apartment management
Apartment Marketing Idea: You are not Your Apartment Prospect
I think one of the easiest traps to fall into when marketing to apartment prospects or residents is to think that they want what you want and they will like what you like. It is really easy when you don’t take the time to understand who your customer is and what they value. In order to that you have to be willing to spend time asking questions, trying new things, testing new theories, crushing sacred cows and refining your successes. All in the name of your client’s changing tastes.
Always done it that way
We have all heard the statement that if you keep doing what you have always done expecting a different result – you get the definition of insanity. It’s as true in our space as it is in different industries across America. We keep at it year after year because it’s easy. It’s really hard to go against the grain. It’s really hard to convince the powers that be that giving up tried and true processes is a good thing. Problem with this is that change, if not embraced, will free up your future sooner or later.
The ABC’s of change
In selling ABC stands for Always Be Closing, in understanding that you are not your apartment customer it stands for Always Be Changing. With the advent of the internet came the rapid acceleration of change. In one fell swoop we had every piece of information we could every want at our finger tips. That is not to suggest that it has not taken time to morph our imbued information gathering habits but it is to say it’s not your older brothers world anymore. If you don’t like change you will like irrelevance even less and that is your prize for standing still today.
How do you keep up with your customer
Tom Peter’s popularized the phrase Management by Walking Around [MBWA], defined by BusinessDictionary.com this way;
Unstructured approach to hands-on, direct participation by the managers in the work-related affairs of their subordinates, in contrast to rigid and distant management. In MBWA practice, managers spend a significant amount of their time making informal visits to work area and listening to the employees. The purpose of this exercise is to collect qualitative information, listen to suggestions and complaints, and keep a finger on the pulse of the organization. Also called management by wandering around.
I think it is a fair way think about how to keep up with your customer. We should be interacting with them both on and offline. Here are just a couple of ideas on how to do that;
- Ask for their opinion any time you see them
- Hang out where they hang out
- Eat where they eat
- Read the magazines, blogs and tweets they read
- Read the books, ebooks and ezines they read
- Ask permission to enlist them on your Facebook, MySpace and Tweet pages
- Participate on their Facebook, MySpace and Tweet pages
- Shop where they shop
- Read what they review
- Ride the buses they ride
- Frequent the places they work
- Experience the products and services they like
- Work out where they work out
- Ask what keywords they used to find you
How about we call this Creating Experience by Walking Around [CEWA]. The real key to remember here is that you are not your customer and in order to understand your customer you must engage and participate with them. And, make it easy for them to do the same with you.
Using social media to market apartments. The start of a great divide?
I came across this great post; Does Social Media Help or Hurt? » Customers Rock! this morning. In it, Becky Carroll points to another great post over at Marketing Profs Daily Fix: The Customer Chasm. Are you Creating a Social Media Divide? by Jason Baer.
Both are rather short reads and raise a very interesting observation that I think is worthy of discussion in the multifamily space. A number of you have a passion for this subject as you have touched on it via blog posts and tweets so I look forward to your continued thoughts. I think the catalyst for the hotbed of comments came when Jason penned the following;
Are we inadvertently creating a Customer Chasm, where those who are
socially media active are receiving preferential treatment compared to
those who are not? And not just in customer service, but in customer
acquisition too?
There are some compelling thoughts and ideas laced into Jason’s examples and those couched in the comment section below his post, all of which could apply to our space.
Thanks in advance for taking the time and have a compelling week.
M
7.10.9 Update
Related story:
Does Social Networking Breed Social Division?
62 Homes – A case study
Yesterday we did due diligence on an apartment community that we will begin to manage on 2.1.9. I hesitate to add too many of the specifics at this point as I have not discussed the use of social mediums with ownership. However, I do hope they allow me the opportunity to create a real time case study via this blog and the Twitter community. If all goes well this study will play favor to a number of advantages. Here are two of my thoughts for starters;
Increased Visibility
The use of social mediums and the creation of a real live and in the moment case study will bring attention to this otherwise lackluster (I use that term with all due respect) deal. The property is a classic destination deal located at the end of apartment row in an out of the way Saint Louis suburb. The city restricts the use of banners, bandits or any other free standing signage. Additionally, there is no monument sign of any sort. I think the use of social media will certainly augment our efforts to market the community and ideally it will mitigate our spend.
Community Builder
As we all know the real beauty of social mediums is the ability to communicate openly with our consumers. And, I think involving the current resident base in our turn around effort will bode huge in building the community. My thought here is to capture material in off-line spaces to build inventory for the various on-line spaces. Any and all offline events will be Flip’d and pic’d so as to provide material for a Facebook fan page and a community blog. Resident testimonials will be the keystone in building what will come to be vibrant place of social interaction. Over time the thought would be to harvest a community brand that residents, employees and prospects rave about. Ultimately the community will become self sustaining. Quixotic? Maybe. But, never underestimate the power of an energized crowd.
I look forward to providing some benchmarks in the very near future that we can measure our successes against. And, by all means, feel free to chime in with comments, suggests and constructive criticism.
Your looking forward to putting a dent in the multifamily universe collaborator,
M
eSignature
I am starting the process of looking for an eSignature mechanism to employ at one of our student properties. The driving reason is the absolute mayhem that happens when forty to sixty sets of parents and roommates show up to move in on the same day.
I think the process would be so much smoother if we did the bulk of it over email and online. In my mind the move in experience would be amplified by the fact that they didn’t have to deal with the paperwork. They could simply stop by the office to pick up the key. That’s it, done.
I am intrigued by the following Tweet;
@lorisn I have decided the Boomer credo “fake it til you make it” is why we think Gen Y has no work ethic. Not true. They just refuse to fake it.
With Gen Y being the group we are all after, I can not think of better employee. It would suffice to say that you want an employee who understands and can clearly communicate with your target demographic. It may not mean that you and I understand it or them for that matter. In the same respect, who understood you and me in our youth.
I would suggest that there will be some growing pains and work practices as we know them today will have to find middle ground. It makes sense to me in the context of Gen Y serving Gen Y.
