It varies by market, but all branding and creative elements (logo, renderings, marketing collateral, fence signage, and website), should be launched three months before leasing begins. This will provide your new development enough time to generate awareness and build frequency with students and parents.

It all depends on the market. Some university leasing seasons begin in the late summer before classes begin where others begin the following January of the academic year. For most markets, brand awareness and SEO start in the summer and the full marketing program is launched in the fall. It’s very common for student housing communities to increase marketing spend and launch new marketing tactics in the spring semester as well as the summer semester to make a final push.

It is very common to reduce or pause investment and marketing tactics when a student housing community reaches 100% occupancy, but certain marketing channels should run continuously. Budget should always be allocated towards Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve or sustain your organic rankings, as it is highly likely that your competitors are continuing to perform SEO on their websites.

The most common student housing websites feature six pages including the following pages: Home, floorplans, amenities, gallery, FAQ and contact.

Any goal or event on your website where a prospect’s information is submitted should be tracked and labeled as a conversion. This includes form fills, click to calls, applications, tour schedules and live chats. Engagement events such as time on site, pages per visit and “get directions” link clicks are also important metrics to track, as they are all positive indicators that a conversion is probable in the future.

We recommend allocating a very small portion of your overall paid search advertising budget to target your property name (branded keywords) for the following reasons – being able to switch information such as availability and specials in your listings, having a presence while your new website organically climbs the Google rankings and defending from competitor properties.

GRO has several clients running successful TikTok campaigns, but this answer varies depending on the location of your community and target university. As of May 2023, TikTok’s minimum location targeting (DMA) is loose in comparison to Meta advertising, so prepare to invest more money to reach your target audience. In addition, TikTok’s minimum daily spend is $20, which is significantly higher than other social ad platforms. We recommend only investing in TikTok advertising if you have a healthy budget and are already investing in the other core digital tactics (paid search, SEO, Meta advertising, geofencing).

This has always been a bit of a controversial topic. To put it simply, if you have an amazing on-site leasing team in place that you have confidence in showing the value of the property, withholding that information could be of benefit (especially if your rates are high for the market). On the other hand, if your on-site leasing teams struggle with converting a prospect to a resident, putting pricing online can help with finding future residents who are ready to make an informed decision. Since not all students that are leasing these apartments are physically present, they are likely to rely on the information they find on the property’s website. If rates aren’t there, they may just move on.