Sorry for the sparse postings…it’s NAA week and it’s insanity here at the world headquarters of the Apartment Marketing Blog and ApartmentExpert.com! (aka, my home office).
I promise to post about NAA this week. The posts will be brief but informative. If you can’t be at NAA, I’ll try to bring a bit of NAA to you!
Okay, how cool is this? A recent press release from RealPage illustrates the impact that their AMAZING 3D floor plans can have on a property website.
When performing web statistic analysis for several of its clients with 3DViewTM floor plans, CrossFire Studio determined that web sites with 3DView-created 3D floor plans displayed on the home page dramatically decreased visitor “bounce” rates from the industry average of 33 percent to less than three percent. Bounce rates measure of what percentage of site visitors leave a web site after only viewing the initial homepage. In addition, the data showed that users spent an average of seven to eight minutes on the site compared to the industry average of one and a half to two minutes, an increase of more than 400 percent in most cases.
“The response to our 3D floor plans and animations has been tremendous. 3DView gives our clients’ communities the opportunity to highlight their greatest asset and product-the floor plan,” said Michael Munoz, vice president of CrossFire Studio. “By strategically positioning 3D floor plans and animations on their web sites, our clients’ prospects spend significantly more time exploring the site and look at far more floor plans.”
Further analysis reveals that the use of 3D floor plans increases the number of return visitors seeking additional information about the property, indicating that apartment communities using 3D floor plans on their web sites are likely to see an increase in leases from online visitors.
If you’d like to see more examples of the 3D floor plans from RealPage’s Crossfire Studio, just click here. Take my word for it; they’re awesome!
I often blog over at Multifamily Insiders. It’s a great site, and Brent Williams has really put something together over there that is truly amazing.
A couple of weeks ago, I cross posted my “Social Notworking” blog post. And last night, a resident weighed in. As so many blogs are posted on Multifamily Insiders, it’s very deep into the site right now and you might not be able to read the response, so I am cross posting it here as well. Here you go:
If you don’t mind, I’d like to share my “I’m actually a resident” perspective about a few of these specific online venues.
RATING SITES
I’m with Steve. Go with ratings sites like Yelp.com and even apartmentratings.com. If blog writers responding to blogs is so valuable, don’t we have the opportunity to respond to resident posts good and bad with grace and poise? My husband actually chose to send me to a local spa from a ratings site because the owner responded personally to all comments good or bad. And most of them were good. You will have to overcome the automatic distrust of the manager, but the best way to do so is to not be defensive.MY VOTE?–Do it…if you can do it well!
As an avid user of facebook, the only way I’ll find any information is if my friends are directly connected. I have too many friends to keep up with to go looking for other events/causes/networks in facebook. I might, just might, see something on the side that someone “liked” or became a “fan” of, but the chances of me clicking on that are next to none.Also, many are getting wise to the possibility that people may actually look at your pictures and check your status update. So “friending” your local apartment community might not always be the best idea. Especially if you didn’t pay for two pet deposits, and your status update often talks about your two big dogs. Having connected with many of my fellow residents and then becoming friends on facebook, I have found out many things they wouldn’t want our manager to know.
MY VOTE: Is it worth the time? Probably not. I just think there must be something we can do better.
I agree that getting tweets about your property are great, but getting residents and their friends “following” your properties’ tweets is a a huge challenge. It would have to be something pretty amazing, like “Come on down to the clubhouse. Cookies are warm and fresh.” Or “Firing up the grill for our resident bbq today! Are you coming?” I especially like the first because it is something that isn’t advertised anywhere else. Twitter would be the exclusive host of this information.In fact, did you know that a bakery, I believe somewhere in the UK, started doing this whenever new batches or new products were hot out of the oven. Whenever they tweeted, they would be sold out of that product in a very short time through phone orders and stop-bys. That’s amazing to me. However, be realistic…apartment homes and freshly baked, hot out of the oven bread is not the same thing.
MY VOTE: Sure! Yet again, if not done well, will absolutely waste too much of your time. My opinion is to focus on current residents first.
MY NUTSHELL OPINION/DEFINITION: Social Networking is about finding your fans, and letting them spread the word, whether it is online or just down at the local Starbucks or Moms Group. Decide what your target market is and prioritize well. You HAVE to do a lot of other forms of marketing, but only do social marketing if it is truly beneficial (facebook, twitter, etc., not including ratings sites). And take good care of those fans, a.k.a. residents. Do so, and they will be fans for life with or without tweets
Whether you agree or not, well said.
In researching for my upcoming NAA speaking events next week, I’ve been noticing a curious trend when speaking with property management company marketing pros and in digging around to various print, web and email marketing pieces.
A lot of the more successful ads these days (in the media mentioned above) are NOT relying on property pictures for their “main” photos. The most successful seem to be conveying the message with a combination of great photos (many of them stock photos), strong messaging in the form of boldface type and very large script, and much more bulleted points than any paragraphs of text.
Interesting.
What do your most successful ads look like? Or maybe, your least successful? Maybe it’s time for a change.
Here’s the reminder email from Facebook. Might as well get the information straight from the source, right?
>>Starting on Friday, June 12th, at 11:01pm, you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.
To select your username, visit the link below after 11:01pm on June 12th:
http://www.facebook.com/username/
To learn more about usernames, visit the Help Center:
http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=896<<
So if you had any plans for tonight, you might as well bag them and spend the hours trying to grab your property names!
I had the pleasure of flying Delta Airlines these last two days. I rarely fly Delta as they are Atlanta based and typically, it just doesn’t make any sense for me to do that. But as I was going to speak to the wonderful Apartment Association of Greater Augusta and visit the Grace Hill Gang, Delta’s schedule was the best one out there and one of only two options.
Unfortunately, delays into Atlanta made me miss my connection to Augusta. But that wasn’t a problem as Delta had made sure I couldn’t get on any of the three remaining flights to August. They did, however, send my bags on ahead as a courtesy. (I was so glad they did that, as I certainly wouldn’t want all of my personal possessions while I spent the night, unscheduled in Atlanta. How did they know I prefer to wear my clothes two days in a row and have no personal items with me?) They also rescheduled me on a flight to Augusta at 345 p.m. the following day. Wow, what a relief! I would get there ten minutes BEFORE my flight OUT of Augusta, back to Atlanta. That’s great planning on Delta’s part!
Luckily for me, the great Grace Hill Gang set me up with a rental car and I was able to drive to Augusta, get to my hotel at a decent hour and be ready to speak the next day. Delta had sent me my ‘check in early’ email and I hopped online, ready to do just that! Using the hyperlinks in my Delta email, I found that Delta had taken away all of my seat assignments on my flights home and set me up on ’standby’ for my flights. Hmmmm.. This was not looking good.
When I sidestepped the online check in process and went straight to my reservations on the Delta site, I did have a seat assignment on one flight, but not the other. Needless to say, both flights were overbooked and I was a little nervous. Long story short…after two ground stops in Augusta due to storms, and a 2 hour delay in ATL due to storms (none of which were Delta’s fault; I might not like their service but I know they don’t control the weather), I got home. But as I sat in the Atlanta airport, I started thinking about all of the folks who don’t travel as much as I do who might have been really distressed if this same scenario happened to them.
So I approached a Delta representative to talk to them about my issues in hopes they could figure out any glitches in their system. The rep listened attentively and said, “Nope, that’s just the way it works! Can I interest you in a SkyMiles credit card?”
In today’s economy, we MUST remember that it’s not about US (the service provider); it’s about THEM (the Customer). All the Delta rep cared about was her $15 or so that she was going to make if I signed up for a card. Let’s look at this in a logical, non-Delta way:
1. I approached her with a complaint about Delta’s service. I was polite but firm and was very unhappy with how Delta had handled my itinerary.
2. I told her that I rarely flew Delta and only did it this particular time due to the destination and the flight schedule.
Do either of those items indicate that I would ever be a likely candidate for a Delta SkyMiles credit card? Obviously not. But the Delta employee didn’t care about me; she cared about herself and the spiff she would receive if she sold me a credit card.
The Lesson Here: The customer doesn’t care (and quite frankly, never did) about YOUR needs. They are only concerned with theirs. So solve THEIR needs before yours and you’ll definitely have greater success.
If you’ve never joined Twitter before, there’s no time like the present to get started. Especially because every Friday at 4p EDT (that’s 3 CDT, 2 MTN and 1 PAC) Mike Whaling, Twitter I.D. @30Lines and myself, Twitter I.D. @LisaTrosien, host a 1 hour moderated chat on Twitter!
A chat on Twitter is easy to follow, but it does move quickly! If you’re not sure how it works, click on the link to show you how the conversation flowed last week on our chat about “Apartment Marketing on Twitter”
Here are some tips:
1. Make sure your updates are not ‘protected’. If you have protected updates, your tweets won’t show up in everyones’ Tweetstream.
2. Always follow your Tweet with the hashtag, #AptChat
3. If you think you’ll consistently forget to hashtag your Tweets, simply go to TweetChat and follow the instructions. It’s really the easiest way to participate!
If you have any questions about this week’s chat, email me! Lisa@ApartmentExpert.com. I’m happy to help. Our topic is “ILS’s” (That’ ‘internet listing services’ for multifamily.) Should be some good conversation. We’ll also try to discuss Pay Per Lead -vs - Pay Per Lease in the same chat, and we’d love to have you there!
Hi all!
I am finalizing my presentations for NAA this year and wanted to see if any of you had great, successful ideas that I can share at the All Stars Idea Factory, to be held on Thursday morning at NAA. I LOVE to share your successful ideas with the audience because people want to know WHAT WORKS out there in the field, especially in these trying times!
If you’ve got great success strategies, techniques or stories to share with me on any aspect of property management, please email me: Lisa@ApartmentExpert.com, and give me the details. I’ll be sure to credit you at the convention. Last year’s audience was around 700 people and standing room only, so you’ll have A LOT of people to hear about your success strategy.
Photos and statistics (that help illustrate how successful your plan was) help the audience so send those along as well.
Can’t wait to see what my email brings this week! Oh, BTW, I need this information as soon as you can get it to me, okay?
Thanks again!
Based on consumer sales in the first quarter of this year, here are your hottest amenities to add to your apartments these days:
1. Safes. Built ins, similar to the ones in hotels are best.
2. Garden plots. Sales of organic gardening supplies are up 500% this year.
3. Wii activity rooms are great, but only if you can stock them with the latest and greatest video game software. Why? Video game software sales are down 23% over a year ago - people don’t want to spend the money on the software. Get the newest and promote that you have it.
4.The ‘Teaching Kitchen’ with classes on how to stretch your food dollars. Fifty three percent of us are cooking at home, from scratch these days, rather than buy prepared foods.
5. The Coupon Swap Station. With a whopping 63% of us using coupons before we hit the mall, the grocery store and more these days, the Coupon Swap Station (basically a set of alphebetized file folders or a basket) is undoubtedly the least expensive amenity you can provide.
6. “Preferred Customer Cards”. Now is most certainly the time to cut deals for your residents with local vendors, restaurants and service providers. Over the counter remedies are up (drugstores), women are stretching the time between hair cuts and coloring (salons and spas), 46% of us have cut down on dry cleaning (so obviously, cut a deal with a dry cleaner) and as we all know, dining out is waaaay down (restaurants).
I’ll be back later this week with more!
If you had the opportunity to attend the AIM (Apartment Internet Marketing) Conference this spring in Denver, one of the several outstanding sessions presented was “Measuring Market Effectiveness” presented by Todd Katler of Level One and Rick Blair of Equity Residential.
A few points from Katler’s portion of the presentation:
1. Print sources are probably underweighted due to the search nature of their customers.
2. Phone call leads have a higher conversion rate than email leads.
3. Longer leasing calls convert to leases 92% more often.
4. Social Media sources (YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Facebook) accounted for .05% of all leads for their tests properties used in the presentation.
So….should it really be called Social NOTworking as opposed to Social Networking when it comes to multifamily? You tell me.