Grasping the attention of residents has become a tough business. No longer will traditional forms of mass marketing and advertising be an effective way to bring awareness to your business and convert prospects into residents. The solution is inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a modern method that equips you to create content that drives buyer personas through your marketing funnel.

Understand and Develop a Buyer Persona

Before you produce content it is important to understand and develop a strong buyer persona. According to HubSpot, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional character that represents your ideal resident.

These personas help you understand the demographics, pain points, behaviors, and motivations of your ideal resident. Developing buyer personas ultimately allow you to better connect with your audience. For a multifamily property, empty nesters looking to downsize their living space, for example. And depending on who you are trying to reach, you may have more than one persona.

To develop a strong persona, you will want to have a great understanding of your existing audience. By conducting three to five one-on-one interviews asking a series of questions, you’ll start picking up on trends of your persona.

You can also collect data from your CRM and sales team to aggregate a generalized view of your potential persona. Then, once you have developed your persona, remember to always reevaluate and revise it as resident needs change.

Understand the Buyer’s Journey

Now that you have your buyer persona, you are better positioned to understand the buyer’s journey. According to HubSpot, “the buyer’s journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service.”

In the awareness stage, your persona has identified a problem and is trying to understand that problem. In the consideration stage, your persona is considering all potential solutions to alleviate their problem. And finally, in the decision stage, your persona is deciding on choosing a specific option to solve their problem.

Using Inbound Marketing Methodology to Guide Your Content

You have probably heard at least once that “content is king.” The inbound marketing methodology will help guide what context your content should be used within, based on four stages: attract, convert, close, delight. By following this methodology and knowing where your persona is in the buyer’s journey, you can produce content in the right context.

Attract

The attract stage is all about building awareness creating content that turns strangers into visitors. Thus, the type of content you would primarily be focusing on are blogs, social media, and white pages.

With every piece of content you publish, the goal is to provide solutions to your persona’s problems. For example, for an urban apartment, you might write a blog highlighting “The Best Places to Grab Cocktails” or “10 Interior Design Tips for a Loft Apartment.”

Convert

The convert stage is about converting visitors into leads. The type of content you are producing would be in the form of a call-to-action (CTA) or landing pages. Create gated content, where viewers must provide minimal information that will be valuable to your business (email, zip code, etc.). For example, gated content can include infographics, fact sheets, eBooks, or other resources that provide value. When trying to convert a persona, they have likely already become aware of your property and are looking for more information.

Close

In the close stage, your content is all about getting leads to become residents. The content being produced in this stage is focused on your CRM, email, and workflows. Your focus is to speak their language, meet their needs, and seal the deal.

Delight

In the delight stage, you will continue to provide value and show you care about your residents, and they will, in turn, become advocates and promoters for your property. Through social monitoring and surveys, you can see how satisfied your residents are, and if there is a problem you can address it quickly. Happy residents are your best advocates for attracting new residents.

With the knowledge of these content stages, you can consistently produce the right content in the right context for your persona.