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Oct 23
2011
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89% to 96% occupied in less than a month using Social Media
Posted by: Aaron Lynch on Oct 23, 2011 17:27 |
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Social media marketing is all the buzz right now. Marketing companies are popping up left and right telling you to get on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, “now before it’s too late!” Many of them of course are trying to scare you into using their services. Quoting statistics like 97% of all consumers now begin their searches online. That is NOT a good reason to start an online marketing campaign!
While it’s true that you need to have a significant online presence, and that social media is a huge part of that, nobody tells you why or how. My suspicion is that they don’t know, and you can tell because they aren’t producing the results they promise.
Prior to going full time as a marketing consultant, I worked at a community as part of a team that grew occupancy from 89% to 96% in less than a month. Previous to that I worked at another community with another team that grew occupancy from 91% to 98% in less than 2 months. I would love to take credit for this awesome growth, but something else was at work. Something many of us didn’t even realize, and probably couldn’t duplicate because we didn’t take notice.
In the first scenario above something amazing happened. Word of mouth marketing, fueled by social media took over. The community had done what it had always done and offered a preferred employer discount to a certain employer. That employer had hired a large quantity of new employees all needing a new place to live. Easy enough right? Wrong, three other communities had offered the same deals.
So why did the majority of the new employees choose our community? Connection. Community. One of the employees came in a little earlier than everyone else. I walked them through the community and engaged them, talked about them (not me or my community). We talked through all of their needs and wants, and our community was a fit. Unfortunately, so were a few others.
It came down to our community and one other. I had developed some serious rapport because I sincerely cared about them and their situation. I wanted them to live at my community, and they knew it. The other community had the ability to offer a better price AND a month of FREE rent. I didn’t have that flexibility. I was sincere and honest, and told them I couldn’t match the other offer. We talked back through their needs and desires, and I remembered that they had commented about an accent wall color in one of our models…University of Texas orange.
I spent quite a bit of time with them to make sure we were the right fit. And I offered a free accent wall in their favorite color. In his words “deal”! They came back in and filled out the application. We laughed about the accent wall, and they went on and on about the time I took with them, and my willingness to answer their questions. That is our culture, so I thought nothing of it. I imagine you have had a similar experience.
What happened next blew my mind. They told their coworkers.
They had gotten connected via Facebook to their new associates. The word about how welcoming our community was and how their new “friends” were going to live there spread like wild fire. Soon we had people coming in and leasing without seeing our apartments because of time restraints and demand. Every person that came in said “I told (message via Facebook or text message) so and so that we’re moving here too, so expect to see them today or tomorrow”.
So, what’s the point? The point is, this is how to use social media to market your apartments. You don’t. You create raving fans, and let them market your apartments for you. This is what I learned:
1. Give them something to talk about. Give over the top unbelievable service. Make it REMARKABLE (easy to talk about).
2. Make it easy to share, and encourage them to do so. When someone compliments your community, ask them to share it right then. Ratings, reviews, testimonial video or social media.
3. Find out which ones are sharing and reward them. Not only because it will motivate them to do it again, but because the deserve it.
4. Start the cycle over again and keep giving over the top unbelievable service. Create an upward spiral of this culture into your team.
How do you do it? That’s community specific. Share your ideas below! Be creative and MAKE IT EASY!
For More marketing ideas, get our FREE eBook at www.HowToMarketApartments.com.
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P.S. build trust
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I thought this was really nicely written and it's nice to see someone document quantified results. I agree that social media is a great way to amplify word of mouth advertising. In an ideal world, it's the best approach.
Unfortunately, not every leasing office has perfect service and a lot of older communities on the east coast don't have any community amenities to speak of. It's a lot harder for them to make social media work the way you have. It may be of interest for the community to know that a client of ours that will remain nameless set up ~40 FB pages and promptly abandoned them. Google Analytics reveals they get a non trivial amount of inbound traffic from these inactive Facebook pages. While I certainly don't recommend this approach, it proves that there is some measurable value even to poorly deployed and abandoned social media efforts even if it's far from a best practice approach.
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