How to Win Students and Influence Lease-Ups

There’s lots of choices for student housing, so how do you get those college kids to ink the lease at your project? Building an effective brand strategy kids can identify with can make or break the lease-up of a project in a competitive market. Here’s three ways to do that in language college kids speak.

Serendipit Consulting co-founder Alexis Krisay tells us the first step is to build a strong persona. That means identifiying your community’s student demographics. Alexis says to ask what they’re interested in, what are their hobbies, what brands are they wearing? This should all be asked during the identification process and key messaging creation. With that info in hand, the brand should take on characteristics that students identify with on an emotional level. 

A student housing community's logo is the first impression made on students; it needs to effectively illustrate the overall brand strategy and stand out in the market, Alexis (pictured) tells us. Once you’ve picked the logo, all collateral items and signage need to be cohesive and complementary. It’s all about getting the students familiar with the brand while creating something that makes them want to be a part of the project and call it home, she adds.

The logo has been picked, so now it’s important to create a brand standards guide to communicate the brand personality, brand elements, design requirements, student personas. That info needs to be in one place to ensure that all team members are aware of the brand strategy and that a cohesive brand design is maintained, Alexis says. An effective brand standards guide should includes the fonts, color palette, logo usage, additional brand design elements like the personas and key messages, lifestyle imagery, hashtag research, a brand pyramid, brand mantra and value proposition. Brand consistency is crucial, Alexis says. If students feel proud of the community they'll share that and your community will be able to spark interest in prospects more effectively and ultimately sign more leases. (Pictured is a leasing team member at 25 Twenty, which serves Texas Tech students.)