Creative, easy, and budget-friendly grab-and-go gift ideas for apartment outreach marketing and resident retention! These ideas will help you get ahead of competitors in the new season. These initiatives help you increase occupancy for your community.

Get creative this month with some fresh, unique ideas for your apartment marketing. We have ideas to check all your boxes and meet all your goals - resident events to increase resident retention, resident notices, outreach marketing, resident renewals, and follow up initiatives. The best part? They won’t break the bank or take up all of your time. We don’t believe you have to sacrifice your time or your money to reach your marketing goals.

Easy grab and go gift ideas for apartment marketing and resident retention! We’ve got 12 ways to show your residents you care and 5 easy marketing tactics you can put to work today.

There are few things that people love more than their pets, except maybe your own children. Sometimes if you ask parents on the right day, even that might not be true. When your prospects are looking for a new home, they aren’t just looking for themselves, they’re looking for their furry friend too. The connection that people have to their pets is the same connection that can get you that new lease because the prospect can see that you genuinely care about what it is that’s valuable to them. We’re giving you some ideas on how to harness the power of pet-friendly marketing tactics to show your prospects and residents that you care just as much for your four-legged residents as you do your two-legged.

Moving is stressful so it’s important as leasing agents, real estate professionals, and property managers that we are empathetic to our new residents and take the time to understand their circumstances when they move in. Taking the time to help make sure their move in process goes smoothly and showing them some gratitude for picking your community will go a long way in gaining their loyalty. Making sure to take the move in process as an opportunity to ‘wow’ your new resident will help in your resident retention as well.

Food centered resident events are great for encouraging resident retention and building loyalty for your apartment community. This cooking class resident event is a great way to get your residents mingling with each other and creating relationships, plus it doesn’t have to be overly complicated for you as the property manager or leasing agent. Utilize social media to market your event and encourage your residents to post about it using a hashtag.

Outreach marketing is the act of marketing or promoting our community. It involves creating rapport, building and strengthening business and customer relationships, and seeking out new clients. In a nutshell, it’s telling businesses (and people) in our surrounding area who we are, what we're all about, and what our community is all about. Building rapport is more powerful when someone can put a face to the (brand) name. When we go visit local businesses, they start to associate us with our community. We go from a faceless brand to a personal connection. Marketing is a numbers game. Increased marketing equals more prospects and more prospects allow us more opportunities to close. If we follow that logic, more opportunities to close leads to higher occupancy. And we all know the benefit of that!

If you’re a part of the Sprout Community in any way then you know that we just released some BIG news and our new project has finally launched! Our new podcast called Marketing Home, Marketing You is now available for all you awesome peeps to dive into. Our CEO, Barbara Savona, being the lifelong learner that she is, launched this podcast out of a passion for creating content that is easy to consume while still being jammed packed with education and value for the listeners. This podcast was born out of a desire to create a space where all housing professionals can come and discuss all things marketing, business growth, and career development. Seriously, ALL housing professionals - multifamily, student housing, senior housing, affordable, brokerage, real estate. 

Most managers would agree that a proactive marketing approach is ideal, still the large majority default to a reactive approach. Why? Often, managers start with the best of intentions to have a well-crafted marketing plan but then things happen onsite that take away our focus. Mid-month they can find themselves with dipping occupancy, unaccounted for skips, or a lower renewal rate than anticipated. In the shock and misunderstanding a hail mary is thrown in hopes it will correct all the missed goals. But let’s be honest, does the hail mary ever work?

Being a property manager is a rewarding career, but it can have it's rough days. Especially when that day consists of dealing with resident complaints. How you handle complaints can either build that resident loyalty that you want, or it can break their trust. Read our sneak peak of our webinar with Rommel Anacan where he'll teach you a step-by-step method for positively dealing with complaints.

Ever have a really big idea and then realize… oops…. You don’t actually have time to make it happen? Maybe you had the best marketing initiative planned but then that to-do list got the best of the day and you just weren’t able to make it happen. We feel you. Time-starved property managers are spread thin and often times it feels like there’s no help in sight which can have such add to the already overwhelming feeling you have on the daily, am I right? We’ve heard this same scenario from property managers all over the US and decided that Sprout can do more to help. So we did! We now have done-for-you bundles in our Sprout Shop that you can purchase and then have the pre-made bundles shipped directly to your door.

We’ll be real honest, selling smaller floor plans can be tricky. No one loves to hear a prospect say, “Oh wow, this apartment is so small.” But, when you hear that, that’s when it’s your chance to sell the lifestyle that comes with living in a smaller space. 

Teachers work seriously hard for the money and I LOVE giving back to them. I’m talking about pairing goodies that give back to teachers and at the same time, attract these hard working professionals to your community. So, let’s think about how you can market to teachers, school districts, and faculty staff.

Q: “Barbara, I've attended several courses that you presented. I have a question for you. With competition being so fierce, do you have any quick tips on best practices when it comes to marketing? Best, Sarah from Indiana."