And for this, my 900th post on this blog;
I would liken the creation of a metric that truly captures the effectiveness of using social media platforms as a delivery mechanism for your marketing efforts to the follow;
I think that it's just a bit complicated – I would equate it to those darn word problems from high school – You know the ones – A car leaves Chicago traveling at fifty miles an hour into a thirty mile an hour head wind. In mile four they hit a south by southwest semi-head wind blowing at four miles an hour six inches off the ground and fourteen miles an hour twenty three inches off the ground. Your car weighs fifteen hundred pounds except on this day you have five people along for the ride. Sally weighs fifty pounds, Johnny weighs eighty pounds, Sam weighs a hundred and sixty pounds, Charles weighs eighty-eight pounds, Will weighs twenty pounds and you weigh in at a hundred and eleven pounds. That is right before three of you ate double quarter pounders with cheese. Charles had two.
At what speed are you traveling when you hit Saint Louis and at what time will you arrive in Dallas if you left at five in the morning on a Sunday driving on a road with seven inches of fresh powder on top of three inches of ice.
At what speed are you traveling when you hit Saint Louis and at what time will you arrive in Dallas if you left at five in the morning on a Sunday driving on a road with seven inches of fresh powder on top of three inches of ice.
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Mike, Good Morning
First, you are the spreadsheet king, you could whip out that equation in a flash. But does it really have to be that complicated. We all measure the same things that we find important, occupancy and Retention, Expenses and Revenue.
1) Occupancy and retention; If my occupancy and retention increase increase x percentage points from my social media efforts, there is your ROI. We have all been measuring this stuff the same way since the beginning of time, so an increase in occupancy and retention in a down economy after implementing Social Media is a marked improvement. For us, our occupancy has risen with the implementation of Social Media and so has our retention.
2) I believe that when you add something you need to also take away something, otherwise your operational costs increase. Social Media isn’t free, if you are doing it or starting, what are you NOT doing with offsetting costs. For us, we made it simple to track, we ceased all traditional marketing. Kind of radical I guess, or maybe not,
3) Cost per Lease. For us, our labor cost per lease has continued to decline as we create more and more evangelists, and those evangelists are renting apartments for you.
This is all pretty cool stuff, and it works, not sure why it is such a hard sell to folks.
I’m on board with Eric’s comments, but I would just add that I don’t think that we are doing ourselves any favors if we try to frame the social media conversation in terms of marketing only.
We’re all quick to grasp on to “social media marketing.” But when we go that route, we leave out the opportunities to build brand awareness and improve customer service response, which in turn will result in the resident retention rate we’re all seeking to increase.
When looking at the justification for incorporating social media into your operations, look beyond the marketing department if you want to measure the full potential impact on your business.