Apartment Marketing Ideas & Multifamily Trends to Hop on This Year

In today’s hyper-competitive and constantly shifting multifamily industry, the most effective strategy should address every part of the marketing funnel, from the brand that’s successfully brought to life on your website to the ads that get the word out and the reputation management that builds loyalty. That’s why our 2025 multifamily marketing trends and apartment marketing ideas cover every creative and digital team at our full-service agency.

Get the lowdown on what’s happening this year plus actionable ideas to make these trends work for you in the real world — even when they’re virtual.

Provide video & virtual tours

The pandemic in 2020 noticeably shifted renter preferences and decision making, and those multifamily trends and impacts are ongoing. Zillow’s 2025 Rental Consumer Housing Trends Report revealed several big points:

• In 2018, 16% of surveyed renters took 5 or more in-person tours; in 2024, only 9% did.
• The survey’s typical recent renter reported taking only one in-person tour during their whole search.
• Nearly one in five (19%) recent renters completely skipped touring a unit before they signed a lease.
• In the same data set, 20% of surveyed renters said seeing a video tour is essential and 25% said seeing a 3D or virtual tour is essential.

With this data in mind, it’s clear how much of your prospects’ searching and decision making happens online. Whether they’re using virtual content to make their shortlist or even to sign a lease sight unseen, communities of all kinds need to give their audience the online resources and details they’re looking for.

What can you do?

The first step in creating your video and virtual tour is identifying your overall video strategy. With that in place, the video your team plans out and shoots can be used for your online tours but also edited for social media, digital ads, email marketing, and more.

So put these on your to-do list this year:

• Create a strategy that outlines your video content use cases then plan your shotlist, ensuring you get all the video you need in one streamlined shoot.
• Write video scripts that show off essential details and top selling points in the most efficient way possible. Remember, your prospects are trying to save time.
• Edit your video for all use cases, including video tours on your website and other marketing channels, tailoring scripts and content to their specific spot in the sales funnel.
• Consider working with professional partners for your shoot and/or video editing, and add virtual leasing tools that make your tours more immersive online.

Consolidate marketing vendors

According to RealPage’s multifamily trends data for 2025, apartment supply and development are up. In fact, US apartment supply was higher in 2024 than any other year since 1974, matching the strongest renter demand in three decades besides 2021. That means many people are in need of a place to call home, but you’re also competing with more new units than ever before. And more competition means more leasing challenges. To jump these hurdles, many marketers and operators are opting for more marketing efficiency by consolidating vendors with an increased focus on full-service partners.

Consolidating with the right partner can give you:

• Maximized efficiency: Managing all or most marketing channels with one partner allows your strategy, brand, and messaging to be consistently woven between platforms, so you’re sending the right message (and the same, branded message) to your audience without duplicating efforts or confusing prospects.
• Reduced costs: With marketing costs on the rise operators are getting less out of their marketing spends than they have in years past. Consolidating services with one partner helps create scalable price efficiencies.
• Time savings: Bringing marketing services under one provider will save operators time by reducing the number of calls and meetings allowing them to refocus that time.
• Stronger partner relationships: Operators will also benefit from one marketing partner through streamlined communication, deeper collaboration, and shared goals/visions.

What can you do?

If you’re interested in consolidating your vendors:

• First, define the top goals of your consolidation. Are you looking for more efficiencies, trying to drive more leads, or reducing marketing costs?
• Research marketing agencies that offer full-service solutions, including both paid and organic services, and place particular emphasis on teams who specialize in the multifamily industry.
• Meet with each option and ensure your company culture and partnership visions align. Understand how the agency will ensure all marketing channels work together to create the synergy and consistency you’re looking for.
• Develop a transition plan with past partners and your new agency to ensure a smooth move.

Keep an eye out for Meta and GA4 integration

A change that will soon affect social media ads, Meta and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration is coming. GA4 is Google’s data collection tool, and Meta (the owners of apps like Instagram and Facebook) is where 10+ million active advertisers place ads. By integrating, the two tech giants hope to streamline data management, improve performance, and offer you better analysis. While still in beta testing, Meta is urging advertisers to link GA4 data as soon as it becomes available in individual accounts, citing a 22% conversion increase based on experimental data.

The main benefits we’re predicting from this integration include:

• Speedy setup: Advertisers can connect their GA4 accounts to Meta directly in the platform in just a couple minutes, bypassing the more time-consuming UTM integration process.
• Seamless syncing: You can select specific GA4 properties and leave others out, enabling more focused and precise analysis in each account.
• Privacy control: Advertisers can choose which traffic sources Meta has access to, ensuring proper adherence to state laws and fair housing guidelines.
• Conversion clarity: This integration provides effortless mapping of Meta conversion events to GA4, enhancing tracking accuracy to better understand ad performance.
• Cross-platform attribution: GA4 allows you to visualize conversion paths and identify where and how much Meta Ads play a role on the path to conversion — better identifying whether your ad was the first, last, or in between touchpoint.

What can you do?

Simply let your Meta Ads partner know you’d like to try out the integration once it becomes available in your account. Or, if you manage ads on your own, opt in yourself. Unfortunately for now, that usually means waiting for the pop up to appear. But you or your partner can also check the Event Manager and Partner Integrations tab in your account to see if you have early access.

Consider Meta’s AI-powered ad tools

With AI tools on the rise everywhere, it’s not surprising to see Meta’s focus on fine tuning their own. Dynamic AI through Advantage+ Creative is a Meta feature designed to help advertisers optimize their creative (like imagery and messaging) using automation and machine learning. This tailors your ad content in real time based on user behavior and preferences with the goal of improving engagement and conversion rates.

The feature is especially ideal when available content is limited, because Meta utilizes whatever you give it, creating different variations of ads until it finds the winning combo. Using this AI feature also gives advertisers a more efficient way to A/B test. Rather than manually creating variations of ad copy, headlines, aspect ratios, and imagery, Advantage+ Creative dynamically tests multiple elements on its own.

What can you do?

At AF3, we always recommend secure AI efficiency that works as long as it’s paired with human creativity and expertise. Our multifamily pros use Advantage+ Creative to help create more relevant, engaging, and cost-effective ad campaigns, leaning into automation while still supplying a human touch and always monitoring ads to maintain a high-quality product.

Use Google Ads dynamic floor plan pricing

Dynamic pricing is in the top digital marketing ideas for apartments in 2025 and beyond — for good reason. Think about this: an ad catches your eye, and you love the messaging, photos, and advertised price so much that you take the time to click. Then the page loads only to reveal a higher price than what was advertised. For us, that’s a quick click away.

With dynamic floor plan pricing in your Google Ads, your advertised price always matches the price on your site. This gives your users a consistent and positive digital experience, and it helps them self-qualify. That means they know before they even click that your rates are in their budget, so the clicks you’re paying for make a difference for your leasing goals.

What can you do?

At AF3, our digital services are powered by human strategy and AI efficiency, so we’re always looking for and using the most efficient tools in the industry. If you get your services outside of AF3, reach out to your provider to find out what their dynamic pricing capabilities are. And, after implementing, be sure you review ad performance after a 30-60 day window. That way, you can see the real impact dynamic pricing has on your Google Ad results.

Get featured in Google AI Overviews

AI Overviews hit the scene (that is the search engine results page) in 2024. They show up at the very top of search results before any other links — paid or organic. Basically, Google’s AI summarizes the information from results that it thinks answers the search best. Google’s goal is to help the reader get the information they’re searching for without having to dig through results or leave google.com at all.

For multifamily, this means the AI Overview can be the first impression a renter gets of your property before visiting the website. And it could mean searchers are making decisions about your community before ever seeing your carefully curated content.

Luckily, the Google AI Overview still links out to its sources, which is a great thing for searchers and marketers alike. So, if your website is optimized for search — and specifically for AI Overviews — you ensure your audience gets accurate information about your community, and you can still get users to your website.

What can you do?

The best way to increase your likelihood of an AI Overview feature is prioritize:

• Content optimization: Write your website content with SEO keywords and copywriting strategies that help AI read and interpret your content accurately.
• FAQ sections: Feature questions your users may type directly into Google search, so Google knows exactly which answer to pull from your site into its overview.
• Technical SEO: Along with other essential performance factors, schema markup may have a big impact on overview results; because Google doesn’t have eyes of its own labels like header hierarchy and paragraph copy, tell the search engine what it’s looking at so it can find accurate info quickly. Especially for multifamily communities, be sure your website uses LocalBusiness and FloorPlan markups.
• E-E-A-T: This stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, and it’s one of the signals Google uses to decide who should be featured on the first page of results; there are so many factors that go into EEAT (including online reputation, high-quality SEO content, and ILS consistency), we may need another blog post just for this.

Lean into fee transparency on your website

Fee transparency is one of the clearest (and loudest) requests from people searching for apartments online, and it’s quickly becoming law across the country. According to Zillow’s 2025 Rental Consumer Housing Trends Report, 94% of participants agreed that listings should clearly list all fees.

Today’s users are savvy, and they know the price listed on your floor plan won’t be their final monthly payment. But they also want to know what that payment will be, and they may skip out on your community altogether if they can’t figure it out quickly online.

What can you do?

Make fee transparency a clear part of the user experience on your multifamily website. This could mean adding a comprehensive table, quick list, or a downloadable sheet that lays out all the required and optional fees through application and residency.

For the most technologically advanced communities and websites, fee calculators on your site can provide online prospects an interactive and memorable experience that highlights your transparency even more.

Balance human creativity & AI influence in brand designs

AI-generated art and graphics were a hot topic last year. And no matter which side you choose in the debate, there’s no question these often abstract and surreal digital creations are having a real impact on human-made designs in 2025. Inspired by surrealism but always standing out from AI-generated materials, we expect to see multi-layered, abstract branding and designs that reflect the trend.

What can you do?

For communities that want to feel contemporary, youthful, and/or in touch with current trends, let surrealism inspire your brand and collateral artists to play around with unique shapes and layouts, using diverse elements to create deep, layered compositions.

Celebrate natural beauty through color

Led by Pantone’s Color of the Year, Mocha Mousse, contemporary colors are celebrating a new naturalism that lets neutrals shine. Inspired by process art, post-minimalism, and clean living, this trend values simplicity but adds a touch of nature’s raw beauty. We can also see this in the industry’s newest developments that lean into wood finishes, sustainable details, natural textures, and decluttered spaces.

Why is this important? Color is a big factor in branding. Without even realizing it, brand colors communicate important characteristics of your brand and make viewers feel certain emotions, especially when they’re applied correctly and consistently. This year’s showcase of natural neutrals lets you lean into calm, grounded, relaxing, and earthy designs.

What can you do?

For the new or rebranded communities that have amenities and features focused on wellness, relaxation, and connections with nature, this multifamily marketing trend is right up your alley. Let your creatives know that your brand should feel calm, grounded, and fully immersed in natural inspirations.

Enhance review recency with review generation campaigns

The meaning is in the term, but let’s make it feel a little less buzzwordy first. Review recency means how recently a review was written. Tech-savvy online consumers are looking at your review dates and expecting to see some left within the last week, month, or 90 days.

And that makes sense. When your potential prospects and residents read community reviews, they want an accurate reflection of current experiences with the brand. Especially with apartment communities, people understand old reviews might represent past policies, pre-renovations, or even old management teams. So, how are people feeling about your community right now? You need the right reputation management strategies to generate those recent reviews — and to show how responsive your team is to that communication and feedback.

This helps with how searchers perceive your brand, and it also impacts your local ranking with Google — potentially allowing your brand to reach more eyes.

What can you do?

The right reputation management strategies include review generation campaigns designed to enhance your review recency by actively encouraging residents to provide positive feedback. This approach means you need strategically timed requests, multiple touchpoints, and follow-up reminders to maximize participation.

We also always recommend responding to every review in order to build and strengthen customer trust. Our agency’s tech-driven approach uses AI tools to generate timely, consistent, and informative replies, allowing us to respond to every review within 2-3 business days. But never implement AI tools without a human touch. So we also do a thorough review of responses to ensure they are accurate, personalized, and consistent with your brand voice and values.

Focus on community-centric social content

A lot has happened (and is happening) with social media in 2025, and that’s putting it mildly. But if these most recent shifts have done anything, they’ve highlighted the power of community — even, or especially, in digital spaces.

As audiences lean into community-building social tools in search of authenticity, brands that focus on fostering genuine connections consistently stand out from those with a more sales-driven approach. Shifting to community-centric content builds trust and drives greater engagement and credibility.

What can you do?

Community-centric platforms, like Discord, and features, like Instagram’s broadcast channels, have been around for a while. But you don’t have to add a whole new tool to your social strat in order to start your focus on community content. Especially in multifamily, your community is quite literally already built. So organize and showcase events on your social channels in a way that gets people excited to attend, host contests or giveaways online, and ask questions people can answer in the comments (but be sure you answer and engage back, too).

Get your apartment marketing ideas from the multifamily experts

Our full-service agency works exclusively in multifamily, so we know a thing or two about apartment marketing ideas that get you results — for conventional, student, 55+, build-to-rent, and categories across the industry.

Not quite ready to send us an email? That’s okay. We have more marketing ideas and insights to share on our blog, from proven lease-up strategy to building your website and more.