Eric Brown
Early Adapters a post by eric
I am preparing for a short trip to Columbus OH Monday and Tuesday to attend the Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference. I am excited to meet in person some of the finest marketing bloggers out there, Mack Collier; The Viral Garden, Beth Harte; The Harte of Marketing, Jennifer Laycock; Search Engine Guide, and many others. It is a great opportunity to learn some new techniques and strategies, and to just be around like mined folks for a couple of days.
One thing I hope to take away from the conference is a better understanding of early adapters, sometimes referred to as influencers, evangelists and ambassadors. Specifically, just how many evangelists does it take within your core Resident Base to “Self Rent” your apartments, and how do you properly nurture and cultivate them.
An article by Robert Scoble touches on the importance of early adapters, quoting Robert here; “Today the angst is onto things like Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. Even older Web 2.0 properties like Flickr haven’t really gone mainstream. Last week we spent some time with Ansel Adams’ son. He had never heard of Flickr. Ansel Adams son!!! That dude should be the first that photo sharing sites pitch, since he’s always talking to press about photography and his company does tons of classes for photographers in Yosemite and other places. Heck, Flickr should figure out how to sponsor the Ansel Adams’ Gallery. But they don’t.
Why not? Because convincing late adopters to change their behavior is VERY hard and VERY expensive. It’s why Amazon doesn’t do TV advertising. Rather they build a product that early adopters, passionate computer geeks, and influencers like. How does that affect their business performance? Well, compare Best Buy’s price/earnings ratio to that of Amazon’s. According to Google Finance Best Buy’s is 13.91 and Amazon’s is 67.03. I know which one I’d rather have. Early adopters DO matter. Anyone who says that they don’t needs to go back to business school.”
Based on these observations and our own experience of push back and naysayers regarding the manner in which we market our own boutique apartment management company, convincing other Multi Family Owner/Operators to embrace Social Media may well be a long time in coming. Perhaps the best way is by example, to the Lead the Charge and Break From the Pack of Apartment Commodity, creating our own “Blue Ocean” and to show by metrics everyone in this industry understands, increased NOI, double digit Cash on Cash Returns, and high occupancy. Apartment Operators across this country are very smart, they are just very late adaptors.
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Lead a Tribe a post by eric
I have been fortunate enough to be involved in a Social Web Site, Trilibes.com launched and led by Seth Godin, who is coining a name for Social Networks as Tribes. It was by invitation only, and has been an interesting and learning experience at watching and participating at how easy and how hard it can be to direct and lead a Social Site. It is in conjunction with a book and it’s commencing that Seth is doing, appropriately named Tribes. There is certainly lots of banter going about surrounding new media, social media, web 2.0 and social sites. There is myspace, facebook, flickr, YouTube and many more that all have a component of social connection. With the book launch in only Seth Godin fashion, he will take the mystery out of at least some of what and how social sites can flourish and again reinvent himself as well as position himself as an expert on the topic of social network sites. I am glad I am involved with the project and have learned a lot.
The way people purchase things today is changing before our eyes. Over the last three years Urbane Apartments has ceased traditional marketing efforts in exchange for a myspace site, a facebook site, YouTube and flickr sites and maximum exposure on our local Craigslist. We also use twitter regularly. We recently started a Social Network site on Ning.com, the UrbaneLobby.com. Like many other Social Network sites we have run into some snags, stalled membership, and lack of participation. We have regrouped and made directional corrections and believe we have an effective revised plan to give our residents enough reason and enough value to make regular visits, beyond just paying rent on line and placing a service request on line. Our Goal; To provide our residents with an experience and value with a high enough return to create enough Customer Evangelists within our core resident base that they self rent our apartments. We are working hard to lead our resident Influencers within our core resident base, and have transitioned most of our marketing budget inward, to further focus on our existing residents. Only good things have happened from this move. Resident retention has significantly improved, and we have created a forum and a field for the Influencers to participate. Along the path we hope to become Social Media experts based on our experience as to what works for multifamily and what doesn’t. We are learning as we go, but are seeing stellar results.
You too should try out some of these new paths. Become familiar with them, use them. They work, and they will work for you too. The central theme of all Social Media is creating community, which has always been what property management has been about.
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Dare to be Different a post by eric
Eric Brown · · 1 Comment
The difference between number one and number two is typically rather significant. The leaders, those who Break from the Pack of Commodity do so by challenging the typical norm, with courage, absent fear. The metaphor of red and blue oceans describes the market universe. Red oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the red ocean bloody.
Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored.
The corner-stone of Blue Ocean Strategy is ‘Value Innovation’. A blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovation that creates value simultaneously for both the buyer and the company. The innovation (in product, service, or delivery) must raise and create value for the market, while simultaneously reducing or eliminating features or services that are less valued by the current or future market.
Companies who successfully develop a distinctive brand and product are able to redefine the product they sell. Apple does not sell computers. Harley Davidson does not sell motorcycles. VW does not sell cars. What do they have in common? The sell the lifestyle and the products that provide that lifestyle. They reaffirm for their customer that they understand them and that they offer what it is that makes them unique and special.
1) Which factors in the Apartment Rental Industry that are routinely taken for granted should be eliminated?
2) Which factors in the Apartment Rental Industry should be reduced well below the industry standard?
3) Which factors in the Apartment Rental Industry should be raised well above the industry standard?
4) Which factors in the Apartment Rental Industry should be created that the industry has never offered
We look forward to your feedback and a spirited conversation…………………..
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Maybe the Model is Broken
Eric Brown · · 8 Comments
Can the apartment industry benefit from benchmarking against other industry standards? Are the metrics that property management company’s use in sync with the changing world? Maybe what we have always done isn’t producing as favorable of a result as what we could with a paradigm shift. Brent William’s blog post about lease renewals and how they stack up against cell phone plan renewals has provoked contemplation on the topic. The cell phone companies have likely created a renewal model that does work better than a typical apartment renewal. The rent increase argument is flawed and can be diffused with an increased renewal percentage. The cost of getting a unit market ready, leasing and marketing cost is far more than a rent increase. Rent increases are certainly required, but perhaps a more targeted approach would provide a better yield. The whole concept is convoluted, on one hand we ask for a rent increase, and on the other hand sometimes give away something to secure the renewal.
What if the apartment leases self renewed, similar to the cell phone renewal policy. What if the burden to terminate the lease was solely on the resident and we didn’t talk about it much after the lease signing? What if you redeployed the savings from managing the renewal process to a planned and systematic series of surprises? Change the lease term to something other than a standard twelve months, so with one auto renewal, the property exceeded the typical 50% or 60% retention target. How it is ever OK to say that half or close to half of your customer base is turning over year after year. It isn’t OK, and we should find an innovative way to solve this.
The current thinking and training may be flawed.
Ideas, comments, thoughts, we would love to hear them.
You can check out Brent’s blog post here
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Exasperating Our Residents a post by eric
Seth Godin has an excellent post today titled “The bitter taste of nickels and dimes” You can read the details of Seth’s post here à http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/the-bitter-tast.html
It provoked me to ponder about the things that we do in the Apartment World that create separation and aggravation with our residents.
One such is an extra fee or charge to go to a Month to Month Lease. We have this argument regularly in our own office. It is pretty silly to penalize a great resident because they want to stay longer. We are saying sure, you can stay longer, but it will cost you more tomorrow than what it did today, yet we have added no additional value, only exasperation. There certainly are the pressures from lenders and partners to not have month to month leases and the unexpected vacancy that can occur quickly. However, it really makes no sense from the resident’s point of view. Perhaps we should completely abolish this silly rule or to Seth’s point do we Waive them early and often to create Delight? What are you doing at your property? What does the community you think about this? We welcome an open conversation surrounding this, and Enjoy the Weekend!
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