How Do Students Search for Apartment Rentals?

Want to reach students looking for apartment rentals? Moving “outside of the box” with your marketing efforts could help you tap into the high demand for college apartments.

Online search is key
Generation Y renters – most of today’s college students — seek out infrastructure to support their tech-obsessed habits. Knowing that technology plays a huge part in their lives, it’s not hard to see how going online with your marketing might be the best way to reach student renters.

Many rental property marketers have seen success using the following online marketing tools to reach students:
• Social networks like Facebook
• Facebook ads targeted to local students
• Craigslist
• Online classifieds in the college newspaper
• General searches on search engines

According to Catalyst, a Texas-based marketing firm that specializes in student apartments, general apartment searches conducted through Google were the single most popular method for student searches. This research indicates that amping up your web presence and paying attention to the SEO value of your online platforms is essential to reaching a young, targeted renting audience.

Thinking outside the box
But don’t hang your hat entirely on technology as the only way to market student apartment rentals. As the saying goes, everything old has a way of becoming new again, and these traditional marketing methods can also prove effective in garnering student apartment referrals:

• Setting up a kiosk at the student center of a nearby university
• Placing ads in the college paper
• Word of mouth from student to student

Word of mouth in particular is an extremely effective way to market student housing. To help encourage word-of-mouth referrals, you may want to reach out to the student housing office at the local college. This office may provide students with a listing of nearby off-campus housing, and that’s a list you definitely want to be on.

Don’t forget about the parents
When you’re talking about marketing college apartments, it’s important not to forget that mom and dad are often key decision makers in a student’s apartment search. In many cases, the student may do the legwork involved in the apartment search, but it’s the parent who really pulls the trigger — and pays the bills.

So don’t count out parental influence and bias as you market student rentals. As Forbes Magazine points out, parents are playing a large role in the student housing boom. Concerned moms and dads want to know that their young students — particularly their daughters — are living in private, secure spaces. And the wealthiest of these parents are willing to pay high rents to ensure their children are safe and sound in off-campus housing. If you’re marketing to college students, it may be advantageous to consider which brand differentiators and marketing vehicles could best convince their parents to sign on the dotted line.