You know broccoli is good for you but you eat chocolate instead. What you know and what you do don’t always correlate. We as Marketers know the golden rule – relate messaging to our client. Yet, it’s easy to lose touch and push our message across in innumerable ways like a bad infomercial.
For a successful campaign we must evoke a feeling. The hospitality industry has mastered this technique. One hotel giant used the campaign slogan “Let us turn a weekend getaway into a honeymoon you never thought you’d have.” The hotel was able to stir up an emotion, glamorizing what could be a weekend on a hard mattress with a locked mini bar or even worse no mini-bar at all. To get your ideal renter to discover your community, it’s critical to develop a marketing plan that aligns with their passions and interests. Sure, most people don’t think apartment living is necessarily a ‘sexy’ topic, but the truth is we don’t need it to be to engage residents. I took a moment to think of examples to prove my point. Would you think salt would engage 400,000 viewers over YouTube? Knorr’s Sidekicks low-sodium meal accompaniment has done just that. How about anti-spy ware having 60,000 likes? Webroot a software company distributing security applications and programs dominates on Facebook. Your community doesn’t need to be glamorous or sexy, but your message should be.
Great messaging alone won’t rent apartments; you also need to tie the message to great placements. Again, enter the social media solution. Social media platforms open a window to what is important to your prospective and current residents, in real time, and lets you relate. Messaging through social media hits prospective renters at the most opportune time. Recently, a Detroit Apartment complex was featured in the New York Times for doing just that. Urbane Apartments attracts 75,000 unique visitors a month to its Web site, has 11,000 Facebook likes, 12,000 Twitter followers and an email list of 16,000, according to the June article. President Mr. Brown explains his social media strategy in the article as, “We’re talking to people all day long on Facebook and Twitter — we mine for new potential customers there. You have to embrace your customers and have a conversation with them. Social media is like word-of-mouth on steroids.” Mr. Brown sure can support his marketing philosophy, Urbane Apartments currently has a 98-100% occupancy rate; even at the peak of the recession (reminder during the recession nearly half of Detroit’s residents fled the city) his units were boasting an 80-85% occupancy rate.
The right social media strategy extends your reach far beyond the leasing office. Whether it be salt, spyware or apartments by the 8 mile, social media tied with the right message is undeniably beneficial for business. As the multifamily industry adapts to the social conviction, RentSocial can help throughout the transition. RentSocial helps glamorize your communities in an organic – not forceful way. In addition to featuring unit types and amenities, show renters what the community offers and give insight on the neighborhood. Renters will gladly get friendly and stay awhile if they’re presented with the exclusive ‘back stage’ access they’re scouting for. With the staggering audience in our favor and here to stay, we have to dodge the quick ILS or advertisement placement, rather sow the seeds for continual conversations with current and prospective residents to come, no matter the temptation.
