One of the best ad books I've ever read is "Cash Copy" by J. Lant. He urges to include a call-to-action in every single marketing piece that includes 1.) a time frame and 2.) a number.

So, for example, "Call by Tuesday and save an extra 10%" In the author's direct mail experience, he has documented about a 20% increase in response using this technique.

Why couldn't ILS or pub ads include: "Email us by the end of the month and get your first month rent free!" ?

It's compelling, it drives immediate action, it's always timely and helps track ad sources.

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On another note...Lisa, is phone number really the best way to contact communities? As I vendor, I call dozens of communities everyday. I get a real person picking up the phone maybe 60% of the time.

(In fact, when choosing my new apartment in a new city, one of the factors helping me narrow down my choice was how easy it was to get a hold of someone in the office.)

Just some thoughts...

Good advice, Lisa. I would add a couple of suggestions with photos - make sure you are shooting high resolution photos, and that the ILS (or print guide) is posting the highest resolution possible on their site. Additionally, consider shooting some lifestyle photos in your mix, as opposed to just empty models/pools/fitness centers, etc. Our focus groups revealed that prospects welcome seeing a person in the photo, especially interior apartment shots, and that they can more easily envision seeing themselves living there.
Also, to respond to Ryan's comment on phone numbers - I strongly support having prospects call versus email. Especially if you have a call center. In our exerience, conversions of phone calls to appointments are higher than email to appointments. (On average for a call center, they convert about 35% of calls and about 7% of emails).

Lisa, this is my biggest challenge! When I call properties regarding their unit photo selection, quite often I hear "we don't have photo's." My question is why not? How hard is it to go in and take some? They don't have to be perfect, but they do have to be real units. They don't have to be furnished, but there are inexpensive options to brighten up vacant models.

Urbane had some great results from their residents on photoshooting units. Why not hold a contest and offer incentives to residents to use their apartments?

Bottom line: When I compare property listings, the properties with the best and largest quantity/varieties of interior shots usually gets the most calls.

@Kevin: Any suggestions on how to get more ILSs to accept lifestyle photos? I haven't found them to be very responsive to that idea, although I completely agree with the results you're seeing. Also, have you seen any difference in response between stock lifestyle photos and those of real residents?

@Lisa: You're absolutely right that we can do more to make our listings more compelling. That said, here's what I'd like to see: an ILS with an app store, or at least some area for customizable HTML -- think Twitter backgrounds or custom FBML on Facebook pages. I have a hard time calling the listings on these sites "ads" ... they're search engines, and those "ads" are just glorified search results. You can tweak the copy as much as you want, but until apartment marketers truly have the opportunity to customize their listings to fit the rest of their brand message, we're just nibbling around the edges. What do you think ... should vendors do more to help apartment marketers deliver better messages?

To Charity's point, here's just one example of an actual prospect's reaction to the typical photos seen in apartment ads:



(If you're in the Columbus, OH area, he still might be looking...)

Mike,
Regarding lifestyle pix; we crossed this bridge with the Boston Globe newspaper (7-8 years ago) in that they refused to run ANY real estate advertisements with people in them. (Citing Fair Housing concerns). After some debate, we helped them understand that as long as we covered all protected classes, and also rotated different layouts with different "classes", we would be fine. (i.e. Having a photo with a group of white, black, asians together, or rotating the "white" ad one week, then the "black" ad the next week, etc. You, or your media agency, needs to document the media schedule). In the end, they agreed, and AvalonBay was the first advertiser they had to run lifestyle ads. We have only run lifestyle creatives on our own website, our own collateral (brochures, annual reports, slim jims, HR Mailers, etc.), and have not pushed them onto the ILS's yet. (Frankly, we have some concern about them being rotated and fairly balanced, without intense oversight/management of my small marketing team). Also, remember the disabled class in these photos. As to your question on stock versus shooting your own, the obvious issues with shooting your own is 1) cost (a good shoot can be several thousand dollars), 2) using professional models, with usage contracts, versus your own amateur associates (you still need waivers for them), 3) professional lifetyle photographer versus shooting them yourself (my advice - use a professional lifestyle shooter, who is not the same as an achitectural shooter). And no matter what lifestyle photos you get, remember that they will looked "dated" much quicker than a non-lifestyl photo (clothing fashions and hair styles change more often than some realize). At the end of the day, we use more stock photography than not.