The marketing gurus at consumer product giants get it: marketing increases product value. They get that marketing increases return on investment.

They get that you should never stop marketing even when demand is higher than supply. Consider Apple, which simply never stops marketing. Even when demand far outpaced supply of the iPhone 5s, Apple continued its television, email and online marketing efforts to drive even more demand.

Yet, in today’s hot apartment market, in which Axiometrics reports that apartment occupancy hit 95 percent in June, some apartment companies are wondering if they should scale back their marketing activities. It seems like a logical consideration, since there is very little (immediate) supply available to offer and a lot of demand for apartment homes.

But what Apple and other consumer-product marketing gurus have discovered is that creating demand even while supply is low has substantial benefits that flow right to the bottom line. Before you say that product companies are able to create more supply while you’re not, remember that you’re able to increase price while in many cases they can’t. There’s only so much people are willing to pay for a phone. And, in this hot market, new apartment communities are being built in droves. Translation: supply is coming.

With that in mind, here are the top three reasons to maintain your marketing efforts even in a hot apartment market:

1. Marketing creates more demand, which means higher rents in the market. This is the beauty of price flexibility, which even Apple doesn’t always have. Apartment communities are positioned to drive rent growth today, but they can hinder that growth by slowing down their marketing efforts and relying too much on natural demand. Apple could probably get away without spending a dime on advertising after its product launch announcement (demand is that high), but it chooses to spend because the branding increases the value of its products.

2.  There are still units available. If you’re on revenue management, those units are priced relatively high. That means you have a shot at a big chunk of incremental revenue. But you have to market even more to fill an expensive apartment home. Apple didn’t have that kind of price flexibility. If it did, you can bet it would have marketed the iPhone 5s even more than it did.

3. Higher demand gives you the ability to be more selective about whom you allow to lease an apartment home. If you’re not advertising enough, you’ll have fewer applicants to choose from and that means higher risk of skips and late payments. This is another advantage you have over consumer product companies. You don’t have to rent an apartment to someone with bad credit. You can choose to rent to someone with better credit, a higher likelihood to pay, and a willingness to pay more. That’s true only if you have their application. Without advertising, you might not. 

Although you can’t create more widgets to sell, you can increase price, reduce the risk of skips and late payments and lease those last few apartment homes. Advantages that consumer products companies like Apple wish they had to market more of in a high demand, low supply environment.