student housing marketing Case Study
GRO’s award-winning digital marketing strategy helped a student housing community achieve success in an ultra-competitive market during the pandemic.
The Story
Aero on 24th (Aero) is a 550-bed, 176-unit student housing community located in Gainesville, FL, just a mile and a half from the University of Florida. During the 2019-2020 term, whilst battling the adversity surrounding COVID-19, Asset Living and Aero challenged GRO to manage the marketing operations and ad spend in the competitive Gainesville market to help pre-lease the property for the upcoming school year.
Located over a mile and a half from UF and in a time where less and less students were returning to campus, GRO & Aero teamed up to create a dynamic marketing strategy to dominate the Gainesville market ahead of the 2019-2020 term.
Student Housing
Gainesville, FL
Digital Marketing
Paid Search Advertising
Social Media Advertising
Youtube Advertising
Programmatic Display Advertising
Retroactive Geofence Advertising
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic being in full-swing, we knew that we had to focus the majority of AERO’s marketing efforts towards digital tactics and think outside of the box. We decided to attack the Gainesville student market using five digital marketing tactics: Paid Search Advertising, Social Media Advertising, Youtube Advertising, Programmatic Display Advertising, and Retroactive Geofence Advertising.
Since some of the students were not on campus due to the pandemic, regular geofence advertising wouldn’t cut it for Aero. Fortunately, GRO’s geofencing technology had the ability to target students who visited certain locations in the past. We decided to set the targeting parameters to students who entered the geofences back in March 2020, which was the last month that students were on campus before they were sent home due to COVID-19. If a student entered a classroom, student center, rec center, or competitor property in March, they were then eligible to be served an ad.
The retroactive geofence advertising combined with the other digital marketing tactics, plus early campaign launch dates, proved to give Aero a huge advantage over their competitors.
Aero successfully pre-leased the property to over 95%! With over 58 properties in the ultra-competitive Gainesville market, 5 of which were also new developments, Aero ended the leasing season with the highest pre-lease, and experienced little to no turnover! To top it off, GRO won the Student Housing Business Innovator Award for Best Mobile Marketing Campaign!
Paid Search Ad Assisted Conversations
Direct Conversations
Cost Per Social Media Ad Conversion
Impressions Shared
