Apartment Marketing

A Dark and Virtual Storm Still on the Horizon?

It was a dark day on Wednesday, January 18, 2012—for some of us more than others.
Murphy’s Law was in full effect the moment my feet hit the ground that morning, and the string of mishaps continued when I got to work and turned on my computer. I opened Google to check my email, and I saw a thick, black bar covering the logo at the top of the page.

Hidden on each of your apartment properties is a secret marketing weapon that can help in your never ending battle to improve resident retention: your maintenance staff.

I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, duh Michael. Quality and timeliness of maintenance service is a key factor in resident renewals. Don’t you keep up with SatisFacts Research’s data?”

Well, Duh:

Here are three quick tips to help your email messages reach your subscribers’ inboxes, avoid spam complaints and maintain your status as a reputable sender:

No matter what our role is within the multi-family industry, there is always one word which is used more than any other; “community.” Some of us own communities, some of us develop communities, some of us design communities and others of us lease or operate them. And chances are that many of us live in an apartment, condominium or townhome community as well. So then why is it that there is so little ‘community’ in our communities?

When it comes down to this failure’s root cause, it can really only be one of two choices;

a.       Either the management team does not expend their energies in a manner that creates a welcoming and vibrant atmosphere that encourages interaction, or

How many times a month does your Leasing Office receive requests for updated Market Surveys? Do you cringe when you see these come through the fax machine or when you recognize other properties’ telephone numbers on your Caller ID? I think it is only human to react this way, especially, when you feel like they ask the same information month after month.

 The BEST Leasing Manager I ever knew (and it sure wasn’t me!) and I worked out a different way of obtaining the most accurate and reliable property information so that our Market Surveys were always easily updated. I use this technique as well when gathering market information for possible acquisitions as well.

 I dislike wasting time and I dislike “busy work.” Busy work, to me, is when a company hires a new or inexperienced Leasing Consultant and assigns him or her the task of doing the monthly Markey Survey. (And you know the person who USED to get this chore each month is secretly happy to be relieved of this!) So, the new person asks which properties to call and proceeds to do so. He or she sometimes never even introduces him/herself to the person who answers the phone and usually says something like this: “Hi. I was wondering if you could answer a couple of questions for my Market Survey?” When the person says yes, then the Consultant starts in with fifteen different questions as to the size of the units at your property, how much do they all rent for, what is the square footage for each unit style, are you running any specials, what amenities does your property offer, do you take pets, how much do you charge for Pet Fees and Pet Rent (often times interspersed with his or her own opinion as to these charges), followed by, “What is your current occupancy?”

And I'm not talking the married kind of engagement. (although that can be pretty pricey too)

I'm talking the price of engagement in regards to social media. I was not a bandwagon social media user. I wanted to understand how to engage and converse with our residents and potential residents before I jumped on the social media train. I also wanted to understand how to measure engagement and then translate that to value for our clients. 

For me, the  issue with social media is not the time it takes to post, blog or tweet, the issue is engagement. Are you maximizing on opportunities of engagement? Are you talking at your residents and prospects are talking with them? Having thousands of fans or followers are great but what are you doing with them?

What gives you the best engagement bang for you buck? I have included my top three.

DON'T BE A NEWS FEED HOG

Posting and tweeting are a marathon, not a race. If you clog up their news feed, they are sure to unfollow or unsubscribe. Studies show a post every 3-4 hours is the sweet spot.

INSIGHTS

Are you looking at your insights page? Your insights page has a wealth of information and demographics. Use that to your advantage when posting. 

FEEDBACK SCORE

Look at your most successful post (in terms of likes, comments, impressions, re-tweets, etc) and figure out your feedback score. For the posts with the highest feedback percentage, do you see a pattern of posts people engage with most... sports, fashion, decorating ideas? 

I benchmark everything. As a Director of Marketing, making sure my marketing team's time is well spent requires just that, benchmarking everything. Have we figured out the secret formula to social media, engagement and ROI.. not yet but I'm working on it. :-)

Happy posting!

Sparkle Hammond, M.Ed.  First Communities | Director of Marketing
shammond@firstcommunities.net
www.century-apartments.com | www.facebook.com/centuryapartmenthomes

It seems like over the past five years or so, an infinite number of marketing channels have emerged. We bought pages on listing sites, then we created our own property websites.  Now web pages are generated for our property just by having a resident “check in” on Facbook or Foursquare.  Seriously!

 This makes it extremely challenging for an apartment community to have one coherent brand on the web. So what’s a marketer to do?

I've been racking my brain for hours in an effort to come up the new marketing initiative for my portfolio. I find this task more difficult than it has been the past because we are now in recovery mode and vacancies are dropping. However, things seem different than they did just a few short years ago. I couldn't decide on whom exactly our target market is in a portfolio with mostly B and C+ communities. I've been asking myself, what can set us apart from the competition to get people to come look at our property?  All of a sudden it dawns on me. I know! I know!  We can advertise ourselves as foreclosure friendly communities. Oh my goodness, did I really think that. After all my years in this business did I really just have the idea to encourage less qualified renters to live at to our apartments? The unfortunate answer is yes that's exactly what I did but there is a method behind the madness. First of all, individuals who have been foreclosed upon makeup a large percentage of those looking for housing right now. In addition, it is assumed that people that are coming from a house are planning to spend less on rent than they did on their mortgage.

Be honest and raise your hand if you are still using clip-art grade pictures in your marketing.  Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.  It just seems so simple and available, doesn’t it?  But when you have clip art representing your $20 million dollar asset, something doesn’t add up, does it?  We have recently started trying to upgrade our visuals, and although it’s not free, I believe it does make a huge difference – what do you think?

If you have a tight budget, and let’s face it, who doesn’t, I highly recommend trying out Crowdspring.  The basic concept of that website is that you submit what work you want done, such as a flyer or logo, as well as the budget you have for the job.  Graphic designers will then submit actual mock-ups of the work, allowing you to choose which one you like!  Obviously, the higher the budget you have, the more submissions you get, but you can also reach out to specific designers and ask them to submit something. 

That is actually how we had our original logo done and found our current graphic designer.  (Now our graphic designer also works for us to provide graphic work for our clients.  So if you have a specific needs, just send me a message and we’ll get a quote for you.)

Are you an effective communicator? If the purpose of communication is to get your message across to others -- envision how often you communicate effectively with people during one day. You may answer the uncounted times over the telephone, writing emails, in meetings, participating in conference calls, creating reports, debating with colleagues…the list goes on and on. We all communicate in countless ways every day to residents, future customer, colleagues, suppliers and even the corporate office.  The better our communication skills are the better we can serve and be more productive. Use the 5 Cs of Communication to communicate in the clearest, most effective way possible:

1. Clear