Apartment management companies today cannot afford to overlook any form of marketing. Understanding and mastering every marketing channel can be a challenge, but there are key steps marketers can take to make sure they're not missing important opportunities to capture prospects.
The path to higher rents and greater occupancy is being achieved today by savvy apartment industry marketing executives who are using varied and creative strategies to help prospective residents find their communities.
These strategies can work in all markets, and under any economic climate, including today's slow recovery.
Veteran marketers say their options are no longer limited to print vs. online--or even print and online together. Innovative approaches available to deliver attractive messaging to targeted audiences include mobile, social media, text messaging, video, social commerce and online ratings sites.
While marketers keep an eye on new technologies that could work best for specific markets or demographic groups, many successful apartment owners continue to invest strongly in traditional formats such as print and online listings. Lead tracking reveals that, for many, these strategies make the most sense for their budgets.
"One advantage we have in our industry is that our prospects take time and effort to find us," says Donald Davidoff, Group Vice President, Strategic Systems and Head of Marketing for Archstone. "It's the biggest decision they're likely to make in the next year, so they are emotionally and rationally invested in the process."
Marketers say overlooking any one form of marketing could squander this golden opportunity. They also say that apartment industry-specific Internet Listing Service partners are willing and able to assist apartment communities with developing effective strategies.
"If a company ceases advertising, regardless of the economy, they in effect are no longer communicating with the prospect when they enter the market looking for an apartment," says Paige Forrest, Vice President of Sales, For Rent Media Solutions. "If they are not present when the prospect is looking for an apartment then they will not be considered when a rental decision is being made. The economy doesn't predict when a prospect enters the market, the prospect does."
Marcia Bollinger, President, Apartment Finder says, "It's simple. Those with more connections to today's consumers will win more business. Today's renters are multi-media multi-taskers who consume every bit of information and use every tool available--regardless of the media source. Smart marketers multitask as well. Integrated media uses relevant content marketing strategies that engage consumers and create connections."
Well-Worn Paths
In a shift from years past, prospective residents today are not simply letting their fingers do the walking--except when typing into an online search window or punching up a text-message. With the booming growth of social media, society is focused more than ever on word-of-mouth recommendations from peers. What a prospective resident's network says about the community could prove to be the clincher. Online ratings, even from sources outside of a person's social circle, are gaining clout as well. Many prospective residents are saying that they find the authenticity of a fellow renter's opinion the most convincing factor in their decision-making process. Cell phone and smartphone use is growing, too. These factors continue to generate new marketing strategies. But for maximum effectiveness, these strategies must incorporate and work with the standard bellwether methods of print and online listings.
Consider, for instance, what Virginia Love, Waterton's Vice President, Training & Marketing, is noticing.
"During this economic downturn, we saw more and more customers come in the door with a print publication in their hand or pages printed off a website as proof of the rent amount or maybe specific floor plan or coupon that was featured," Love says. "We found that the more targeted the industry-specific print publication and Internet listing sites were, the better they performed."
Today, all the "rules" of how customers find communities are "out the window," Love says. She says having a multi-dimensional approach to marketing is paying off.
"While one customer searched for a new apartment home online, or did further research online after picking up a print publication, and called, e-mailed or chatted for an appointment, another customer may have had a friend live at your community two years ago and remember the floor plans," Love says. All these advertising sources are valuable and each requires serious tracking and consideration."
"The marketing of yesterday is not the marketing of today," says Arlene Mayfield, President, Apartment Guide. "Digital technology has permanently shifted distribution from a closed to an open model and content from linear to dynamic. We started as a print company in 1975. Today, more than 85 percent of our leads (connected phone calls and e-mails) delivered to our advertisers are derived from our websites and mobile applications."
Christina Aragon, Director, Strategy and Brand Marketing, Rent.com, says, "Marketing always has and always will matter in both up and down economies. What is critical--regardless of the market--is accurately measuring how your marketing channels are performing. If you are accurately tracking your leads and leases hack to their sources then 'going dark' [the concept of turning off a marketing source as a method for measuring it] is of little benefit."
Kevin Doyle, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Apartments.com, says that while the country continues to see the early signs of economic recovery nationwide, especially for the rental industry, it's critical to keep marketing efforts dialed up to not only elevate exposure of your property, but to remain competitive. "Market wisely to stretch dollars further by focusing on strategies that are cost-effective and measurable," he says. "Technology is reinventing how consumers access information and how marketers reach them."
So what are today's most effective marketers doing to make the most of the vast pool of sources?
Units magazine asked prominent marketing firms and established apartment professionals for: 1, their thoughts on the importance of a multi-faceted marketing campaign, 2, how they measure their efforts and 3, their opinions on what tomorrow could bring.
What Works Today?
While all say a mix of marketing sources is key, Peggy Hale, Vice President-Sales, Marketing & Training, Morgan Properties, says that online marketing--including social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, traditional ILS sites, and free sites such as Craigslist--accounts for 85 percent of all of her company's leads.
"We have shifted much of our budget to online marketing and reallocated a portion of our spend into resources that enable us to post free, online ads; creating and hosting YouTube marketing videos; and promoting resident referrals online through specialized software or portal sites," Hale says. "Our relationships with new vendor-partners are win-win because they are delivering qualified rental traffic at a low cost through creative use of technology and the Internet."
Israel Carunungan, National Director of Marketing, TGM Communities, says he foresees the migration to a heavier online marketing mix continuing "as print sources start to cut back on their distribution and the cost of paper and production continue to increase. We will see more consumers interact with us via mobile devices, and there will be a greater demand on real-time information."
Keith Dodds, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Apartment investment and Management Company (AIIVICO), says his company focuses on all primary marketing sources, studies them and buys the most effective media available for the given market. "We focus on ensuring that the content on the ILS vendors is accurate and compelling," Dodds says. "We use Web analytics and pay attention to the voice of the customer to optimize our community sites."
Dodds and others say that different media sources are effective in each market and change often, forcing him to constantly review and re-allocate media expenses.
"However, it's twice as likely that guest cards originating from the property website will become residents than otherwise," Dodds says. "So we are very focused on driving additional traffic to our website and presenting the most exciting story possible on our website to drive qualified traffic.
Dodds says ARMCO also invests a lot of energy and great care to ensure that its website visitors "find it easy to pinpoint all of the information they need to make an informed decision."
Companies that focus on driving search-engine traffic can take advantage of their effective web presence.
Jennifer Staciokas, National Vice President of Marketing & Training, Lincoln Property Company, says it is critical for communities to have a robust Web presence coupled with a firm understanding of reputation management and its implications on leasing at their communities.
"We are focused on mobile. SEM, SEO and social. media campaigns at the corporate as well as at the community level to continue to drive traffic and leases to our communities," Staciokas says. "We continually look at the way our potential residents are searching online, and we are trying to have a presence in those locations to capture more traffic and leases. I do not see our marketing mix changing drastically in the next year; however, mobile will continue to play an even more important role in reaching potential clients."
Staciokas says Lincoln has embraced newer technologies to provide the "wow" factor to its potential residents by incorporating QR codes, iPads and special discounts to potential and current residents via location-based marketing.
Melanie Stiles, Vice President, Training and Marketing, Milestone Management, says a very high percentage of Milestone's direct marketing efforts are online initiatives. "We have found success with advertising partners who specialize in long-tail search queries, as well as search-engine marketing firms that continually optimize our keywords based on conversion metrics," she says.
She adds that content and reputation management are the current buzzwords given the "explosion of information available online at all times today" and that "with the increase in consumer-driven content, resident satisfaction has become the new marketing."
"It is important for organizations to continually feed 'the marketing machine,' mainly through the Internet and positive content, and to truly blend marketing efforts with retention efforts," Stiles says. She advises that communities solicit positive reviews at every touch point and manage the negative reviews as best they can.
Online source Craigslist continues to be part of apartment companies' marketing plans. However, its results are mixed and inconsistent. Staciokas says Craigslist continues to drive qualified traffic to its communities in coastal urban markets. Love says Craigslist "can be an effective source, depending on the market and demographic, but Waterton is tracking more unqualified leads from this source than from other sources."
Staying On Track
Effective lead tracking and analysis serves as both the road map and the road signs on the path to effective marketing.
AIMCO uses a comprehensive system to measure and manage its media, Dodds says. First, all of its advertising sources are assigned unique tracking phone numbers. Its property websites, which are seen by 6 million visitors per year, dynamically generate the phone number based on the URL of the referral source, enabling AIMCO to track its website traffic back to the original media source.
All of AIMCO's marketing calls are routed to its in-house call center representatives, who receive a screen pop-up with the property that the guest is calling about and the ad sources they used to find the community, which are then entered into the guest card. The guest card is followed through to move-in so we are able to effectively calculate cost per guest card, cost per application, and cost per move-in," Dodds says. "We have three years of historic information, so any time we need more traffic to a community we are able to buy the next least expensive media source."
Morgan Properties' Hale also uses a call center and "a unique integration" between it and its property management software provider. "We not only measure leads and traffic by marketing source, but also the success of each communication channel--phone, Web chat, e-mail--and we have software in place to check availability," Hale says.
Hale says that prospective residents using phone and Web chat are further along in the rental cycle and more likely to commit to an appointment and lease an apartment than those simply hitting "e-mail me information" buttons on Morgan Properties' online listings.
"We have carefully worked with all our Internet sources to reduce or eliminate the "e-mail me" button in an attempt to discourage renters' behavior of simply firing off e-mails if they are interested in our communities," says Hale, adding that her trained call-center phone operators' lead conversion is more effective than counting on the e-mail in-box.
Since making this adjustment, Morgan Properties' incoming phone calls are up by 24 percent and its e-mail volume is down by 65 percent, helping to improve the staff's overall effectiveness and efficiency. The appointment-set rate has increased by 25 percent.
"We have also focused on re-training our leasing professionals about how to prioritize their lead follow-ups," Hale says. "They've learned that not all leads are created equal."
Waterton, too, uses a call center system that enables it to track lead sources with individual phone, e-mail and chat listings. "We are able to track not only the best-performing sources based on the percentage of visits set, which is how we determine the most successful sources, but also how those sources perform when changes are made to the ad or listing or additional advertising is purchased from a particular source," Love says.
Archstone relies on the lead-tracking system it developed on its own "so we have a pretty accurate count of where the leads are coming from," Davidoff says. "We have a dashboard that shows us counts, costs, cost per lead and cost per lease," he says.
It is important for organizations to have lead or lease cost analyses that fit their culture and organizational goals, Stiles says. Milestone Management internally monitors cost per lead for all advertisers on a consistent monthly basis. "We measure all by the same metrics and account for duplications," Stiles says. "We have found our process to be extremely fair and appreciated by our advertising partners. Although we review cost per lead monthly, we validate our results and advertising direction through periodic lease analyses."
Carunungan says TGM Communities' metrics show a clear path from when it captures the leads all the way to when they become a lease, and the company can sort those leads by the marketing source they used. "We're also able to track important milestones during the sales process, such as appointments, property tours and applications," he says. "These data allow us to make smarter decisions on our advertising and marketing spend. We allocate our ad dollars only to the best performing sources for that property, and eliminate those that do not deliver results."
The cumulative effect of a well-planned, consistent message allows advertisers to reach prospective residents for the long term, according to Forrest.
"Changing technology and the increased ability for prospects to reach advertisers has allowed consumers to become fragmented in their approach to seek information," Forrest says. "No longer are they just looking at one source for places to live, and therefore it is even more important to have a cross-media approach, which offers the prospect the option of how they want to view your message and in turn respond."
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For more resources and discussions on online marketing, visit the Marketing community by clicking "Interest Group 'Communities" under the Directory tab. Sign in at http://community.naahq.org.
Paul R. Bergeron III is N it's Director of Communications and can be reached at 703/797-0606 or paul@naahq.org
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