Let's say you're a marketing director for a company that has lots of student housing or communities located near a university campus with a generally younger resident population.

You're redesigning your website and you decided that you wanted to do something edgy and interesting to try and hook millennial residents.

So what did you do? You hired a professional photographer to come in and shoot photos that looked like something from Instagram complete with odd angles, interesting lighting effects, and creative filters. And you spent a ton of money on an expensive web developer who built you a site that looks every bit as expensive as the price you paid.

Did that work? Or did it just cost you a lot of money without producing results that seem all that different from what you see at other communities with more conventional online apartment marketing strategies?

What kind of photography does an apartment community need?

It's easy to fall into a bit of a trap when you think about apartment marketing to millennials. There's a tendency to think that the combination of a new generation and new technology has completely rewritten the rules of marketing--and in one way it has.

But what has changed is mostly about capabilities and expectations: People are capable of doing more research online about a product and so they expect to find information when they search. What hasn't changed is the fact that the best, most efficient marketing is going to be the marketing that moves the person through the sales funnel fastest without compromising on price. The longer the sales process takes the more there is that can go wrong. If you can give the prospect the information they need to make a decision and then help them to make it, then you have a successful marketing strategy.

Here's where this high view of marketing connects to apartment photography: When people--and yes, millennials are people too--are looking to buy a product, the main thing they care about isn't the brand. It's how good the product is. Apple's marketing obviously played a massive role in its success, but if the iPod had been just another MP3 player it wouldn't have been such a revolutionary device. The marketing was simply complementing a superior product. If you paired Apple's marketing with Microsoft's Zune the effect would not have been nearly as powerful.

So when people are researching your community online, the first thing they need to know is if you are offering the product they want. In other words, they want specific, objective information about your apartment community that will equip them to make a decision about it--this means high-quality photography of each specific floorplan as well as easy-to-access information about square footage, pet policy, washer-dryer, parking, etc.

Where Many Communities Targeting Millennials Go Wrong

Here's where the problem begins to develop: When it comes to their online marketing, many student housing communities or luxury communities end up forgetting all about the actual product and going all-in on the brand.

This is where you get those luxury properties where the home page of the community site is a picture of the pool with an attractive woman lounging next to it in a bikini. This is where you get student housing sites with pictures of huge parties. This is why you see apartment websites whose photography page includes as many stock photos of attractive models as it does photos of the property itself. And, sure, some people will look at this site and think you have a cool community. But here's what they won't think: That apartment looks perfect. I should call them.

They won't think this because it isn't possible for them to do so: There is nothing on the site that wiould give them a firm idea of what the apartment is actually like. The photos are all about communicating brand, brand, brand, and what is missing is the product.

To put it with a bit more punch, we've got a completely empty thousand dollar suit. Or to use still another image--we have a luxury car with no engine. However you want to say it, the point remains the same--you have an awesome website but no one knows exactly what your product is.

Conclusion

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with having a strong brand. Hopefully you have a good reputation in your community and your residents are happy living with you. And if you want to create a cutting-edge trendy website to make your community look that much glossier, you certainly can. But before you do that you need to think first about the product and making sure that people know what the product is and why it's good.

Your prospective residents need to know what your apartments look like, they need to know your amenities, they need to see the kitchen and bathroom and bedrooms. They need objective information, not edgy marketing copy and art-house photography. You want a professional website with good photography, to be sure. You just want it to be about your product first and foremost. Otherwise you may as well be using Chipotle's marketing to sell Taco Bell.