Topic: If you had $20,000 to spend on a grand opening, what would you do?

Brainstorming marketing ideas for future lease-ups. So... If you had $20,000 to spend on a grand opening, what would you do?

Send out mailers to the addresses of your competitors,
Have a grand opening with door prizes, lease up specials.

Local radio DJ onsite remote broadcast weekend event with give aways in line with budget. Maybe hire a local celebrity/band as well? Anything to drive traffic.

Online advertising

Y'all, I need BIG, outside the box ideas. We always have massive advertising budgets, so this wont be spent on typical ads. This is for a one-weekend kind of event. You have money to blow... What would you plan? There will be prizes, there will be leasing incentives. Those are an absolute. But TWENTY GRAND! You have one shot for a HUGE event. What would you do with it??

Fireworks

Where is the property?

Summerville, SC. Just outside of Charleston.

I would hire a party planner/event planner

With that kind of money- I’d think you’d be able to run a great engagement contest of 1year FREE rent with a call to action to enter!

What time of year?

May

Use as much as I could buying words for online marketing

You could do an Aladdin themed summer night with belly dancers, sword tricks, magicians and all the works to go along with the theme.

Use “Genie” bottled as parting gifts which would be branded and have leasing incentives inside

Dana Jiles definitely invite the Chamber of Commerce, police, fire Dept, medical professionals and whom ever else has prominent businesses in your area

Make a donation to high school or middle school band and have them come play something patriotic and invite the mayor and city council and police and fire. Of course all the parents will come too. Mayors offices have the big scissors.

Valet park cars to make it easy.

Jazz band.

Waiters with appetizers and champagne walking around.

Leasing team in tux and gowns giving tours.

Piggybacking off Jamin’s comment:
Late Afternoon/Evening
Business casual or cocktail Dress
•Art Show:Bring in high end art pieces, wall art and designer furniture to display throughout.
•Fashion show
•Silent auction (and include leasing incentives, local gym or personal training, things catering around your apartment community style, etc)
•Hire servers - Hors d'oeuvres, wine, etc

Auction can generate a lot of money you can then donate to your local charities and schools

I partnered with a local Porsche dealership. I paid $8k to “rent” a Porsche to be parked in my clubhouse for one year. We debuted it at the grand opening Polynesian Luau. High end. Everyone who attended got a raffle ticket. For one year we did promos for the raffle tickets. Then we did a mini- second grand opening and pulled the winning ticket which was to “win” a one year lease of the vehicle. (Get an atty to write all the disclaimers.)

Free hot air balloon rides. It would give a good view of the community and surrounding area.

Anything huge to generate as much PR attention can make for the most effective grand openings people will continue talking about long after your event. Consider choreographing a flash mob or organizing a stunt to break a world record. The bigger the better!

How about a Cirque du Soleil themed party? Great costumes .. the decor would be awesome. Different areas of the community can feature different "acts" to entice people to see more then just one place.

Bring a masseuse crew of 4 or 5 guys and girls, prepare another section for make overs, bring those make up artist from fb, they’re everywhere, and another one for facials, even free manicures and pedicures, then add some of the other ideas from previous comments like the live band etc,

Save it for later in the lease up

Two ideas I wanted to try at my next one are below. Don't forget lights are important, a final small gift is important and remember the real reason for a grand opening. It's not about attracting more residents (unless it is, which I am not a fan of), but more appreciating all the success of everyone who made the community possible. Best of luck and if you use any ideas, let us know.

Take 10,000 of it and raffle off 5 $1000 cash prizes and each comes with a matching $1000 donation to ( and pick 5 local charities that are in need - pet shelter , woman’s shelter , suicide hot line, etc). Get news publicity of it and promote maybe whoever rents from the open house gets 6 months rent on 12 month lease.

This is how you bring prospects, have your residents to bring a posible referral that could b on the market for apartment hunting, have a raffle of cruise or something really attractive, the residents that bring u prospects get a ticket and the prospect does too, but u want them to bring you as many as they can, so for each prospect they get a ticket, that way each prospect will bring you more prospects the more they bring the more chances for them to win it,,, I did this at church, as my grad project, that church reached the highest attendance ever, of guest which that was the goal,,

Great ideas but if you are in a predominate neighborhood or near properties that you may compete with, announce a grand opening in social media of neighboring websites and the locals will all see and along with that, send out post cards perhaps, a welcome invite to a classy champagne and appitizer opening with ( if possible) a model to show off or at least a welcoming staff that can meet and mingle and work the crowd to gather more information about people in the area that may be interested in moving or sharing information about friends that may need to move soon adding the raffle of a grand vacation which usually can be purchased for merely a couple hundred bucks for the guests to drool and fight for. Ha. Have the staff knowledgeable of the opportunities of the vacation locations offering a package usually offers multiple vacation options this again makes it their choice and more inviting to a diverse group The follow up from the drawings are now new prospects and the community is already talking about you and how friendly and knowledgeable and fighting for a chance to lease their next home with you. Ha or me because you would also need me to make it all happen. Wink wink

Pay for local influencers with high, relevant followings to both show up and post about your grand opening. Higher end realtors with 20,000 followers for example.

Maximize your attendance.