Your Renters Are Checking Google. Here’s How to Make Sure They Like What They See.

A while back, we broke down a shift that's changing how renters find apartment communities: people aren't starting on Google the way they used to, and even Google has adapted by pulling social content directly onto business listings. The response was the same across the board. Property managers kept asking one question. How do we actually make sure we're showing up the right way?

So this week, that's exactly what we're covering. A practical, multifamily-specific walkthrough for optimizing your Google Business Profile, connecting your social media, and making sure your first impression online is one that fills units.

Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a renter sees. Before the tour, before the call, before your website, they are forming an opinion right there in the search results.

Why Google still matters for apartment marketing

Even with search volume shifting toward social, your Google Business Profile is doing heavy lifting in the background. When a renter hears about your community, the first thing many of them do is Google it. What they find, your photos, your reviews, your recent activity, quietly decides whether they take the next step or move on to the next property.

The problem is that most communities set up their Google profile once and never touch it again. Dated photos, unanswered reviews, and no social connection add up to a first impression that works against you.

Step one: connect your social media to your Google Business Profile

This is the highest-impact, lowest-effort move available to multifamily marketers right now. When you connect your social accounts, Google displays your latest posts directly on your listing. Your reels, your neighborhood content, and your community's personality show up the moment someone searches your name.

Here is how to set it up. Sign in to your Google Business Profile using the account that manages your community, then search your property name to pull it up. Click Edit profile and open the Contact or About section. Find the area for Social profiles, then add one link per platform. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and X are all supported. Use your main public profile URL rather than a link to a single post, then save. Your posts will begin appearing on your listing within a day or two.

When social content lives on your Google listing, a plain search result becomes a living preview of what it actually feels like to live at your community.

Get the complete checklist

Connecting your social is just the start. We put together a free multifamily Google optimization checklist that walks through everything covered in this issue and more, connecting your social the right way, keeping your reviews active, refreshing your photos, and completing the profile details most communities overlook. It is built specifically for apartment communities, and it is yours to download and keep.

Download the free multifamily Google checklist here.

Treat your reviews like part of your leasing strategy

In multifamily, reviews are reputation, and reputation drives tours. Respond to every review, both the glowing ones and the difficult ones, in a professional and human tone. Prospective renters read how you handle criticism just as closely as they read the praise. An active, well-managed review section signals a community that cares, and that matters more to a renter than almost anything you can say about yourself.

Make sure your photos actually sell the place

If your Google photos are dated, that is the version of your community renters are judging. Outdated or low-quality images quietly cost you tours before a renter ever reaches your leasing team. Fresh, professional photography that reflects current finishes, amenities, and the surrounding neighborhood is one of the most powerful tools you have on your profile.

Renters are not comparing your community to perfection. They are comparing it to the property down the street with better photos.

This is exactly why every community we work with receives a full library of professional real estate photography, yours to use during our partnership and to keep long after. Keeping your Google profile current should never be one more task on your plate.

Complete every detail

The small things compound. Confirm your name, address, and phone number match exactly across your website and social platforms. Fill in your hours, write a renter-focused business description, list your amenities, and keep your website link direct. A complete, consistent profile is one Google rewards with visibility, and one renters trust.

The takeaway for budget season

Showing up well on Google is not about gaming an algorithm. It is about making sure that when a qualified renter looks you up, everything they see moves them closer to a tour. As you head into budget planning, this is the kind of foundational work that makes every other marketing dollar go further.

Ready to see where your community stands? Book a strategy call with our team. We will walk through your Google profile, your social, and your content, and show you exactly what is working, what is costing you tours, and how to make your community impossible to scroll past.

The Digital Digest publishes every Wednesday. Follow along for practical multifamily marketing strategy, and catch new episodes of The Leasing Lens on our social channels.

Your renters aren’t Googling you anymore. And your AI content isn’t helping.

This week we launched something new: the first episode of The Leasing Lens, our new social series where we break down what's really happening in multifamily marketing, minus the fluff and minus the vendor sales pitch.

Episode one goes straight for the uncomfortable truth: the content most properties are posting right now is quietly costing them leases. Our Head of Content Marketing, M'Kaila Carter, breaks it all down in the video below, and we're going deeper on the why in this issue.

The number nobody at AIM was talking about

We just got back from AIM and MSMS, and the theme was impossible to miss. AI, everywhere. Booth after booth promising to make your content faster, cheaper, and more "efficient" than the vendor next to them.

But here's what none of those booths mentioned.

Google searches per U.S. user are down nearly 20% year over year.Source: Meta, Social Search report (2026), citing Datos/SparkToro clickstream data

That's not a rounding error. Renters haven't stopped looking for their next apartment. They've stopped looking for it on Google. They're on Instagram and TikTok, watching a walkthrough and getting a feel for a community long before they'd ever type your property name into a search bar.

As Meta put it in the report, consumers don't think in channels, they think in questions, and where they go for those answers has fundamentally changed.

So why does AI content make it worse?

Because the whole reason renters are on social is to see something real. AI content gives them the opposite.

Only 11% of people find AI-generated content useful or entertaining.Source: eMarketer, 2026
73% of consumers can identify and reject AI-generated marketing.Source: SmythOS, 2026

Put those two together and the math is brutal. The AI flyer you thought looked polished? Most renters clocked it as filler and kept scrolling. And it doesn't just get ignored, it actively costs you trust.

When a brand posts visible AI content, only 7% trust that brand more, while 31% trust it less.Source: Klaviyo / Datalily, 2026

Every piece of AI filler you post is doing the exact opposite of what you hired it to do.

Even Google is betting on social

Here's the part that should settle the debate.

Google Business Profiles now let you connect your social accounts and pull your recent posts straight onto your Google listing. So when someone searches your property, your social content shows up right there in the results.

Think about what that means. Google, the search engine, is now putting your social front and center, because even Google knows that's what people want to see before they make a decision.

Your social media isn't just your social media anymore. It's your first impression on Instagram, on TikTok, and now on Google too. If all of it is AI filler, that's the first impression you're making everywhere at once.

What this means for your budget

You're heading into budget season right now. And a lot of properties are about to walk out of these conferences with five different contracts from five different vendors, all running five different AI tools.

You don't need that. You need one team making real content that reaches real qualified renters. Content filmed by actual people who show up to your property, because a template can't show a renter what it feels like to live there.

That's the whole idea behind how we work. And it's exactly what M'Kaila gets into in episode one of The Leasing Lens.

Book a call before you lock your budget

The Digital Digest publishes every Wednesday. Catch new episodes of The Leasing Lens on our social channels, and forward this to someone on your team staring down next year's budget.

Before You Finalize Next Year’s Budget, There’s One Shift You Need to See. Meta Just Put a Number on It.

Here's the number, and it's the reason we're writing this before you close out your budget:

"Google searches per U.S. user declined nearly 20% year-over-year, while consumers increasingly relied on social environments for discovery and purchase inspiration." — Meta, Social Search Narrative report (2026)

That's not a slow slide over a decade. That's one year. And it comes straight out of a 16-page report Meta just published on how people are actually finding brands in 2026.

Here's why that should stop every leasing team cold. Renters aren't opening Google and typing "apartments near me" the way they used to. They're on Instagram and TikTok, watching a walkthrough, getting a feel for the neighborhood, and deciding how a place feels long before they ever touch a search bar. Meta's own research backs this up:

"92% of surveyed users use social platforms for product information, compared to 79% who use traditional search engines." — Meta, Social Search Narrative report (2026)

The discovery shift already happened. Most communities just haven't budgeted for it yet.

And the timing here matters, because budget season isn't around the corner. It's already happening. By the time you're walking the floor at AIM or Apartmentalize collecting business cards, you're already making next year's decisions in the demos, the discovery calls, and all those "let me take this back to the team" conversations. That window closes the moment you finalize your numbers over the next few weeks. So before it does, we want to make sure you're building that budget around where renters actually are, not where they used to be.

Here's the part that probably connects to something you felt this year. Busy season didn't perform the way it was supposed to for a lot of communities. Occupancy didn't climb the way it historically does, and the qualified renters everyone planned around just didn't show up in the numbers. It's easy to blame the market for that. But if renters quietly moved off Google and onto social, and your community wasn't making a strong first impression where they were actually looking, then you were losing them at a stage that never even showed up in your traffic reports. This is what we've been telling people for years. The only difference now is that it isn't our opinion. It's Meta's data.

And this is exactly where we come in, because making that first impression on social isn't something you can hand your leasing team as one more thing to juggle between tours and renewals. It's a full-time craft, and it's the one we do. We run your social for you. Your team stays focused on leasing, and we stay focused on making sure the renters they're waiting for actually show up.

The way we do that is by building what's really a digital brochure for your community. Not a static PDF and not a flyer, but a living stream of content that shows renters exactly what it feels like to live there and puts it directly in front of the people most likely to lease. And this is where that same Meta report gets impossible to ignore, because it doesn't just say renters are on social, it says social is what actually moves them to act:

"63% said social platforms accelerate buying decisions and 65% reported greater purchase confidence when social content plays a role." — Meta, Social Search Narrative report (2026)

That's the whole game for a leasing team. Renters who decide faster and feel more confident when they do. That's what a well-built digital brochure gives you, and it's how you find the qualified renters you're actually looking for, by meeting them where they already are and giving them a reason to stop scrolling.

When budgets get tighter, and after a soft busy season they will, the way you spend matters more than it ever has. So let's talk about where a lot of communities quietly lose that budget. You've got one vendor for paid, another for organic social, a photographer for your stills, a separate crew for drone, and someone else entirely for video. That's five relationships, five invoices, and five people who each only ever see a small sliver of your community. It's expensive, it's disjointed, and when the contracts are up you often walk away owning almost none of it. That math doesn't work in a tight year, and honestly, it barely works in a good one.

This is the part we really want sitting in your budget before you close it out. When a community works with us, that entire digital brochure isn't stitched together from five different vendors. It's one relationship, and it already includes professional real estate photography, videography built for how people actually discover places on social, drone and aerial work, and neighborhood and point-of-interest content that shows renters the life happening around your community instead of just the floor plan. All of it is filmed, produced, and managed by us, running alongside a social strategy built around the way renters really search now.

And here's the piece that changes the whole conversation: everything we create, you own. Not just during your time with us, but after it too. These aren't rented impressions that vanish the second you stop paying for them. It's a real content library that keeps working for your community long after the shoot wraps. That's what keeping qualified renters coming so occupancy never has to catch up actually looks like in practice. One partner running your social, pointed exactly where renters are now, making work you get to keep.

So here's our ask, and it's a simple one. You're deciding right now where next year's money goes, and we'd love a short call before those numbers are final. Not a pitch deck, just a real conversation about your occupancy goals, what busy season showed you, and how handing your social to a team that does this all day might free up the budget, and the qualified renters, you're working so hard to protect.

The discovery shift already happened, and Meta just proved it. The only question left is whether your community is showing up where renters are actually looking, before you lock in a budget that assumes they're still on Google.

If any of this is hitting home, book a free strategy call before your budget closes.

What kept one brand full while busy season fell flat for everyone else.

A lot of properties walked into this leasing season expecting a surge that never fully arrived. The staffing was set, the pricing was set, and the forecast said the traffic would come. Then the numbers came in softer than anyone planned for.

If that sounds familiar, it is worth saying clearly: most of the time, it was not a staffing problem and it was not your asset.

When busy season underdelivers, the gap is rarely demand. It is whether your property was visible at the exact moment renters were looking.

The renters were out there. Search volume peaks in late spring every year, and this one was no different. What separated the properties that stayed full from the ones that came up light was not budget or effort. It was whether their content showed up consistently across the platforms renters actually use, and whether it held that standard month after month rather than only when someone had time for it.

That consistency is harder than it sounds, especially across a growing portfolio. The early properties tend to get real attention, and then the calendar stretches across more communities and the quality quietly thins out. It is almost never a talent problem. It is the absence of a system underneath the work that can hold up as you add doors.

When Taylor Morrison brought their build-to-rent brand to us in 2024, it started with a handful of communities. The work performed, the brand stayed consistent, and over the months that followed they kept expanding the relationship. Today we run organic social across 11 of their communities, spanning the Yardly and Ascend brands.

Here is what that has looked like across the portfolio since 2024.

• 19.3 million impressions across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok

• 4.8 million video views

• 92,000 engagements

• 4,292 net new followers

• 7,386 posts published, every one on brand

The portfolio-wide averages only tell part of the story. A few communities show what the approach is capable of at its best. Yardly Elm, which came onto the program in early 2025, now holds a 7.4 percent engagement rate on TikTok, well above the multifamily benchmark. Yardly Cross Creek Meadows has drawn more than a million impressions and over 10,000 engagements on Facebook alone. These are apartment communities, not lifestyle brands with built-in audiences, and they are earning real attention through a slow stretch that left a lot of properties wanting.

A portfolio does not keep handing you more communities because the content looks nice. It does it because the results hold up at every property.

What allows it to hold at scale is that the content was never treated as eleven separate efforts. Each community has a dedicated specialist and its own strategy, all built on a shared foundation that keeps the brand recognizable from one property to the next. That structure is what lets the work stay consistent through the busy stretch instead of slipping right when it matters most.

Their team described the value this way:

"Partnering with Smart City Digital has provided a significant boost to our social media efforts. Their quality of content, elevated service and quick response time allows us to maintain brand standards across multiple accounts which is vital to our business." — Alyssa Prosch, BTR Senior Marketing Operations, Taylor Morrison

If your season came in lighter than you hoped, the takeaway is not to spend more. It is to look honestly at what was actually in place before the push started. The consistency of the content, the channel mix, and whether the whole thing runs on a system or on whoever has time that week. That is usually where the gap is.

We care about this because occupancy is everything. It is not about making a property look good online. It is about putting qualified renters in units and keeping your leasing team out of the content business so they can do the job they were hired to do. When your property reaches full occupancy, we expect to get fired. That is how we know we did our job.

If you want a clear read on where your own portfolio stands heading into the back half of the year, we should talk.

Book a free portfolio content audit with Smart City Digital.

Your Busy Season Was Slower Than You Planned For

A lot of properties walked into this leasing season ready for a surge that never fully arrived.

The staffing was set. The pricing was set. The forecast said the traffic would come. And then the numbers came in softer than anyone had planned for.

If that sounds familiar, the first thing worth saying is this: it wasn't a staffing problem, and it wasn't your asset.

Busy season doesn't fill units. Visibility does. And most properties are invisible at the exact moment renters start looking.

The renters were out there. Search volume peaks in late spring every year, and this year was no different. The gap wasn't demand. The gap was whether your property showed up in the places renters were actually spending their time, with content that made them stop and pay attention.

That's the part most management groups underestimate. A community can be beautifully run, well-priced, and in a strong submarket, and still lose the season to a property down the road that simply showed up more consistently.

We've been in multifamily for 12 years. The pattern almost never changes. The properties that struggle going into summer aren't doing everything wrong. They're doing most things fine and a few things not at all, and those few things compound quietly until they become a loud problem in July.

So here's what the management groups who stayed full actually did differently.

They treated paid social and paid search as a system, not a boost. They ran it before they needed it, not after the traffic dipped. And they measured it, which most properties still don't.

United Apartment Group is the clearest example we have.

Across 15 of their communities running paid social with us through this stretch, cost per click averaged $0.60. Our internal target is $0.80. That is 25 percent under goal, held steady through the exact window when most properties saw their costs climb and their traffic thin out.

When the rest of the market was paying more for less, the properties running a real strategy were paying less for more.

That efficiency is not luck. It's the difference between spending into a platform and running a strategy across the right channel mix, with content built to convert rather than just collect impressions.

The occupancy follows. One of their communities, Ovation at Town Madison, went from 32.7 percent pre-leased to fully pre-leased in eight months, with organic engagement climbing from 1.85 percent to 5.08 percent over the same period.

Here is how their Regional Manager put it:

"Their creative campaigns and social media expertise drove our occupancy from 74% to 95% in a short time. Marc and Chebria's dedication and professionalism made such an impact that we pitched their services to our ownership portfolio, who signed on without hesitation." — Shawn Williams, Regional Manager, United Apartment Group

We care about this because occupancy is everything. It's not about making a property look good online. It's about putting qualified renters in units and giving your leasing team room to focus on closing instead of creating content.

If your season came in lighter than you expected, the issue is almost always somewhere in the channel mix, the content, or the consistency. We put together a free pre-leasing audit that shows you exactly where your gaps are before the next push.

Get your free strategy call.

Content Is Customer Service: What AIM Taught the Multifamily Industry

We just got back from AIM 2026 in Huntington Beach, and we need to talk about something.

Not a new platform. Not a new tool. Not another AI integration. The biggest conversation happening in multifamily marketing right now is actually a really simple one.

Your content is your customer service.

That idea kept showing up in every session, every hallway conversation, every roundtable we sat in on. And it was validated on stage during "The New Language of Leasing" with Michael Sherman, Senior Vice President of Zillow Rentals. The message was clear. What a renter sees online before they ever schedule a tour is part of the leasing experience. Not a precursor to it. Part of it.

And right now, most properties are failing that experience before a prospect ever walks through the door.

The renter has already changed. The content hasn't.

98% of renters use online resources when searching for their next home. 40% say social media directly influenced their decision. And Gen Z, which is projected to become the largest consumer group in the U.S. this year, makes half of their purchasing decisions based on what they see on social media.

Those numbers aren't projections. That's the current reality.

So when a renter lands on your property's Instagram and sees a stock photo of a kitchen island, a generic caption that could apply to any apartment in any city, and no video anywhere on the page, what does that tell them? It tells them you didn't try. And in a market where 82% of renters are cross-referencing three or more listing platforms before they commit, you're not just competing with the property down the street. You're competing with every piece of content a renter scrolls past before yours.

What we heard from regionals

We spent three days talking to regional managers and marketing directors, and the frustration was the same almost every time.

Nothing feels personal anymore.

Their vendors aren't posting across all three platforms. Video content is either nonexistent or clearly an afterthought. Nobody is creating content around the things renters actually search for. The neighborhood. The parking situation. Whether the property is actually dog-friendly or just says it is. The closest coffee shop. What the pool looks like on a Saturday. The stuff that helps someone feel something about a place before they've ever set foot in it.

One regional told us their property's social media hadn't mentioned a single thing about the neighborhood in over six months. Six months of content and not one post about what it's actually like to live there.

That's not a content strategy. That's a checkbox.

The cost conversation

We also had a lot of conversations that started with raised eyebrows.

When we walk through what we shoot during our first visit to a property, people tend to react. Drone footage. Full real estate photography for the entire property. Video content. Neighborhood content. UGC. It's a lot. We know it's a lot. That's the point.

"That seems expensive" came up more than once.

Every single piece of content we create during our onboarding shoot and throughout our partnership is yours. You own it during our relationship, and you own it after. No licensing fees. No content held hostage. No fine print.

We show up at the property. We walk the neighborhood. We find the taco spot around the corner, the trail behind the leasing office, and the sunset view from the third-floor breezeway. We create content that makes a renter feel like they already live there. And we do it across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok because your renters aren't all in one place, and your content shouldn't be either.

Content is the first tour

That phrase kept coming back to us throughout the conference. If 98% of renters are researching online before they ever reach out, then your social media, your listing photos, and your video content, that's the first tour. That's where the leasing experience begins.

And if that first tour is a grid full of empty amenity photos with no context, no neighborhood, no personality, and no video, you've already lost the renters who would have loved your property if they'd just been able to see what it's actually like to live there.

The properties that are winning right now aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones whose content actually feels like it was made by someone who has been there.

What we're taking home

Beyond the sessions and the conversations, the best part of AIM was the people. We got to see partners we've worked with for years in person. We met new teams we're genuinely excited to work with. And we left more confident than ever that the industry is ready for what we've been building.

Human-made content isn't a trend. It's what renters have been asking for. The industry is just finally starting to listen.

If your property's content doesn't feel like it was made by someone who actually visited, we should talk.

Book a call with our team.

Busy season is 30 days out. Here’s where your pipeline is losing pressure.

It's April.

Busy season starts in May. And if your pipeline isn't already moving, you're not behind on marketing.

You're behind on foundation.

Occupancy is a lagging indicator.

What shows up as a slow June was set in motion in February. Not because the ads failed. Because the groundwork wasn't there when renters started looking.

And renters are already looking.

May is consistently the number one month for rental searches. April and June follow close behind. Apartments.com The window to capture that traffic isn't when it peaks. It's right now, before it does.

"Their creative campaigns and social media expertise drove our occupancy from 74% to 95% in a short time." — Shawn Williams, Regional Manager, United Apartment Group

Here's something worth sitting with.

Only 9% of renters recalled seeing property information on Instagram, despite 47% of U.S. adults actively using the platform. Rent

The renters are there. Most properties just aren't showing up in a way that registers.

The properties that struggle going into busy season aren't doing everything wrong.

They're doing most things okay and a handful of things not at all.

A Google Business Profile nobody has touched in months. A bio link that goes nowhere. A follow-up cadence that exists on paper but not in practice.

Small things. That compound quietly. Until they become a very loud problem in July.

The fix isn't always more spend or more content. Most of the time it's an honest look at what's already in place.

We work with properties across the country and the gap we see most often isn't strategy. It's foundation. The unsexy stuff that nobody audits until something breaks.

So we built something for it.

The Leasing Playbook: Your Pre-Leasing Checklist

Six sections. Every gap worth finding before busy season hits. Built from what we've seen work across the properties we support.

Pull it before you run a single ad.

Download the checklist here.

Smart City Digital helps multifamily communities build the foundation, strategy, and content that drives occupancy. Want a second set of eyes on your pipeline? Book a free strategy call.

Book here.

Why keywords are running the show now, and what TikTok and Meta just did about it.

If you manage a social media account with us, you have probably noticed something at the bottom of your captions. A list of words. No pound signs, no trendy phrases, just... sentences and phrases. Maybe you have asked us

"What is that big block of text?" or "Where did the hashtags go?"

We are so glad you asked.

The platforms changed the game. We changed our strategy.

Here is the short version: TikTok and Instagram are no longer prioritizing hashtags the way they used to. Both platforms now use AI to scan your caption, your on-screen text, and even your audio to figure out what your content is about and who to show it to. When someone searches "best apartments near downtown Austin" on Instagram, the platform looks for those exact keywords in your captions, not just a hashtag. Collab Design Co.

That long block of words at the bottom of your caption? Those are keywords. Intentional, searchable, strategic phrases that tell the algorithm exactly what your content is about so it can serve it to the right people.

So what happened to hashtags?

They did not disappear entirely, but their role changed significantly. And both TikTok and Meta made that official with back-to-back platform updates.

In August 2025, TikTok officially rolled out a restriction limiting posts to a maximum of 5 hashtags, a move designed to declutter captions, encourage more intentional hashtag use, and help the algorithm better understand what your video is about. TikTok

Then in December 2025, Instagram followed suit. Instagram settled on limiting tags to five per post, with Instagram chief Adam Mosseri noting that targeted, relevant hashtags can play a role in discovery, but that the limit exists to avoid misuse. Social Media Today Instagram also confirmed that generic hashtags like #reels or #explore do not actually help content appear in places like Explore and could, in fact, hurt content performance. Men's Journal

Both platforms are saying the same thing: quality over quantity, and keywords over clutter.

Why this matters for multifamily

Think about how your future residents are searching. They are not typing "#apartments" into TikTok. They are typing "pet-friendly apartments in Fort Worth with a pool" or "luxury one bedroom near downtown Dallas." Up to 40% of Gen Z now prefers using TikTok or Instagram over Google for search, turning to social platforms to make purchasing decisions and research local businesses. Collab Design Co.

That means your captions need to speak the same language your audience is already using to search. Keywords do that. Hashtags alone do not.

What we are doing for your account

When we write your captions, we are building in keyword-rich language that mirrors real search behavior. The "block of text" you see is not filler. It is strategy. Every phrase is chosen to help your content show up for the right people at the right time.

We still use up to 5 intentional, niche-specific hashtags per post where they make sense. But the heavy lifting? That is done by the words in the caption itself.

The bottom line

The era of 30 hashtags crammed into a caption is officially over. Both TikTok and Meta have made that clear. The brands winning right now are the ones writing captions that actually sound like something a real person would search.

That is exactly what we are doing for you.

Ready to make sure your content strategy is built for where the platforms are headed? Book a free strategy call with us today and let's map out what this looks like for your community.

Book Your Free Strategy Call

Sources: Social Media Today, Business Today, Sprout Social, Collab Design Co., Dive Media

We inherited a lease-up at 32%. We left it at 100%. Here is what actually moved the needle.

Ovation at Town Madison had a great product, and nobody knew it. This is the story of what consistent, high-quality digital content did in 8 months.

When we first walked Ovation at Town Madison in November 2024, the property was brand new and 32% preleased. No history. No reviews. No reason yet for anyone to choose it over the community down the street. Just a beautiful building that the market had not yet discovered.

That is the hardest version of this job. You are not fixing something broken. You are introducing something unknown. And in a market where residents scroll before they tour, the content you put out is often the first impression, the second impression, and the one that finally makes someone book a showing.

So we got to work.

What we actually did

Ovation came on with our standard plan plus paid efforts. That means consistent organic content across platforms, shot on-site with minimal editing, combined with a paid social strategy designed to put the right content in front of the right people at the right moment.

The content itself was not complicated. No heavy production. No scripts. We filmed with high quality equipment, optimized everything for SEO and platform performance, and then let the property do the rest of the talking. That last part matters more than most people realize.

This video averaged a 12% engagement rate. For context, the industry average sits around 1 to 3%. It performed the way it did not because of editing tricks. It performed because it showed the property honestly, framed it beautifully, and gave the algorithm something worth pushing.

This still hit 16%. Same principle. Minimal editing, high-quality capture, and content that let Ovation speak for itself.

What happened next

32% preleased when we started.
100% preleased 8 months later.
4% average engagement rate this year alone.

In 8 months, Ovation at Town Madison went from 32% to fully preleased. They have maintained an average engagement rate of 4% this year alone across their content, in an industry where most properties are happy to see 1%.

The people who became residents saw the content first. They followed the account, watched the videos, recognized the place when they drove by, and showed up to tour already sold.

The takeaway

Digital does not support your leasing strategy. For a new property, it is your leasing strategy. Ovation did not fill up because the market was easy. They filled up because the right people saw the right content at the right time, repeatedly, until choosing Ovation felt obvious.

They have been a client since November 19, 2024. This is what 8 months of showing up looks like.

If your property is still being introduced to the market, or just undersold in it, we would love to talk about what this could look like for you.

Ovation was at 32% when we met. Your property deserves the same conversation. Book a free strategy call.