Apartment Search
Apartment Search Twice as Efficient
What can you do to make searching for an apartment twice as efficient?
One Way
Give the people who do business with you twice the number of reasons to stay. Do that by making sure that you over serve the people who serve your organization. It’s called trickle down…
Second Way
Know that marketing is everything and everything is marketing – make it your mission to never settle for the idea of a middleman in your transaction. Throw out the idea that you should by ads or digital listings from people because they are nice. And, the bring you goodies around the holidays and throughout the year. Don’t get me wrong – I like most of those people too. I consider their value in the way of always keeping me on my toes. They help me understand the better, best and excellent ways to move people direct to Mills Properties instead of to their sites and then to my site.
Your always looking to make apartment search efficient for the people who need a place to live multifamily maniac,
M
pic props: Legends Web Design
Apartment Search: What’s in your box?
“Think about what a user is going to type.” – Matt Cutts
Apartment Search
Short and sweet today –
What words did you type in the search box when you looked for us online? If you still use paper guest cards – does it include the question? It’s not a novel question on my part, someone in our space took this posit sometime ago – I just can’t recall who off the top of my head. Point is – if it’s not a question that you ask – you should start asking it now.
Ask the question and pay attention to the answers. Log them, get them on a spreadsheet, massage them, care about them and analyze them. But most of all, use them. Use them to create hyper-specific content.
Your caring about what’s in your box multifamily maniac,
M
Memory Lane – Welcome Home
It seems like yesterday I was in Portland, Oregon leading and being lead by a team of twelve stellar real estate gurus. Collectively, we managed a portfolio of nearly 4000 units in five very different sub-markets. It was an absolute blast. And, during that time we managed to pull off some pretty innovative things. At least I think so.
In late 2004 and leading into 2005 we started playing with blogs and video. In the beginning the blogs were created to serve as a testament to the team in Portland and would include everything from recipes to leadership awards. And, all the contributions to the blog would be made by volunteers within our talented group. That blog [Portland Rocks Newsletter] is still going strong today – two years beyond my departure from the market. Video also became a big part of the adventure. We were in the beginning stages of creating everything from resident maintenance training videos – i.e., How to unclog your garbage disposal, to Welcome Home Maintenance Videos like this;
I was blown away by the efforts on Matt Steen and the team at LaSalle Apartment Homes in Beaverton, Oregon. They took this project to a whole new level and blew my expectations out of the water. I can recall the day I veiwed this video, I was speechless and so very proud.
It’s hard to explain the abosolute pleasure it was to lead and to be lead by such an amazing group of people. I owe much of learnings and motivations about the industry to each of them. Guys like this, who made it happen on the front lines of the business day in and day out. I hope you enjoy the fruits of their labor as much as I did/do.
So what is RentWiki?
That is the question Eric Wu posts on his blog. In Eric’s words RentWiki is “…peer recommendations on where to live.” See the entire post here.
I am excited to see this platform in action as I think Eric and his team really took the time to do this right. The look, feel and usability of the site is clean and simple.
I really believe this concept will ring true with consumers and with enough buzz RentWiki could become huge in the way of rental search. Just last week I was eating lunch with an industry vendor and brought up the subject of peer recommendations and how I thought RentWiki was a site to pay attention to. The response was fair and respectful with a kind of wait and see flair to it. I didn’t really push the subject at the time and in the same respect I think industry players will need to pay attention. I am not advocating that RentWiki will take over the world but I am suggesting there is room for them at what is quickly becoming and overcrowed table.
Apartment Search Companies: Here is an idea for you
I ran across this site today; Homethinking. Amongst other things they provide a neighborhood comparison tool that is very cool. That is even though Saint Louis is yet again not a choice. Frankly that is not shocking to me but I digress.
As a society we are creatures of habit and as such when we relocate we like to surround ourselves in like kinds digs and locales. What better tool than a neighborhood comparison database. I think you have a chance of winning fans, at least to the extent you can do the research for those creatures who like familiarity.
Just a random thought on this random Saturday of mine.
