Apartment Operations
Fill Your Marketing Balloons With More Than Air
I was recently given the privelege to co-moderate a brainstorming session on the topic of marketing. The session was held for members of the apartment management industry at various stages in their careers, from leasing agents who have been in the industry for 2 months to property managers with 10 years of experience. My topic was old school marketing. Old school referring to anything not social media. More specifically, tools such as resident retention, outreach marketing, Craigslist, etc. The idea was to get creative juices flowing, discuss what’s working, what’s not working and maybe learn a few things to take back to the rest of the team.
I was surprised by the lack of marketing knowledge…and for that matter, the lack of creativity. I heard the same 3 “best practices” from a majority of the groups: Generic signs and balloons for drive by traffic, generic Craiglist ads and monetary resident referral incentives. I heard questions like: “What do you say when you’re marketing to a business?” and “It’s ok to send thank you cards and gift baskets to businesses who refer someone to you?” Leasing agents and PMs who had no knowledge of free additional ILS marketing template tools like VFlyer and Postlets, who had never thought past posting a flyer with a resident referral rent credit in terms of using residents as a marketing tool, and those are just building blocks. It’s as if they were told that marketing is something only a rocket scientist can figure out.
First let me say I’m not exactly saying the 3 best practice items listed above are crap, I’m simply saying that they shouldn’t be IT. Also, I’m in love with social media and believe it’s an insanely valuable tool, however 1. It was not my topic to discuss and 2. I also think that personal touch and those face to face human interactions through outreach marketing and resident appreciation events are valuable, and combining the 2 forms is fabulous! (Read Urbane Media’s QR Codes blog). But I’m not sure I believe you can be effective with social media if you don’t even know the basics of effective old school marketing tools. And if no one is teaching or motivating their team on the basics of marketing, then I doubt that there is any social media marketing in place anyway.
So I guess what I’d like to learn from this eye opening experience is: Am I way off base in believing that some old school marketing techniques are still a valuable tool in the industry? Is someone teaching your staff about marketing? Do you believe that one can effectively use social media tools without ever having learned/practiced old school marketing strategies?
Title courtesy of Melissa DeCicco
Photo credit bloggingoutloud
Apartment Budget Time Suck
Ah! With budget season coming to an end, it will feel good to ease my way back into the blogging world. It’s been way too long. So, if I am rusty with words and concepts bear with me.
To kick it off, I have decided to start and ongoing series dedicated to questions that I ask myself throughout the course of any given year.
The subject matter will be all over the place but central to the ongoing operations of an apartment management business.
I hope to keep the posts brief and to the point [200 words+/-].
With that, let’s see how it goes…
To start: What do you do to streamline your budget process?
Every year from September until the later parts of December we nearly stall our home office operation to write our property operating budgets. To me it is one of those necessary evils of doing business. That is to suggest that the end product is a well thought through playbook for not only the year to come but the ten to twelve years beyond that. As such, it demands prudence in its preparation. But, what suffers?
Nearly all the fundamentals get the semi-thoughtful but certainly not mindful once over review. Everything is surface and there is little time to dig in to the really important stuff. In all fairness this year was the best one on record. That said, we are always looking to approve.
Would love to hear your feedback on the subject.
Trusting you will have an amazing 2012.
M
Business, Love, and Other Guts
In the beginning…
It began with strategy. We set out to re-think our marketing. Scratch that. We set out to re-think Everything. Our mission includes Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and a new website for the online world as well as other off-line ingredients.
So the first question was: Who shares our passion and do we have the support we need to be successful? – Yes.
Here we go!
Our delectable combination…Business, Love, and Other Guts. (This combination is true for all our social media and other endeavors, not just blogs)
b.l.o.g.
business: Apartments, the experience of
love:
- People
- St. Louis
- Apartments (crucial that your business falls in the love category as well)
other guts: The fire in your guts that is dying to come out. Passionate people with everything to say.
And then we blogged…
We selected Mills associates who are creative, passionate, and gifted writers – they all have a common b.l.o.g. (Learn more about them here) And then, we gave them the matches…
We knew we had a talented group of associates but our first blog posts were INCREDIBLE, and the next ones, equally amazing. I feel like the best is yet to come!
Our quest is still in its infancy, but every day I am excited to see what we will ignite next. Check out their work at millsapartments.net/neighborhoods…
Tell us what you think!
Mills Apartments Charts Social Media Course
It’s official, Mills Apartments is slowing making it’s way into the world of social media. While the process of participation has been slow to evolve, we have not been completely idle. Over the past two years we have listened and interacted here and there, dipping our toe in on experimental basis only. We are now going from dipping our toe to a full swan dive by creating an overall marketing strategy that integrates social media into the mix.
The following are the areas we are choosing to focus our time and attention;
- New website [not something that we would have elected to do [nor see as an absolute necessity] except that we collectively did not like our current one]
- Prospect Portals
- Resident Portals
- Ten blogs, eight of which will serve the various neighborhoods and regions where we have a presence. The other two will be penned from our home office, one from the various team members that make up this family called Mills and the other by our President – Kirk Mills.
- One Twitter Account Click Here
- One Facebook Like page for each of our 47 [as of today] properties Park Clayton Apartments
- YouTube Channel
Now we have no illusions that we can pull this off with out the help of a professional and after a bit of a beauty contest we elected to work with Mike Whaling over at 30lines. He along with a few others [hopefully, soon to be announced] are building the lion’s share of the infrastructure. Up to this point, he has proven to be a very valuable partner and resource and as such we are very excited about the future.
The post today is really just a tease in the way getting our story out there in the crowded sea of multifamily social media starts. I have been given full permission to document the good, the bad and the ugly along the way in building this out. And, in doing so I would be remiss not to mention the many fine trailblazers that we have borrowed [wink wink] ideas from. Many of the things you will see in the coming months will echo the efforts of others and many will take on little tweaks and nuances. And, I will do my best to site the sources of inspiration and feel free to call me on the carpet if I miss anyone.
With all that being said, I wanted to share the first of a number of internal dialogs that relate to our get social initiative. This gem is from our Communication Strategist and Brand Manager – Melissa Presusser. It relates to our blog initiative and went out to a select group of managers who have been charged with beginning to create compelling, over the top and very cool content. While they will by no means be alone in this – we thought it right to have them highly involved in the process. We are certain that it will be a work in progress and we will learn a lot along the way.
As a premise, we are encouraging all of our bloggers’ to read the introduction of Brains on Fire. We are going to use their passion for ignition in hopes of putting a real dent in the city of STL.
With that – here we go!
YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED!!
Mills Properties will begin a blogging frenzy in the next few months with 9 blogs going at one time. We have chosen all of you to help get this super important piece of our web presence started!! You have all shown a very strong ability and passion for writing and using social media and we think you will be perfect to join our team! This is an excellent, rockin opportunity for you to really build your skills and help make really great things happen – bigger than big!
Here is what will be required, if you choose to accept…
- Accept our offer to be a Fabulous Mills Blogger
- Purchase, with petty cash, the book Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements
or pick it up – I believe it can also be purchased in store at Barnes & Noble or Borders - Read the introduction of the book mentioned above by October 26th
- 4. Attend the Mills Blogger Training Class on Tuesday, October 26th at 9:00 at the corporate office (we should conclude at or around 12:00)
- Get started with your crazy cool content to make things happen at Mills
We can’t wait to hear from you! Please call me if you have questions!
Let us know what you think and a big thank you to all that have inspired us along the way…
Do Signs Matter When Renting an Apartment?
Thought
I ran across a blog this morning that suggested that dollar signs or the lack thereof mattered when it came to significantly increasing a restaurant patrons spend. Just for sake of discussion I visited a couple of ILS’s; Apartment Finder, For Rent and Apartment Guide and found that all of them use $ when demonstrating price.
Restaurants use it successfully
The Food Section: Restaurant Menus, Dollar Signs, and Spending
A new study by the Center for Hospitality Research at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration reveals that the way in which prices are displayed on restaurant menus has an impact on the amount of spending by diners.It’s Not Normal – Does that make it remarkable?In the spirit of being remarkable or memorable – would it make a difference? Would it give cause for a prospect to inquire about the higher priced apartments and or would it allow us to push rates with no real consequence to our leasing efforts? Is it worth testing to see if it works in our space?
