How to market your apartments on a small budget.

Tip 4.

Promote resident referrals.

Encourage residents to refer their friends to your apartments. Airbnb and Uber grew by leaps and bounds using their referral programs. Boost your resident referral program to provide a money or discount to both the resident and recipient of the referral.

Creating a successful resident referral program is not difficult. There are three important components to an effective resident referral program. Structure, Design, and Promotion. I am going to write about each of these components in this post – and provide examples of best practices from programs that have succeeded with resident referral apartment marketing programs.

Resident referral programs are built upon genuinely enthusiastic, resident-get-resident interactions that equally rewards all parties involved. There is a science to making resident referral marketing programs successful. Here are the three steps to this strategy.

Craft the resident referral structure

To build an effective resident referral program, start with the program structure.

Take this step to determine the incentives you’ll offer target residents, coordinate an easy to understand referral structure and determine what interactions are necessary to make your resident referral program successful. To assist with defining your structure, start by answering three simple questions:

Who are your best residents?

Outline a program that leverages the enthusiasm of your happiest residents. Why? Because like follows like. These residents are most inclined to refer friends, family and co-works who will be satisfied with your apartment community and have similar income levels. Resident referral incentives are targeted at a specific group and this is what makes them effective. Target residents to get target residents.

Design the resident referral program.

A double-sided resident referral brings value to both parties when they participate in the offer. It feels like you’re both taking advantage of a deal and you’re both on level ground. Other arrangements like affiliate programs have one party profiting off of the other. Most consumers aren’t interested in this kind of deal.

Promotion

Make the referral message easy to share on social and by email.

Effective resident referral programs make it as easy as possible to share. A complicated process creates friction and directly undercuts the referral initiative. Personalized links to hook user attentions, pre-filled text boxes to streamline sharing, and one-click sharing – this all works wonders. The best apartment communities conduct their referral programs within a seamless sharing experience.