pieces of text that guide a user through your website, like the text on a CTA button or the error message they get when they fill out a form incorrectly. It’s easy to overlook the power of strategic micro-copy, but these are often high-impact areas that define the quality of a user’s experience in spite of their relatively small real estate.
Beyond their usefulness in guiding a user clearly through your website experience, micro-copy also offers a great opportunity to turn something generic into something that expresses your unique brand and really makes an impression on users. For example, the ubiquitous “Submit” button is boring and not all that descriptive. A button reading “Send My Message” or “Make Me a VIP” is more descriptive, personal, and flavorful.
Micro-copy applies to areas like CTAs and form fills but can also include hover copy to let a user know something is clickable and what will happen when they click (e.g. on an image or button), like in the below example.
Micro-copy also allows you to set expectations for what will happen when a user does something, which makes them far more likely to take the conversion actions you want them to take. For example, if you want the user to contact you to schedule a tour or start an application, including the text “We’ll read your message thoroughly and get back to you within 24 hours,” near the contact form gives a user the confidence that taking that action will lead to their desired result.
That’s all our tips for improving UX on apartment websites! If you want to learn more about UX or get professional assistance with your UX Design, you can do so by filling out our Contact Form. We’d love to hear from you.
