Social media is a wonderful tool for apartment marketing, especially with the 2020 projections showing even greater reliance on the internet for consumer decision making. What social media provides is a brand story and a personal connection for your already engaged audience. However, social media provides leverage primarily for interest-based industries, while the majority of renters fall more squarely into intent-based consumerism.
A powerful new tool for apartment advertising fills this intent-based aspect of marketing campaigns: Facebook Marketplace.
Facebook recently added a Property Rental category to their marketplace, opening up the platform with a convenient access point to reach your audience and make a sale. Renters who are ready to buy will search the rental properties available, making it easy to put your available units in front of your audience for free. You read that right: The Property Rental feature is a free new lead source! In addition to the perk of a free marketing platform, Facebook Marketplace employs the same marketing strategies as your Craigslist advertisements, meaning you can design posts for both platforms with no extra effort! In fact, this addition to Marketplace will likely replace Craigslist for apartment advertising in the next few years. Yearly adopters will be rewarded with an eager and active market on the largest social media platform in the world. Talk about power.
While apartment advertising on Facebook Marketplace is still developing, now is the time for early adopters to maximize on a new and currently free marketing platform. Innovative advertisers can begin experimenting with post types and branding in order to attract renters on the Marketplace. With the large-scale power of Facebook, early predictions show substantial growth in the use of Marketplace for the apartment advertising industry.
So, how do you get started?
1. Log on to Facebook and navigate to the Marketplace (notice: currently the Marketplace
can only be accessed from a personal account, not a business account. You will
need to post your properties from a personal account while still maintaining your
branding initiatives)
2. Choose Sell and click Housing for Rent
3. Begin providing the details of your listing
a. High quality photographs of the space
b. Wonderful copy with essential content in the description
c. Keywords for search-efficiency
d. A strong title for your space
e. Preferred contact (Note: many potential renters will message on Facebook Messenger,
so you should be prepared to check the messages regularly within the application)
f. Links to additional social media platforms and your website
4. Post