Overview
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 Marketing 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.
Industry
Student Housing
Location
Gainesville, FL
Involvement
Client
Kayne Anderson
Asset Living
*Photos / Renderings owned by Kayne Anderson
Opportunity & Solution
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 as well as think outside of the box. We decided to attack the Gainesville student market using five digital marketing tactics. 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.
In addition to the retroactive geofencing marketing tactic, The GRO and Asset team took it one step further. Using the University of Florida student contact list, the team harvested the home addresses of each student and set hyper geofences around their homes. If a student went back home to live with their parents during the pandemic, then there was a high probability that they would see an AERO ad. When it was all said and done, over 40,000 geofences were deployed and the GRO/Asset team was able to effectively reach and stay in front of students when they were home with their parents!
Social Media Ads
GRO’s digital marketing and retroactive geofencing strategy helps Aero successfully pre-lease the property to over 95%!
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! The lease up team continued into operations, and are 15% ahead YOY, with higher rates.
The Numbers
