Apartment advertising comes with a unique set of challenges. Even if you’ve come up with a series of creative apartment ads, they won’t be effective without a strategic approach. Unlike selling products with wide audiences, like electronics or kitchen gadgets, apartments are hyper-local. So, the best way to ensure that you’re reaching the right audience is to align your apartment community and what it offers with the needs of your potential customers through targeted advertising.

What follows is a rundown of dos and don’ts of great apartment ads that will help prospective renters find your community online.

Do: Use branded keywords in your apartment PPC campaigns

When people search for the name of a specific apartment community in a specific city and state, they’re using branded keywords. These are your hottest leads because they’re already aware of your community, so it’s important that you capture them. If you don’t use branded keywords, there are two potential scenarios. Either an ad for a competing apartment community will appear above your ad, or an ad for an internet listing service will, making it easy for you to lose that prospect.

Do: Weed out irrelevant clicks by adding negative keywords

Adding negative keywords to your PPC campaign means that your ad will not be shown to people searching for those keywords. For example, if there are other apartment communities with a name identical to yours in other cities, you’ll want to add those cities and states to the list so your ad only appears when people are searching for your specific community. Also, consider adding other keywords that are not relevant to your community, such as “55 and over” or “senior housing,” for example, if your community is not specifically geared toward seniors.  

Do: Use custom landing pages

If your PPC and display ads are targeted properly, they should appear to those who are interested in your apartment community. So don’t lose that prospect by leading them astray when they click on your ad and reach your apartment website. Make sure your landing page clearly delivers on the promise implicit in the PPC ad. For instance, if you’re targeting renters who searched for apartments in a particular neighborhood, make sure your apartment landing page highlights the perks of its location and doesn’t just give a general rundown of your property.

Don’t: Use black hat SEO tactics

Black hat SEO refers to techniques designed to boost a site’s page rank in search engines through tactics that violate a search engine’s terms of service. Some of these include keyword stuffing (loading up a site with content that includes keywords that have nothing to do with your product or service), content automation (using tools to generate content automatically and publish it to your site without human involvement), and sneaky redirects (sending a user to a different URL than the one they clicked). These tactics can result in penalties from search engines that could impact the bottom line of your business.

Don’t: Set it and forget it

While Google Ads offer suggestions on how to maximize your apartment PPC campaign’s performance, it’s important not to rely solely on this. You need to keep track of your performance on a regular basis and make small (or large) adjustments as needed. For example, if your click-through rate (CTR) is low, you will have to determine what’s causing it. Likewise, if your CTR is through the roof but you’re not getting any apartment leads from it, that’s a signal that something is off. Continue making adjustments and monitoring your campaign’s performance.

Don’t: Overlook the value of remarketing

Remarketing, or retargeting, as it’s also called, is a key component in effective apartment advertising. Say a prospect visits an apartment website then leaves without taking a specific action, like setting up a tour or applying online. You can create ads to run on the Google Display Network that “follow” the prospect around the web for a set period of time or until they take the desired action. An effective apartment advertising idea when it comes to remarketing: create an ad targeting people who’ve bounced from your apartment rates page that offers a free month or limited-time discount in rent.