With nearly 3.5 billion active social media users worldwide, likes, posts, shares, and yes—reviews—are here to stay. All this digital noise makes it essential, and more challenging than ever, to reach the right person with the right message. Property management companies seeking to rise above the competition with sustained success must start at the local level.

Our newest resource, The Property Management Guidebook for Localized Social Advertising, explores what every multi-family property marketer needs to know to leverage localized social advertising for powerful results.

Every market is different based on geography, behaviors, demographics, and regional tendencies. The Guidebook examines how new social media platform driven technology allows companies to meet potential residents where they are, at any moment, and engage in personal ways.

Specially crafted local strategies, which may include social media marketing, ratings and review sites, social advertising, and other two-way engagement channels, can capture the attention of engaged residents at the property level to drive foot traffic and deliver ROI.

Why localized social advertising?

With the decline of trackable and scalable organic content across social media channels, most notably Facebook’s algorithm changes, it’s tough to engage new audiences, let alone stay connected to fans and followers, without local social advertising. 

The Property Guidebook builds on SOCi’s recent State of the Market: How Localized Social Marketing Impacts Multi-Location Businesses that revealed most brand engagement happens on the local level. An estimated 72 percent of social engagement occurs on local pages, and 80 percent of those searching say the opinions of others sway their decision making.

This local voice is especially imperative for property management companies because the location is often a key selling point. A recent survey showed that 81 percent of residents consider location an important factor, with respondents in some markets saying it’s the essential factor.

The guidebook underscores the value of a centralized platform, like SOCi, to coordinate multi-location marketing efforts and address the three critical areas of localized social marketing (LSM): a local social presence with a consistent brand voice; monitored and responsive online customer care; and growth boosted through high performing content and localized ad campaigns.

The Localized Social Advertising Guidebook provides a close look at these localized strategies on Facebook, where an estimated 74 percent of the U.S. users log in every day and two out of three consumers visit a Local Business Page at least once per week. Facebook is also where property management companies will find their tenants. The social media pioneer’s family of services (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger) boasts over 2.41 billion worldwide active monthly users. Facebook also provides the tools to laser focus local strategies and offers the best ROI among digital advertising methods.

Most paid social budgets are spent on Facebook Ads and Facebook Boost. The guidebook outlines the differences between the platform’s two paid features and nuances to maximize ads for multi-location marketers to drive potential tenants through the door.

Different locations require different approaches

There are many need-to-know nuances to maximize Facebook Ads for multi-location businesses. Localized social tools empower multi-family marketers with key features like dynamic text and images. The Property Guidebook tackles the various ways Facebook ad objectives optimize a campaign for a specific result or goal and emphasizes the need for audience targeting, retargeting, and geofencing, a location service that triggers an action when a device enters a pre-defined virtual geographic area. 

The most engaging posts draw high-value engagements, such as comments, tags, and shares by those who share the post with their friends and followers and there are different ways to get the job done. Digital advertising techniques include social media, Google Ads, display ads, retargeting, and geofencing, a location service that triggers an action when a device enters a pre-defined virtual geographic area, such as your property or even a competitive community.

SOCi Ads PLUS is the only solution that allows property management companies to create one new ad creative, that dynamically includes local copy, unique images, and localized URLs with just a few clicks.

The Guidebook explains the steps to achieve localized advertising success and the need to define the purpose of a local approach, whether it’s to increase awareness, generate leads, boost engagement, promote a sense of community and loyalty, or improve renter satisfaction. Goals should be tied to specific and measurable objectives by leveraging data and marketing tools such as SOCi or Google Analytics. 

The report highlights common mistakes and tips to avoid harming your digital presence with poor reviews, inaccurate business information and low social media engagement. 

Pitfalls include:

• Inconsistent branding
• Generic content
• Talking without listening or responding to your customers 
• Failing to segment audiences properly or geofence online ads 
• Ad fatigue
• Ignoring local analytics

In the high-touch sales funnel of property management, social ads, accompanied by clear objectives, targeting, and results tracking, open up a world of innovative opportunities to gather contact information, engage residents and collect leads, while sharing your corporate portfolio story. Teaming up with a partner like SOCi can provide national management companies with a one-two localized social advertising punch to support give individual properties a competitive edge, while protecting and building brand equity in an ever-changing property management landscape.

Download the Property Management Guidebook for Localized Social Advertising