Apartment Social Media
#apartmentmarketing – 2012 Short List Prediction Post
Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing. – Mike Volpe, Chief Marketing Office – Hubspot
Not another social prediction post! No, there are many really good ones already out there such as the one Mark Juleen posted with the help of Mike Whaling and Duncan Alney. Another fav is the one Brian Solis penned on the subject of social and how it relates to business in 2012.
I’m not heading for the broad angles or general predictions that seem to affront us all this time of the year. No, I would like to get a little more intimate and little more bold. To me 2012 will be the true year of pain for many of the tried and true resources that many of us have leaned on over the years to market our apartments and communities. The simple premise being that the proliferation of DIY platforms and DIY tools along with a growing level of comfort in using them have made it easier to compete.
The barriers to entry have crumbled and it’s time to ROCK!
My prediction comes in the way of a question –
Who will be your biggest apartment marketing competitor in 2012?
Print and Internet Listing Services
If you are anything like me you pay attention to everything the traditional ILS’s and print media outlets are doing in the social space and otherwise. In 2011 some of them made shrewd moves like employing our very own leasing consultant and management forces across the country to build Google Juice on their behalf. Brilliant but very un-partner like in my opinion. And, still others have stumbled; for example absolutely refusing to unbundle print from internet offerings until it was just frankly to late. Certainly soured my opinion of that specific group.
You just can’t see them as partners anymore [remember – they have to pay the light bill too] and to the extent that you can embrace that, use them where you need to [print and ILS are not broken and are still effective] and build a plan that brands you and your company first you will be better off. It’s frankly as important as sending out renewal letters and collecting the rent at this point.
Just know, anymore it’s not the building next door or across the street from you that is your biggest competitor. It’s more and more so the print media and ILS providers.
The Re-imagination of Locators in Secondary, Tertiary and Hyper Local Apartment Markets
Back in late 2004 or 2005 I met a guy named Eddie Passadore. Brilliant guy and passionate about the multifamily space. He came to work for Equity Residential and quickly went about producing some off the wall results. How? Craigslist. And, Rentwitheddie.com. That’s right he built out his own website, put his personal cell number on it, made himself available 24/7 and syndicated it via the emerging social platforms of the time. Namely Craigslist and MySpace. Result? He now runs his own property management firm in Portland, Oregon.
I recall spending countless hours brainstorming with Eddie about marketing oneself in lieu of physical buildings. It’s what inspired my personal blog [at the time called mike brewer on stuff and things] and the Portland Rocks Newsletter blog we ran back then that promoted Equity Residential’s Portland employees and properties. We talked about everything from using print to advertise our agents in lieu of our communities to building out personal websites for every single one of our agents. An idea I still think has some crazy potential [time and date stamped for future development]. And, he went and did it.
All that to suggest that the locator will have a major play in our space and many of our current day leasing consultants will be the people doing it.
Me. Us.
If we are to contend with the fire hose of data and change that will come our way in 2012, we have to invest in ourselves. I think this is the year that those who have sat on the sidelines as observers and passive participants are going to come alive. They will finally get that if they don’t they will be cooked and standing in the unemployment lines across this great nation. This is the year that organizations raise the bar for talent. No longer will mediocrity be tolerated. And, no longer will it be just okay to muddle along.
You are your biggest competitor in 2012. You are your own benchmark. The you that you look at in the mirror today should be a distant memory by the time you make it out of bed tomorrow. And, in a more beautiful way!
Here is to us in 2012!
Go – and make it relentlessly compelling!
M
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#Apartmentmarketing: Attention Economy
Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it. – David
Meerman Scott
Seth Godin quipped that engagement is hitting people with the right message at the right time so as to have them take action [engage]. I think we have to take that word engage and thus precise moment further. To truly engage, at least in my head, you have to be enchanted, you have to be moved, you have to yearn for more so much so that you have no choice but to act on your desires. It the deepest throes of emotion. Words like love, anger and the many nuances of each come to mind. It’s not just a like, unlike, +1 or the such. It’s deeper.
Mr. Apartment Manager Man; “I am done.”
It’s not unlike the gentleman I met with last Friday evening. He, unfortunately, was moving out of our Central West End Community. Reason? In his words, “I am done.”
You see about three weeks ago, the entire roof of his five story building blew off and landed in the parking lot beside and the street in front. Thank the one that governs it all that no one was hurt as it could have been really bad.
In response to the situation; our team entered every apartment in the building and place plastic over beds, electronics and the such. Most were thankful. Not the gentleman I met on Friday. His beef? We did not leave him a note to let him know we had been in his apartment.
Engage
Somewhere in the wake of the roof being pulled off the building by straight lined winds; his attention got engaged. The premise aside; he was moved by an aggressive deep seated emotion. He engaged with some ill language and barbed personal remarks for the onsite team and the rest of our Mills management team. He got so engaged that he ended up leaving the property.
The Point
I think we are headed toward true engagement – we are not there yet. We use the word but in it’s loosest of senses. We are in the early innings of a very long ball game that is frankly destined for infinite extra innings. Think in terms of singularity. Think in terms of love, hate and other extremes. That’s engagement. For now we are just courting. Or, at best out on a blind date and liking our mate because our friends suggested we should. Now it’s up to us and the million other people out there participating with brands to fall in love or fall in hate.
What do you think?
Photo tip to: Online Ninja Blog
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#Apartmentmarketing: Share
People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends & people they know and trust! – Malorie Lucich – Facebook Spokesperson
Know and Trust
When it comes to using social media to market apartments, I think we are still in the early miles of a endless endurance pace across the deserts of Africa. Some in the business have caught the fact that business is transacted by great story tellers. And, it is incumbent upon us, on the selling end, to give exceptional reasons for our buying constituents to echo the very stories we tell them when we sell our goods and services.
Park Clayton Apartments
Park Clayton rests just about a mile from Washington University in Saint Louis. The apartment community is but 104 units and boasts zero meaningful amenities outside of location. Even that has it’s challenges as it relates to getting to the university. It sits on the opposite side of a major freeway that disects its way to downtown Saint Louis. Yet we have Likers and we have occupancy.
Our Mills Branded Park Clayton Specific Facebook site boasts just over 300 likes. They are made up of current residents, former residents, industry professionals from in and out of Saint Louis and employees of Mills. Within in the diverse mix of people is a group that hails from the Far East and they love Park Clayton. They love the Luaus, they love the open houses to show off our upgraded units, they love the annual St. Patrick’s Parade that makes its way down the street in front of the building and they love Reb’s dump joke Friday. And they love to share.
Share to Rent
About a year ago Teresa, the Property Manager, used Facebook to give away some goodies and the response was over the top. One resident shared with over 100 of his friends in order to stand out in his quest to receive the prize. He shared the story with his friends in the Far East and they shared back. And, they shared back in a big way. You see, this young man had friends who were in wait to come to the states. More specifically in wait to attend Washington University in Saint Louis. And, you better believe they leased at Park Clayton. All because we told some stories that people could share.
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Apartment Marketing: The Key
Value…
It’s that simple
Every message must provide value. And, the most important key might not be what you think.
In my head, the three most important words in real estate are not location, location, location but rather people, people, people. You can have the most amazing asset fetching top p/s/f rates and lose it in an instant if people lose the sense that they are part of something bigger than self. If they lose site of the human nature of business. If they lose desire, hope and willingness to serve. People are a message. Dare I say that people are THE message!
Or, could it be deeper and/or more fundamental?
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Apartment Marketing: Friendslist
Friendslist might be something to keep an eye on. Especially in light of the shrewd move by Forrent.com in creating an exclusive, carve their client marketing partners right out of an avenue of advertising platform, relationship on FBs Marketplace. Could a platform like friendlist make the likely crazy expensive quasi-distribution point irrelevant? Likely not but I secretly hope so…
No offense FR. But, please know whether it was you, AF, AG or any other provider, I would feel the same. The move gave me every cause to expedite the reallocation of near $550,000 of FR specific marketing spend over the last 18 months. Not a complete departure but a semi-massive one. Stay tuned…
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