Apartment Marketing Fail

A very Special Guest Post from the lovely @SarahFaasse

Riddle me this: if a real estate agent encountered her own advertisement on Craigslist, would she pursue it? Some of the techniques used to advertise apartments these days on the ol’ CL simply baffle me. Granted, I am not an apartment-hunting expert of any kind, but I am a picky renter (or as picky as I can be at my age and budget). Most people are: right size, right location, right price, utilities included, management situation, parking, pets, laundry, etc… ick. And there are a LOT of apartments out there to sift through. In the hours that I’ve spent perusing, critiquing, and daydreaming over apartments listed for rent on Craigslist, I’ve noticed some disturbing trends of marketing failure:

1. All caps – when I see all caps in an ad, I automatically think “computer inept.” I’m pretty sure the “impoliteness” of all caps was agreed upon back when Al Gore invented the internet. I can’t focus on any one word when they’re all screaming at me. So I ignore all of them.

2. Sham pictures – I won’t drag myself out to an apartment unless I’ve seen pictures first. Who knows what it could be!? Basement, roach-infested, straight out of the 70’s, a shoebox… you never know. So when an ad says “pic”, those are the ones I click on. The advertisers know this: they put in their company logo, a general picture of Beacon Hill (I live there, and I KNOW that picture is a different street than the one the apartment’s on), even a little animated dancing man. Really. Let me see the actual apartment!

3. Wrong apartment size – We need 1 bedroom. Not a studio that you listed as a 1br so that I would look at it, even if it is so breathtakingly spacious that it is practically a 1br. If it’s not a true one bedroom, don’t lead me on. That’s mean.

4. Repeats – GREAT DEAL BEST DEAL WON’T LAST GREAT DEAL BEST DEAL WON’T LAST – I get it. You are completely convinced of this apartment’s awesomeness, or more likely are completely ridiculous and are lying through your teeth in order to seduce some poor sucker into renting this crappy place. Even if it’s not, the repeats combined with all caps are so annoying that my eye skims right over it, and I won’t consider it based on principle.

Despite the pitfalls of everyone’s favorite online classifieds, I found my current apartment there, and I’ve been pretty happy here. I have faith that there are great places out there still, and that we’ll find the one we’re looking for. Just show me accurate pictures, write in a calm, informative, and concise way, and say H&HW included. And that I can paint the walls whatever color I want.

tagged as apartment marketing fail, apartments, bad advertising, fail, Marketing, marketing fail