How to Build a College Student-Centered Brand

By Danielle Wirsansky on June 21, 2017

When you are a property manager in a college town, your demographic almost always has to be college students. Students always need a place to live and can run the spectrum on what they can afford — from a student whose parent is paying for their every need and expense without concern to the student struggling to pay their own way.

It is a wide open market but it will be much more easily accessible if you build yourself a student-centered brand. How can you target students specifically in order to get them to live at your property? Read on for some tips to rehabilitate your brand and gear it towards college students instead.

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Be personable

This might seem like a given for anyone who has dabbled in a customer service related field but it can be easily forgotten or pushed to the side — be personable. Students are technically adults and are trying to come into their own. They want, and deserve, to be treated like adults. Yet they are also still childlike and naïve, finding a place to live for the first time in many cases, which you also have to be understanding of.

They may not realize that they need a guarantor or understand the difference between a split and shared lease. They might not know how to set up their utilities. So you need to find a balance of treating them with respect while also being understanding of their follies or misconceptions. They do not want to be treated like a child but when times get tough, they also do not want to be treated like an adult. It can be hard to find a balance to handle them. But being understanding, respectful, empathetic, and more are all incredibly important elements of this.

Be accessible

Another important element of re-branding yourself and your company to be more geared towards college students is to make sure that you, your staff, your company, your premises, and more are all easily accessible. Students should be able to know how to contact you, by phone, email, or in person. They should be able to find out information about your company easily without having to dig through the decaying matter of the internet.

Your office hours should be listed, and your company’s number and address should come up with a simple Google search. Email and phone call queries should be responded to as well — having the information available so that you can be contacted does nothing if you never ever respond to the queries that you receive.

Your website should be easy to navigate and have all the relevant information on there as stated before but also including amenities, floor plans, and rent prices.

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Be up to date

Another really important element of rebranding yourself and your business towards college students is to make sure that you are up to date. Your policies, your website, your social media, your amenities, your service, even your decorating needs to be up to date in order for you to be competitive against other properties. Take it step by step and make sure that you meet current standards. And if you do not, then you need to take the steps necessary to update your business. Go through the steps.

Here are some steps to check your website with. One, do you even have a website? Two, is your domain name appropriate? Three, does your website end in .com? This is important as consumers will often discount websites that have less professional suffixes. Four, does your website look professional? A cheesy, poorly made website will do you no favors. You can always look at the websites of your competitors to set the standard that your own website needs to meet.

Five, is the website easy to navigate? If a student wants to call your office, can they easily find the number? If a student is interested in renting a 4/2 bedroom, can they learn quickly if you even offer that floor plan? Six, is your website’s information itself up to date? When was the last time its photos were updated? Have your prices increased since the last time you updated the website? Have you added any amenities or changed any policies that might entice students into living at the property?

There are many steps that you can take to check and then double check that you and your property are up to date with current market trends in the industry to make sure that you are and keep you a top competitor in the market. Just as there are many students looking for a place to live, there are plenty of properties to house them in. If you want your property to be rented out, you need to rebrand and make sure that your property is competitive.

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