by threshold | Sep 24, 2019 | General
We’ve been around the real estate marketing block a time or two (or three, or four), and we’ve seen a lot of different apartment complex marketing ideas over the years. Along the way, we’ve also learned that many of our clients and other property managers are constantly searching for new marketing strategies that will help them raise lease rates, revitalize their online reputation, or generate buzz for their new brand.
Well, we believe that good ideas are meant to be shared, so we wanted to put together some of the best real estate marketing strategies we’ve seen in action so that property managers, leasing staff, and apartment marketers are empowered to make bold choices and see big results. We’ve gathered out top apartment marketing ideas into a handy pdf available for download.
Below, you’ll find a preview of the top nine marketing ideas we love for multi-family properties. If you want to see more, you can download the full pdf here.
Host a Pet-Friendly Promotion Event
Four-legged friends are a big part of many residents’ lives, and a pet-centric community event can be a great opportunity to promote your pet-friendly property and get shareable content for your social media pages.
If you have a dog park or outdoor courtyard, consider inviting residents to bring their well-behaved dogs by and partake in some tasty treats. Or hold a giveaway of pet-friendly goodies for resident pet owners who share a photo of their pet at the property on social media. Everybody loves cute pet photos, and showing some love to a resident’s fur-baby is a sure-fire way to get on their good side.
Team Up With Local Businesses
You already know residents are drawn to properties that are surrounded by local businesses they love. So why not team up with the businesses in your neighborhood for some mutually-beneficial marketing? Partnerships like these strengthen both parties while also communicating to your prospects that your property is keyed into the local community residents will be a part of.
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by threshold | Sep 10, 2019 | General
We work with a lot of student housing properties, and we’ve been with our clients through the execution of a lot of different apartment complex marketing ideas over the years. While we’ve witnessed the occasional flop, we’ve also seen the power of a great idea executed flawlessly. Believing that good ideas are meant to be shared, we wanted to put together some of the best real estate marketing strategies we’ve seen in action, so that property managers, leasing staff, and apartment marketers are empowered to make bold choices and see big results.
Here, you’ll find a preview of the top ten apartment marketing ideas we love for student housing properties. If you want to see more, you can download the full pdf here.
Host a Bring-a-Friend Event
Referral specials can drive lease signings, but even just getting potential residents to visit your property can go a long way. Encouraging current residents to bring a friend to a community event is essentially providing a prospect with a partial property tour while giving them a chance to see your property not just as a name but as a real community.
In our experience, pool parties, team activities like sports and games, and holiday activities like pumpkin carving make great excuses for a bring-a-friend event. Whatever the theme of your event, consider asking folks to RSVP, and make sure you’re poised to make a great first impression by ensuring your property is looking beautiful and your event is well-prepared with supplies and friendly staff.
Show Residents You Care With Seasonal Events & Initiatives
The seasonality of the student housing market can be challenging and stressful, but it also provides opportunities to wow your residents. The beginning and end of the school year can be fraught times for students—why not show them some support and cheer them on with resident appreciation initiatives or events?
[su_button url=”https://www.thresholdagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Threshold_Apartment_Marketing_Ideas_Student_Housing.pdf” target=”blank” background=”#ef3c26″ size=”4″ center=”yes” icon=”icon: download”]Get the Full PDF[/su_button]
by threshold | Sep 9, 2019 | General
Seeing is believing, so stunning photos and video are a must when it comes to today’s competitive real estate market and the fleeting attention of modern consumers. High-quality visuals make a huge impact on the effectiveness of both digital and traditional marketing, from display ads to brochures. Not only that, but bad photos or video can have the opposite effect, communicating to your prospects that your property is as low in quality as the visuals that represent it. In other words, photos and video are essential, but not just any photo or video will do.
At Threshold, we work a lot with property visuals as we create marketing assets for our clients, and we’ve seen how big a difference professional photography and videography makes on marketing results. That’s why we’re officially rolling out new Photography and Videography Services for our clients, many of whom want to take advantage of high-quality visuals but don’t want to endure a lot of hassle to get them.
How It Works
Threshold will leverage its expertise and resources to simplify your service experience and make sure everything goes off without a hitch. You’ll start by talking with a Client Success Manager to select a Photography or Videography package that’s right for you.
Our packages range from a basic 3-hour photoshoot of the exterior of your property to a full-day shoot capturing up to ten different locations throughout your community. You might choose to include drone footage, shots of the neighborhood, or just combine existing assets to create a professional video. Whatever your needs, we can make it happen.
Once you’ve selected your package, Threshold will help you prepare for the shoot or compile existing assets, using our expertise to guide you toward the highest quality outcomes. We’ll connect you with a trusted professional photographer or videographer and oversee the shot list, the shoot itself (where applicable), and the entire production process to ensure things progress smoothly. Finally, we ensure that you have your professionally-edited photos or video in hand by the agreed-upon deadline. You’ll walk away with high-quality visual assets to implement on your website, in digital campaigns, in print media, on your social posts, and anywhere else you want to stand out from the crowd.
If you’re already one of our fantastic clients, then reach out to your Client Success Manager to get started! Or if you’re new to the Threshold fam, you can reach out to our team here—we look forward to meeting you!
by threshold | Aug 27, 2019 | Digital Marketing, General, Marketing, Thought Leadership
Updated June 22, 2021
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, after asset management companies rushed to implement quick digital marketing solutions, Property Management Software have become more ubiquitous than ever, but so has the demand for strong agency/client marketing partnerships. With this surge in demand for digital real estate marketing, knowing the recipe for a great agency partnership is more important than ever. As real estate marketing agencies work to prove their worth, knowing these strategies for excellent partnerships is essential. Likewise, as asset management teams seek out ways to stand out from the crowd of competitors using the same PMS marketing tools they are, an agency partnership that honors their unique needs and goals can be particularly rewarding. For a timely comparison between Property Management Software marketing solutions and the advantages of a strong marketing agency partnership, check out the Pros and Cons of Relying on Property Management Software for Real Estate Marketing.
If you’ve read our blog post on How a Strong Agency/Client Relationship Can Make or Break Your Real Estate Marketing Plan, then you know just how important a healthy agency/client relationship is. Not only is a bad relationship unpleasant to deal with, it also impacts your bottom line (for both clients and agencies). But it’s easier to identify a bad relationship once it exists than to build a good relationship from the word go. What strategies can clients and agencies use to develop relationships that work for them?
Whether you’re a client looking for cost-effective marketing results or an agency looking to wow clients and encourage loyalty, today’s blog post will help you craft relationships that are mutually beneficial. So let’s get into it, shall we?
Emphasize Mutual Success
Your relationship isn’t just about contracting services and exchanging deliverables; it’s about partnership. As you make plans, launch campaigns, and review performance together, bear in mind that each party is made stronger by the other, and each party’s success is intertwined with the other’s. When you emphasize mutual success, you foster an attitude of working together (rather than simply performing transactions) that not only creates a better experience for everyone, but also creates better marketing results.
Acknowledge Uniqueness
Each client and each agency is unique—they are made up of unique individuals, have unique needs and areas of expertise, and experience unique challenges. A partnership works best when each party understands the other fully, and neither has a one-size-fits-all attitude toward working together. Cookie cutter strategies not only underperform due to their imperfect fit, they also communicate a lack of investment in the partner you’re working with.
Set Clear Expectations
When you don’t set clear expectations, needs go unmet and frustrations are inevitable. In order for work to get done together smoothly, everyone needs to know what is and is not expected of them, and when. Be honest and upfront about the limitations of what you can provide, and ask for clarification on what others need from you. Don’t wait until things are going wrong to have these conversations.
With clear expectations set, your projects will suffer from less scope creep, fewer disappointments, and a consistent plan that helps work get done on time and on budget.
Respect (And Take Advantage Of) Expertise
Neither the client nor the agency knows everything they need to know to create excellent marketing results—and that’s okay. In fact, it’s crucial to recognize where skills and access to information differ so that everyone can come together to inform your big-picture real estate marketing plan. That said, it’s not enough to ask for the input you think you need, you have to also put some trust in the expertise of the other party. Neither the client nor the agency should be—or even can be—dictating every single detail of the work you create together. Take advantage of your partner’s expertise and trust them to inform the areas where that expertise is relevant.
Establish Regular Communication
You’ve heard before that good communication is crucial to a healthy relationship, and that’s true for agency/client relationships as well. Calls and emails should happen on a regular cadence, not just when questions or issues arise (though they should happen then too). This ensures that all teams stay on the same page, issues are caught early, and a healthy rapport is maintained. All this translates to the marketing results you achieve together by encouraging steady progress through all your projects together, with fewer missteps along the way.
With these tips under your belt, you should be able to cultivate strong agency/client relationships that create mutual success as well as mutual happiness. If you’d like to learn more about agency/client relationships, or you’d like to start building a relationship with our team at Threshold, contact a Threshold team member today! We’d love to chat with you.
by threshold | Aug 13, 2019 | General
What do you picture when you imagine a solid agency/client relationship? Mutual trust and respect? Partners that are eager and delighted to work together? Or maybe you just picture strategic partnerships that create remarkable real estate marketing results?
Maybe you can guess where we’re going with this: the truth is, all these things are intertwined. A strong agency/client relationship drives results through establishing trust, maintaining excellent communication, and fostering a positive, unique, and interactive work experience. In short, a lot of things go into creating strong relationships between clients and agencies, and a bad relationship almost always means poor results.
If you’re asking yourself how much the relationship between a client and an agency really impacts real estate marketing results, then this is the post for you! We’ll discuss the elements of poor agency/client relationships that can impact your bottom line, and identify a few red flags that will help you assess the health of your agency/client partnerships.
Good Communication Leads To Efficient Spend
Good communication takes time, attention, and effort, but it’s as crucial to building strong agency/client relationships as it is to building…well, any relationship. At the beginning of a relationship, there should be a lot of communication as client and agency get to know each other, set expectations, and make plans. Communication should continue through regular reporting and client input briefs as needed.
When communication is unclear, unprofessional, or infrequent, this can have a major impact on the work clients and agencies do together. Without taking the time up front to establish clear expectations and deliver relevant information for a project, agencies may put in work that is ultimately unproductive and needs to be revised. And without clear and regular reporting on campaign results, mistakes may be repeated and motivation to excel may fall off over time. All this leads to inefficient marketing strategies and results that aren’t worth the time or money either partner is devoting to creating them.
Solid Trust Means Quicker Timelines
Have you ever been part of a review process that seemed to go on forever? Partnerships that suffer from low trust fall prey to this problem all the time. The problem is, when either party isn’t trusted to deliver good work or input efficiently, a lot of checks and balances may be added in the hopes of counteracting this problem. Agencies may schedule additional meetings to explain content that could otherwise have been sent over email, or clients may ask for additional review phases so they can intervene early when something doesn’t wow them. Review is good—in fact, it’s crucial—but too much review and too many changes along the way can not only delay the timeline of a project, it can also result in a poorer end result that lacks cohesion or focus—all because there were too many cooks in the kitchen.
Ideally, each partner in a relationship should be able to rely on the other to bring their own expertise to bear on a project, and do so efficiently. Clients, remember that your marketing partner is the expert when it comes to marketing strategy and design, and give them the space to advise in those departments. Agencies, remember that your clients are the experts on their properties and their audience, and take their input to heart when planning and executing campaigns.
Customized Strategies Create Remarkable Results
In order to achieve results that live up to your goals, it’s crucial to acknowledge that each party has their own strengths and weaknesses—their own styles, structures, and expertise. When you take those things into account and fully understand what your partner needs from you and what they’re poised to offer, you avoid making requests or delivering results that could work for a partner, but doesn’t work for your partner. You also avoid strategies that are merely okay, instead of being the best option.
In a best-case scenario, cookie cutter strategies might be better than no strategy at all. Still, they are unlikely to offer the biggest bang for your buck, or deliver results that make you proud and have dramatic impact. If you want to build a relationship that lives up to its potential, then you have to be in a position to produce well-tailored campaigns together, and that means taking the time to understand each other.
Whether it’s due to poor communication, a lack of trust, a lack of understanding, or something else, a troubled agency/client relationship can have an equally troubling impact on the success of your real estate marketing plan. At this point, you might be asking yourself, “Then how can I build a strong agency/client relationship that avoids these problems?” We’ll be devoting an entire blog post to that in the coming weeks. For now, feel free to chat with a Threshold team member to learn how we treat our agency/client relationships—you might just discover that we’re the right partner for you.
