Apartment marketing
Tell Them How Much You are Moved by the Neighborhood
Don’t tell prospects and residents how much your apartments are – tell them how much you are moved by the neighborhood.
Tell them about waking up on a crisp fall morning and taking a run in Forest Park just one block over from your apartment. Tell them about stopping back by Velocity Coffee Shop to have a cup of coffee – served by a friendly Barista named Tracy who rarely smiles but wants to. Tell them about the free copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the St. Louis Dispatch. Tell them about the free wifi. And, oh – it’s a bike shop too with cool bike motif everywhere. The bathroom even has a cool chalkboard where you once drew a giant dragon that looked as if it were eating the giant flower someone else drew.
Tell them about Papa John’s pizza and Subway at the end of the block where Tony and Charles remember your name and serve you with a smile. Tell them about Atlas Restaurant located in the heart of the neighborhood and the amazing food and desserts that they serve. Tell them about The Loop and The Central West End [very cool Saint Louis neighborhood hangouts] being just one mile away and don’t forget to mention the friendly cab driver resident who will drive you over while entertaining you with great conversation. Tell them about all the fun nights you had in those neighborhoods.
Tell them about Mr. and Mrs. Wang who own the dry cleaners right next door to Papa John’s and how they wash and fold clothes for $0.75 a pound. Tell them how much you love the fact that each Christmas they give your children big canisters of candy as a thank you for your business.
Tell them about the dog park even if you are not a pet lover – not even in the least.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the neighborhood that I fell in love with in Saint Louis. Oh yeah, and I lived in a great apartment that overlooked a tree lined street that looks amazing in the fall.
Tell them with conviction how much you love the neighborhood the rest will fall right into place.
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.
Zuberance’s September 17 Webinar Features Forrester’s Josh Bernoff, Co-Author of “Groundswell”
PRLog (Press Release) – Sep 03, 2009 – The webinar, entitled “The Groundswell Power of Word of Mouth,” will be hosted by Zuberance, the leading Word of Mouth marketing company. Zuberance is turning Word of Mouth into sales now for leading B2C and B2B brands by energizing highly-satisfied customers (AKA “Advocates”) to spread Word of Mouth and generate referral leads.
Should be a good one [sign up here]
Apartment Reviews – Reimagined
Looking back
Back in October of 2007 we wrote about participating in the conversation via rating sites and even suggested incorporating a mechanism into your property management website to make it easier. Here is a bit of a revised excerpt from that post;
“If you are still of the mind that dismisses the value of sites like apartmentratings.com, listen up. The feedback outlined in the brief above [Deloitte] should move you to action as soon as possible. I truly think we should all open up our company websites to include a consumer and resident feedback mechanism. Instead of internal score keeping, make it completely transparent. My only suggesting is 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. Even with that in mind you have to be courageous enough to leave the meat and more importantly act on it.”
Two years later
Here we are nearly two years later in the midst of the conversation marketing buzz and while a good many of us are participating there is still a hesitancy to move that conversation to our websites. Even those that have don’t really have a great deal of participation in terms of consumers reviewing them.
Two years from now
Not only is the writing on the wall but the ink is dry and the conversation is going on with or without you. And, the benefits are immense when you bring the conversation to you;
- You have the ability to increase your credibility
- You have the ability to participate
- You have the ability to influence
- You have the ability to increase your Google Juice
- You have the ability to innovate with your consumer
- You have the ability to create evangelist
- You have the ability to generate further participation
- You have the ability to create loyalty
- You have the ability to create an environment where people feel they are part of something larger than themselves
- You have that ability to respond in lieu of react [there is a big difference]
The more important point here is: how do we increase participation to an Amazonish or iTuneish type level? Do we ask former potential, existing or former residents to review their experience relative to their specific unit such that every unit takes on its very own unique rating? Would that allow us to price higher rated homes differently than lower rated homes. I see it as a great mechanism to allow us the opportunity to really maximize our rents. Maybe the lease rent optimizers out there employee a unit rating lever into their pricing algorithms. The ideas are endless – acting is the key.
Offline WOM Rules the Day…
Below are the results of a recent Nielsen survey of 25,000 consumers from 50 countries.
Is it interesting that off-line trust leads the pack? And, by a fairly comfortable margin?
I thought about it in my own life and while I do occasionally [when buying books] read a review or two before making a purchase – I many times turn to my friends. Just last week I asked a couple friends for names of a good Family Doctor and a really good place to eat lunch. And, as funny as it may seem, when I moved in Feb. I asked a couple of friends what neighborhoods they would recommend living in or around. I ignored the ILSs, Craigslists and even my own companies offerings. Reason: I – personally – find them to be time consuming relative to a friend saying, “Yeah – check this place or that place out.” I found my dentist, attorney, local bank, and cleaners the same way – ironically from the same person. I even consulted two friends to help me find the perfect Jeep dealership. Never even thought about Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc…
Interesting or not really? What does it really mean – if anything?
Related story:
Nielsen: Consumers Trust Online Opinions
