Apartment Social Media
Using Social Media to Market Apartments – Resident Retention
Apartment residents move for a variety of reasons and many times we have no idea why. It’s kind of a shame, really. Social media/networking can help change that and by default drive down our cost of turnover. Think about it, if you couple the advent of the internet with the understanding that people are innately social – toss in a few platforms where they can observe, connect or participate and you have the perfect recipie for resident retention. And, as demonstrated in the last post you have the recipie for some great GoogleJuice. What we are really after is what Seth’s Blog: Share of wallet, share of wall, share of voice speaks to. [A quick shout out to @sbrewer10 for bringing this one to my attention.
In short, Seth speaks to the point many of us have made over the years – long before the advent of the internet and social platforms – the replacement cost for a resident is far more than the cost of retaining our current ones. Lisa Trosien wrote a great piece over at Multifamily Insiders that speaks to this point.
What kind of experience are you creating today to get a share of the wallet, wall or voice of your current resident base?
Have a stellar day –
M
Apartment Review Sites; Friend or Foe, it’s up to you
Consumer Online Reviews Strongly Influence Purchase Decisions
According to a recent survey by Deloitte’s Consumer Products group, consumers are
turning to online reviews in large numbers, and those reviews are
having a considerable impact on purchase decisions. 62 percent of
consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet, says
the report, and of these, more than eight in 10 say their purchase
decisions have been directly influenced by the reviews, either
influencing them to buy a different product than the one they had
originally been thinking about purchasing, or confirming the original
purchase intention. [Read More Here]
If your still of the school of thought that dismisses the value of sites like apartmentratings.com, listen up. The feedback outlined in the brief above should move you to action as soon as possible. I truly think we all should open up our company websites to include a consumer and resident feedback mechanism. Instead of internal score keeping, make it completely transparent and thus authentic in nature. I would suggest that you have an editor just for the sake of carving out names and character attacks as we know they will come despite our best efforts. That in mind you have to be courageous enough to leave the meat.
I would speculate that over time the likes of For Rent and Apartment Guide will have a feedback component. Sound crazy? At the end of the day, traffic is king and if traffic goes to the consumer feedback site more often then something will have to change. I think the likes of For Rent and Apartment Guide will have no choice but to become even more “potential renter-centric” than they are now. I would love to be a fly on the wall in those strategic planning sessions.
I will be keeping an eye on this topic. Have an amazing Monday. M
Related post: Apartment Reviews – Reimagined
