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Let's All Bash The ILS's, Shall We?

Let's All Bash The ILS's, Shall We?

The Internet Listing Services (ILS’s) haven’t had it all that good lately. They’ve been getting some pretty close scrutiny on the Multifamily Insiders website, as well as some discussion at national conferences including NMHC Tech and the Multifamily Brainstorming Conference.

Just to make sure we have full disclosure here, I have worked for many of the ILS’s, either as a paid speaker or a paid consultant. Am I currently under contract with any of them? No.

In the interest of fairness, I want to add a few points to the ILS debate. These points are all based upon my opinion after having numerous discussions with the ILS community over the years.

1. Ratings: All of the ILS’s are very much aware that renters want ratings. However, they (the ILS’s) have received significant pushback from their advertisers (NOT their renter/users) on the whole idea of ratings. The majority of their advertisers have been vocal in saying that they do not want ratings on the ILS sites. Rock, meet hard place for the ILS’s. Years ago, some of the ILS’s used to advertise onApartment Ratings. Why? The site receives a tremendous amount of renter traffic, exceeding some of the smaller ILS’s on some occasions. Their advertising on this site was dropped however, again due to pressure from advertisers.

2. It appears, to me at least, that the majority of the ILS’s are continually striving to keep changing, upgrading and improving not only their product, but the end user experience. Apartment Guide was the first ILS to come out with an iPhone application. Apartment Finderlaunched their Community Sherpa product, in an effort to help property management companies pursue a social media strategy. For Rent just launched the first augmented reality application for the ILS’s, yet another way to improve the renter experience.

3. Most companies who choose to work with an ILS never try to leverage their relationship. The ILS’s have a wealth of knowledge about your renters at their fingertips such as the top ten search items for your market. Have you asked what these are? If not, why not? Have you asked them how renter behavior changed due to the recession? Rent.com even released a white paper on the topic, loaded with great information on number of searches and more. ILS’s can tell you how many properties the average renter views, how many they contact, what features are most helpful to you in gaining more ‘page views’ and more. (Coupons can increase your leads by 18%; including accurate pricing can increase them by 30%).

4. One of the biggest criticisms of the ILS approach to the rental market is the fact that all property ads basically look the same. And I agree, that’s clearly an issue for companies that have been able to successfully build a brand. Unfortunately for those forward thinking companies who’ve managed to do this, they are in the minority (on an national basis) and in their case, they might not be the best properties served by an ILS. Taking an extraordinary approach with their extraordinary brand is smart marketing on their part. I will throw in one caution, however. For potential renters coming in from outside the immediate market, the personality that these companies have established might not be immediately discernible to someone who is simply searching for an apartment home with geography, size and price as their qualifiers. In that case, the ILS model would serve them and I believe, serve them well.

Lastly, I must say that I fully appreciate and support the discussion that has been started by folks on the ILS model. Pushing the ILS’s to improve the experience for both renters and property management companies and owners is only going to improve the performance of the product. In NO WAY am I criticizing those who have been willing to ‘take up the charge’ so to speak. They have actually publicly stated what many were ‘whispering about’ for years and for that and more, I applaud them.

Let’s keep the debate going and help to increase leads and leases for all of us.

Lisa Trosien is an award winning,  multifamily educator, consultant and professional speaker with 20+ years of industry experience. She blogs here and on her website, Apartment Marketing Blog.  

 
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Lisa -- first of all, let me simply say, "well said!" Your observations are right on point in all areas. There has been a great deal of chatter about the ILS model recently; and contrary to what may be popular belief, I believe most of these companies (certainly Apartment Finder) welcome the dialogue -- it does keep the entire sector on our toes and helps us understand what the hot buttons might be.

The ratings issue is an especially challenging one! For example, our online advertisers have the ability to opt-in to a Yelp! feed for their property, showing consumers ratings they may have received on this site. However, most advertisers do not elect to include this option and we cannot "require" it do to the vehement push-back from the majority. There is still a great deal of fear among owners/operators due to some of the vitriol that regularly appears on sites like apartmentratings.com. We are probably a couple of years and a lot of education away from seeing the industry embrace ratings as a viable way to enhance their marketing program and the consumer experience.

Thanks for the shout-out on CommunitySherpa -- and more importantly, the observation that many aren't appropriately leveraging their relationships with the ILS's. We all have a great deal of data and constantly try to push this information out to the industry (for example, we have a current white paper on social media usage within the industry that is available at http://www.community-sherpa.com).

As for all ads basically looking the same on the ILS model, that's largely true -- but what I would encourage the industry to keep in mind is that the average consumer looking for an apartment home is first and foremost searching by geography and price. There is no more efficient way to do this at present than the ILS model, which gives the consumer an unbiased representation of communities and results relevant to their criteria -- and gives the marketer an economy of scale that is difficult to...

Lisa -- first of all, let me simply say, "well said!" Your observations are right on point in all areas. There has been a great deal of chatter about the ILS model recently; and contrary to what may be popular belief, I believe most of these companies (certainly Apartment Finder) welcome the dialogue -- it does keep the entire sector on our toes and helps us understand what the hot buttons might be.

The ratings issue is an especially challenging one! For example, our online advertisers have the ability to opt-in to a Yelp! feed for their property, showing consumers ratings they may have received on this site. However, most advertisers do not elect to include this option and we cannot "require" it do to the vehement push-back from the majority. There is still a great deal of fear among owners/operators due to some of the vitriol that regularly appears on sites like apartmentratings.com. We are probably a couple of years and a lot of education away from seeing the industry embrace ratings as a viable way to enhance their marketing program and the consumer experience.

Thanks for the shout-out on CommunitySherpa -- and more importantly, the observation that many aren't appropriately leveraging their relationships with the ILS's. We all have a great deal of data and constantly try to push this information out to the industry (for example, we have a current white paper on social media usage within the industry that is available at http://www.community-sherpa.com).

As for all ads basically looking the same on the ILS model, that's largely true -- but what I would encourage the industry to keep in mind is that the average consumer looking for an apartment home is first and foremost searching by geography and price. There is no more efficient way to do this at present than the ILS model, which gives the consumer an unbiased representation of communities and results relevant to their criteria -- and gives the marketer an economy of scale that is difficult to duplicate otherwise. Let's not forget in this discussion that any marketing program should be one that does not place all the eggs in one basket . . . and that an ILS (or several) should be only part of a robust marketing initiative that includes a variety of ways to reach the apartment shopper.

Again, thanks Lisa for taking the time to write such a balanced, fair article on the subject!

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  Judy Bellack
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

This articles nicely sums up the tension we feel as ILS providers. Thank you for articulating our struggles, and providing some of the specific examples of how the larger firms are trying to adapt.

This year we as an industry have been trying to do more with less. My guess is that revenues at the large, established ILS firms were flat or down this year. On top of this, there were unprecedented demands on development teams. Here's just a few of the investments ILS companies made this year: data integration with additional social media sites and MITS partners, mobile websites, text messaging technology, video and/or virtual technology platforms, iPhone apps, 3-D floor plan compatibility, social media marketing and social media integration.

One thing any company that's in business any length of time has to do is adapt. But like everything else, it's a matter of timing. And right now, the fact of the matter is the ILSs getting the most traffic are not the ones that have done the most with social media.

  Ellen Thompson
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Lisa, Judy, and Ellen: What will it take besides more education to get advertisers to allow the ILSs to innovate further and better serve apartment hunters? Where does the discussion go from here?

Search engines, review sites and classifieds don't need to worry about catering to apartment operators as their primary source of income, and they are moving ahead with new services and formats that are successfully changing the face of the consumer experience. Yet, the ILSs work at a scale much greater than any of their customers, and they're able to deliver first-hand knowledge about apartment hunters that any advertiser should be drooling over.

I welcome your suggestions, as I think you are all well positioned to move this discussion forward in a way that can benefit everyone.

  Mike Whaling
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Until review sites build good will with more owners, our hands are tied. And until the rants of anonymous reviewers and rebuttals of property management folks are weeded out, this is not going to happen. The site that will achieve this end will require reviewers to take ownership of their posts, allow property managers to voice the opinion of management and have enough reviews/content/momentum to be credible.

Sites like these don't build themselves overnight (or for free). Eventually (my best guess is 2-3 years from now) a site or two will emerge the winner. At that point, you'll see the ILSs integrate third party reviews and/or allow users to post their own.

For now, the best way for me to keep the lights on and 16 paychecks clearing is to keep my customers happy, and while we have the technology in place right now, you won't see us integrating property reviews until I am quite certain I'll still have 90% of my listings when I do!

  Ellen Thompson

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