13 Ways to Market Your Apartment to Millennials & Gen Zers

If your apartment complex is in a college town or trendy urban area, millennial renters are probably your bread and butter. Reaching this audience should be a priority, but the way millennials respond to marketing messages are changing.

You don’t need to shift your entire marketing mix and gear it towards millennials, but winning with millennials can lead to tons of business success. According to Convince and Convert, millennials are 50% more likely to recommend a product or service by word of mouth than the average American. Therefore, winning with millennials can lead to tons of business success. To do just that, there are a few steps to make sure your apartment complex is optimized for this audience.

1. Make Your Online Presence Felt

Millennials were raised on tech, and the majority of apartment searches for them will begin on the internet. If your community can stand out in a crowded field, then you are a step ahead of the competition. You can achieve this by going above and beyond with your online presence.

Make sure your online images are high quality and show off your apartment complex. The pages on your website should be easy to navigate and well-optimized for both desktop and mobile. Showcase 3D floorplans, rent prices, amenities, and emphasize your calls to action. It shouldn’t be difficult to find your email, phone number or address. Millennials are less likely to pick up the phone and call, so consider adding in a live chat box to make communication easier.

Don’t forget to track your apartment’s online reviews. If you don’t have one already, make sure your property is listed on Yelp and Google My Business. Take the time to kindly respond to reviews, especially the negative ones! Showing that you are a responsive property and care about reviews will go a long way.

2. Offer High-Tech Upgrades

Everyone knows that millennials are into new technology. Upgrading your apartment units to have some smart home features could be a huge selling point for millennial renters. Whether it be a large project like installing smart locks on apartment front doors or a small add-on, such as adding an Echo Dot in every unit's kitchen, having a tech-forward property will help attract millennials.

3. Build a Community

Building a community with your renters can make your apartment building feel like more than just a place to crash after work. Host events to bring renters together. If you have a communal area, that would be a great place to host community gatherings.

The events don’t have to be expensive. Think of get-togethers like happy hours and movie nights. Small events like this build up the feeling of home and a sense of community, and could help renters make friends with their neighbors. Nice perks like this encourage millennials to live in your building for longer, as it feels more a friendly community and home.

4. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

If you want a sure-fire way to get in front of a millennial audience, make sure your social media pages pop. Use Facebook and Twitter to engage with current and prospective renters. Get on Instagram to highlight your property. Upload high-quality pictures of your apartments, and use relevant hashtags to reach an audience beyond your followers. Test out industry-related hashtags or those related to your city.

Also, consider shifting more of your marketing budget to social media advertisements. With today’s targeting and remarketing tools, reaching your optimal audience through social media is easier than ever.

5. Showcase the Location

For millennials, location is everything. When giving apartment tours, make sure to highlight the area and list off nearby attractions and local hotspots. Give renters a rundown on your specific neighborhood and what locals do in their spare time.

A page on your website or a blog post covering your location in detail is also a great way to highlight your property and its surrounding area. Talk about favorite restaurants, popular nightlife destinations, public transportation, and everything else the area has to offer.

6. Highlight Amenities for Social Gatherings

One of the great things about millennials is that they are wonderful at fostering a sense of community. This is largely based on their love of spending time with one another. Whether it’s setting up a Dungeons and Dragons meetup or hosting monthly community mixers, having a private or community-member-only gathering space is a huge selling point with millennials. Be sure to highlight any of the following social gathering apartment amenities that your community boasts:

• Open Rooftop Access
• A Pool
• A Lounge or Lobby
• A Clubhouse (featuring a pool table, ping pong, etc.)

In the time of the pandemic, community outdoor gathering spaces are a huge draw for any renter. Whether it’s getting a little air during an impromptu lockdown or connecting with other members of the apartment community, outdoor gathering spaces are a huge win.

7. Promote Your Use of a Tech Management System

Beyond the benefits of automation and more organized rental management, rental tech management systems or solutions can help boost your apartment’s millennial appeal.

Millennials grew up with technology playing a huge role in their lives. Like Generation X, millennials look forward to quick and efficient solutions in everyday life.

Paying rent with a few taps on their phone screen, submitting a maintenance request in under five minutes, and providing important rental documents digitally, are all tasks a tech management system can handle and make your tenants' lives easier.

If your business uses a rental management system, be sure to advertise that fact when targeting millennials.

8. Mention Its Proximity to Nature

Park nearby? An even larger national park? Maybe a lake or resort? Millennials are some of the most adventurous individuals and the vast majority of them love spending time outdoors.

Use this information to your advantage, simply by mentioning your apartment’s proximity to local nature spots. These locations don’t have to be in your backyard either. An apartment location that’s within 15-20 minutes of a major local park is more than enough to attract millennials.

9. Show Its Proximity to Social Activities

Beyond nature, millennials love social activities that take place indoors. It’s all about having a great place to have some fun times with friends.

If your apartment unit is located anywhere near a:

• Bar
• Nightclub
• Gym
• Cafe
• Library
• Theme Park
• Mall

Or something else, make it known in your advertisements! If your unit happens to be conveniently located near a thriving social district, make sure you highlight that fact with all applicants.

10. Make Your Unit Pet-Friendly

If your unit is not already pet-friendly, you may miss your shot with most millennials. The bottom line is that 76% of millennials are pet owners who are taking their four-legged friends along on their rental journeys.

Making your unit pet-friendly is an easy way to drastically increase the number of millennials (and their furry friends) interested in renting your apartment unit.

If you are concerned with legal issues related to liability or pet-caused property damage, speak with a local attorney. They will be able to advise you about your risks and how to mitigate them.

11. Offer Free Social Experiences

Millennials are one of the loneliest generations, with over 30% of millennials reportedly feeling lonely often and/or always.

However, these are feelings that many millennials look to alleviate by participating in social events. Unfortunately, with remote work increasing and pandemic-related isolation, it can be difficult to make new connections.

Renting an apartment that regularly hosts free social experiences can help millennials in this regard. Here are a few social experiences that your apartment community can offer:

• Yoga Classes
• Running Club
• Dancing Classes
• Book Clubs
• Cooking Classes
• And Many More

Fortunately, it’s easy to introduce free social events to your rental offerings. You can even partner with local small businesses to host these opportunities. It’s great advertising all around.

12. Make Your Complex Environmentally Sustainable

It’s no secret that millennials care about the environment and issues like climate change. These strong opinions have completely shifted millennials buying habits.

Fortunately, these opinions also allow businesses to set themselves apart from their competition and support good causes, solely by implementing green initiatives.

Setting out recycling bins around the apartment complex (and having it collected), going paperless, creating a community garden, and offering composting are all highly-coveted, sustainable apartment amenities.

If possible, get your apartment certified through LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). A LEED-certification is challenging to get, as your apartment community must meet certain standards.

Getting a LEED-certification or a LEED rating can help prospective tenants easily identify your apartment community’s commitment to sustainability initiatives.

13. Offer Pre-Setup WiFi

From scheduling moves to setting up utilities, there tons of details that a new renter has to handle to get their apartments move-in ready.

Offering to rent your apartment unit with WiFi that has already been set up and is ready to go, can help to take a major hassle off of your new tenant’s plate. Plus, it may convince your tenant to move in right away. Win-win!

Choose how you handle WiFi payments beforehand, and be sure to note it in your lease agreement and discuss it with applicants before they sign to avoid any confusion.

Start Marketing Today

Regardless of which strategies you use when marketing toward millennials, the bottom line is simple. Make your marketing matter to its intended audience. If you want to ensure that your apartment units appeal to such a core category of apartment renters, then you’ll need to do a little research first.

We’ve done some of that here, but we also offer more in-depth insights in our Millennial Homeownership Report. Take a look at it to learn more about millennials as renters and homeowners to create winning marketing strategies.

If you want to get straight to the marketing, we’ve still got you covered. Our property management marketing guide provides key tips and tricks to help you build a solid marketing strategy, even if you’re a marketing novice.

One of the best ways to market your property is to join Apartment List. By listing with us, you'll be able to market your property to renters free of charge!