by threshold | Jul 23, 2019 | General
How do you define marketing success? Which metrics best evaluate the strength of your apartment complex marketing ideas? How should you go about analyzing the performance of your overall real estate marketing plan? Of course, you know that at the end of the day your occupancy rate is the most representative measure of how well you’re meeting your goals, but along the way, what metrics are most important to let you know you’re on the right track for current and continued success?
If you’ve ever asked any of these questions, then today’s blog is for you. We’re going over a few Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help you evaluate how you’re doing now and how likely you are to meet your goals moving forward. Each of these KPIs tells you something slightly different about your marketing performance and tracking them all will help give you the most holistic view of your overall performance.
Because a holistic real estate marketing plan touches every part of the buyer journey, from online searches to on-site tours, we’re including both digital and offline metrics in our list today. After all, digital marketing is only part of the equation, and everything from your lease space and tour unit(s) to your website and digital ads can influence your bottom line. Now, without further ado, let’s talk KPIs!
Click-Through-Rates
The CTR of your digital ads, including retargeting ads, social ads, email ads, and more, can give you considerable insight into the success of your messaging and your audience targeting. Low CTRs typically mean you’re not reaching your target audience consistently, or your messaging just isn’t speaking to them. If you read our blog on the Top 5 Actions You Should Take To See Results From Your Real Estate Marketing Plan from earlier this month, then you know that understanding your target audience is key to marketing success. If your CTRs aren’t meeting industry standards, consider doing more research on your target audience and make sure you understand what they care about, how they make purchase decisions, and where you’re most likely to reach them.
Website Traffic
One of the major goals of digital marketing efforts is funneling potential residents to your property website, where they can learn more and discover how to take further action. That’s why measuring traffic to your website is essential. Take stock of how many unique visitors there are to your site, which pages they visit, how many pages per session they view, and where they’re coming from (e.g. from a Google search, from an email ad, from your Facebook page, etc.). If your website traffic is low (people aren’t reaching your site, or typically leave quickly after arriving), it might be worth evaluating your performance in a number of areas, including SEO, UX web design, and social media presence.
Foot Traffic
For most potential residents, visiting the property is a key step in deciding whether to sign a lease. Measuring the foot traffic to your property tells you a lot about how much curbside appeal you have, as well as how well your digital presence drives potential residents toward concrete next steps (namely, visiting the property). If other areas of your marketing plan are seeing good results, but foot traffic is low, consider the following:
Make sure potential residents can easily find the information they need to move forward (particularly with respect to address and contact info) on your website and in Google results. Also ensure that your property is visible from the street (if it’s not, signage can help) and looks inviting and well-maintained from the exterior of the complex, especially near the leasing office. Finally, consider placing signage, posters, or brochures more prominently near the complex and at other businesses in your neighborhood. For more info on these strategies, check out our previous blog post.
Abandonment Rate
It’s important to know how often potential residents decide against going further along the buyer journey for your property, and it’s even more important to know at which step in that process they bail. You’re always going to lose some leads along the way as potential residents move through your marketing funnel, but knowing how significant the drop-off is at key points can help you reduce abandonment rates and increase the number of leads that make it to the signing stage.
For example, if lots of folks make it to your website, but only a few then proceed to schedule a tour, that might let you know that you need clearer information or more calls to action on your website. If, on the other hand, lots of folks are touring your property but only a few then decided to apply, you might want to take a closer look at your tour unit or implement staff training to make sure the tour-givers are friendly, informative, and enthusiastic when showing potential residents around.
Conversion Rates
Similar to abandonment rate, conversion rates are a measure of how often a visitor to your website or property actually completes the desired goal while there. For example, a tour conversion rate might measure how many people that tour your property actually go on to apply, while a website conversion rate might measure how many visitors to your website actually go on to contact the leasing office or sign up for a mailing list.
Since abandonment rates and conversion rates are essentially two sides of the same coin, addressing low conversion rates can be done in the same ways that you’d address high abandonment rates.
Summing It Up
At the end of the day, of course, applications and lease signings are the truest and purest measures of success. That said, they certainly shouldn’t be the only things you’re measuring. For a solid real estate marketing plan that drives results at every step of the buyer journey, make sure you’re tracking the KPIs we’ve discussed above. Then use those metrics to inform improvements to both online and offline marketing, from digital ads to on-site tours.
If you’d like more information about how to measure marketing success, or you could use our help in implementing improvements to your apartment marketing strategy, don’t hesitate to reach out! Chatting with a Threshold team member today can help you quickly and consistently achieve the results you’ve been working toward.
by threshold | Jul 9, 2019 | General
There are hundreds of individual decisions, actions, and steps that go into developing an overall real estate marketing plan. Everything from initial naming and branding to digital ads to lease space design to seasonal specials…all these things and more can be part of your marketing plan, influencing the number of lease signings you see at the end of the day. With so many factors going into your plan, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and unfocused.
That’s why we’re taking some time today to identify a few of the most impactful actions you can take as part of your overall real estate marketing plan. Focusing on these five action items will go a long way in generating meaningful results and putting heads in beds. So without further ado, let’s get into it!
Understand Your Target Audience
This step is absolutely crucial and ultimately involves more than one single action (sorry, we know we’re cheating here). As early as possible, you should do some audience research that will help inform where, when, and how you should implement your marketing plan for best results. Find out where your audience spends time on and offline, how they tend to make purchase decisions, what amenities are important to them, and what kind of messaging appeals to them.
Understanding your target audience allows you to evaluate the messaging that will best highlight your property, the types of ads most worth running, the local business most worth partnering with, and the local events most worth attending, among plenty of other things. Not only that but having a well-defined target audience will help you evaluate why your marketing plan is ineffective if you’re already implementing strategies but not seeing results.
Participate In Your Community
Some of your most effective marketing can be done in person, out in your local community. First and foremost, make sure you’re taking part in any local residential events like housing fairs, if applicable. Secondly, build relationships with businesses near your property and leverage those relationships as part of your real estate marketing plan. For example, you might ask local businesses if they’d be willing to display your poster or brochure at their business (perhaps in exchange for you promoting their business in a similar way in your leasing space, or hosting a resident event catered/sponsored by their business if applicable). You might also offer discounts to customers or employees of a given business and promote those discounts at that local business as well as through your online presence. Finally, referral specials help promote grassroots marketing and tap into one of the most effective marketing avenues—word of mouth.
Do Competitor Research
You know as well as we do that your property doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your potential residents probably have a lot of choices, so it’s important for you to know who your competition is and what they’re up to. After all, if a competitor is just like you in many ways, but is running a seasonal special when you’re not, you stand to lose out on renters that might otherwise sign with you instead.
Competitor research shouldn’t just be done once either. Check in regularly on your competition to see what specials they’re offering, whether they’re doing any renovations, what amenities they’re promoting most, and so on. The more information you have, the better poised you are to meaningfully differentiate yourself from your competitors and give potential residents a compelling reason to sign with you.
Manage Your Optics
In other words, make sure you look good both on and offline. Savvy consumers are going to perform searches, read reviews, and (if they get that far) visit your property before they make their final leasing decision. To make sure potential residents like what they see (and can see you at all), there are a few areas you need to focus on.
Reputation Management
It’s essential that you have a positive reputation online. Never neglect your reviews on places like Google, Yelp, and Apartments.com. Respond to positive reviews with thanks and negative reviews with understanding and a clear intention to make things better. While you’re at it, make sure you actually take feedback to heart; implement reasonable changes, clear up misunderstandings, and talk further with residents about their concerns when possible. It’s far better to be a property that makes mistakes but learns from them rather than a property that appears not to care about its residents.
Curbside Appeal
Most potential residents will visit your property before signing a lease if they have the option. If your property greets potential residents with poorly-kept grounds, that’s a red flag right off the bat. Make sure plants are healthy, parking is unobstructed, signage is attractive, fences or gates are in good working order, and stray trash or debris is removed. Any indication that your property is dirty, unsafe, inconvenient, or otherwise poorly maintained will certainly give a bad first impression, while a well-cared-for property inspires confidence and invites potential residents to learn more.
SEO
Residents may never find you in the first place if your SEO is poor. Performing an SEO audit is often an important step for properties that are having trouble reaching their desired audience. Understand the keywords your audience uses to look for apartments like yours, then make sure those keywords appear on your website in prominent places. In a similar vein, it’s crucial to ensure your Google My Business page has ample and accurate information about your property, including a link to your website, office hours, street address, and contact information.
Anticipate Seasonality
To everything, there is a season, and that’s often particularly true for apartment marketing. Whether your seasonality is consistent and pronounced, as with student housing, or simply dependent on renewal schedules, as it often is with conventional multifamily properties, these seasonal fluctuations should be accounted for in your long-term marketing plan. Scale back marketing during your most leased seasons, then ramp it up again when you need to attract more renters. On that subject, consider offering special rates for early rent renewals and new residents who sign during a high-vacancy season.
That’s it for today’s apartment complex marketing ideas! We hope we’ve helped give you a few actionable items that will generate meaningful results! If you’re interested in discussing these tactics further, or you’d like to learn how we can help you do all these things (and more), go ahead and chat with a Threshold team member! We’d love to help you improve your real estate marketing plan.
by threshold | Jun 18, 2019 | General
We like to highlight our real estate marketing experience here at Threshold, and for good reason. But when it comes to generating apartment complex marketing ideas and executing a real estate marketing plan, there are a few other types of experience that can also offer a significant advantage to the client-agency relationship.
So what other areas of expertise can come to bear on real estate marketing and promote successful client-agency relationships? Here are a few additional realms of experience we have amongst our team at Threshold and how we’ve found them helpful in driving tangible marketing results.
On-Site Leasing & Residential Management Experience
Okay, this one may be a bit of a no-brainer. We’re taking the time to mention it, though, because not all marketing agencies can boast this kind of experience. Residential brands can get some good mileage out of a general marketing agency, but working with a real estate marketing agency specifically has major benefits. Working with a real estate marketing agency that has experience with the client side of the relationship too? That’s priceless.
A marketing agency with on-site leasing and residential management experience is well-informed of the needs and nitty-gritty realities of running a residential community. That means they’re poised to understand your needs as a client, including demands on your time, budget, and legal responsibilities. Such an agency has additional insight into what clients need to cultivate high lease rates, healthy NOI, and positive client-agency relationships.
Financial & Retail Experience
Speaking of budgets and NOI, a marketing partner with financial and retail experience can be invaluable when it comes to getting the biggest bang for your buck. Financially-minded folks have the drive and the insight to make your marketing spend efficient and effective. They also know how to make the agency they work for financially efficient in its own right, which in turn often means better results for less client spend.
Agencies with experience in retail also have additional insight to share on certain aspects of marketing strategy that can drive higher lease rates and better lead generation, like specials and referral programs. Knowing what makes for a successful promotion or sale means your marketing campaigns are that much more likely to deliver meaningful results.
Utility Agency Experience
Managing a residential company means working with utility agencies to build and maintain a functioning residential community. After all, residents and staff need and expect working power, water, gas, and other utilities. One of the easiest ways to stumble into bad relationships with your residents (and a bad brand reputation) is struggling to deal with a utility emergency or failing to provide consistent utilities functionality for residents.
When your marketing partner brings utility agency experience to the table, it means they have insider knowledge regarding how utility hiccups happen, and valuable insight into how to communicate with residents when they do. This insight helps you deliver accurate information and genuine assistance to residents while engaging in reputation management designed to paint your residential brand in a charitable light.
In other words, having folks with utility agency experience makes for a marketing partner that can help you diffuse tensions with residents and make sure you maintain a solid brand reputation.
Interested to learn more about how these and other spheres of experience can benefit a client-agency relationship and promote meaningful marketing results? We’d love to chat with you about your needs and whether we have the experience to meet them! Contact a Threshold team member today to learn more.
by threshold | Jun 4, 2019 | General
There are a lot of marketing agencies out there, but not all of them have years of experience in the real estate industry. When it comes to generating apartment complex marketing ideas or developing a real estate marketing plan, it’s important to work with a marketing partner who’s been around the block a time or two.
Today we’re going over three main areas of expertise your real estate marketing partner should have. We highly recommend real estate brands partner with agencies with these kinds of experience in order to secure the best possible results.
Understanding Your Business Cycles
To everything, there is a season, and this is particularly true for real estate marketing. Your marketing needs during the lease-up phase will be different from your needs after your property is fully operational. Your needs during peak leasing season will be different from your needs during a slow season. An agency with the ability to anticipate these shifting needs is better poised to help you make both short-term and long-term real estate marketing plans.
For best results, you want to work with an agency with years of experience working with real estate brands at all phases of their business and during all seasons of the year. This experience will help when you need to scale your marketing efforts at different stages of these cycles for maximum efficiency and meaningful results.
Understanding the Target Audience
Even tried-and-true marketing strategies can fail if you don’t understand your target audience. Your marketing strategy should be different if you’re marketing to students vs. seniors, or young professionals vs. parents with kids. Everything from branding to specials to digital strategy needs to speak to your audience in the right ways and at the right places, or you can fail to reach potential residents and convince them to convert.
When you work with an agency with experience in real estate marketing, you can be confident in the strategies and creative assets your agency develops, knowing that they know what it takes to reach your target audience, whether they be students, parents, professionals, seniors, families, or others folks looking to rent.
Understanding Successful Digital Methodologies
Understanding successful digital strategies go hand-in-hand with understanding your target audience. Understanding the audience alone isn’t enough, however. In order to really translate that knowledge into effective marketing, you have to know how to leverage a variety of strategies to capture the attention of that audience and encourage them to convert.
Your marketing agency should have a firm grasp on what marketing strategies will suit the needs not just of your audience, but also of your budget, your phase of development, and the season of the year. They should also be keeping up-to-date on the ever-changing digital landscape, including social platforms, search algorithms, and ad trends.
When it comes to reaching your audience, promoting conversions, and developing high-quality assets, Threshold has the experience to help you see fantastic results. Want to learn more about this expertise? Check out some of our success stories, or chat with a team member to learn how we can put our experience to work for you!
by threshold | May 21, 2019 | General
Creating bad branding is easier than some people realize. In our line of work, we are witness to a lot of common mistakes that can lead to poor brand recognition, a lack of quality leads, and low marketing ROI. As it turns out, not all apartment complex marketing ideas are made equal.
So what’s the good news? Thankfully, these mistakes are avoidable with a little bit of forethought and some guidance from those who have been around your block a time or two. So today we’re discussing common pitfalls in real estate branding and how you can avoid them. Let’s get into it!
- Lack of Differentiation
It’s easy to be just another fish in the marketing sea, especially when the market you’re competing in is densely populated. It’s essential that your brand be one of a kind so that your audience has a reason to choose you over other brands. It’s even more vital that you be able to communicate the uniqueness of your brand, or your audience will never be aware of the compelling reasons they might have to pick you.
If you’re having trouble differentiating your brand, ask yourself a few questions: Is there a need not yet being met among your target audience? How can you diverge from the design and personality of other brands to offer something new? Are there marketing strategies your competitors aren’t making much use of? Most importantly, what is your brand’s mission and how does that mission offer value to your audience?
- Inconsistent Integration
Even good branding fails when it’s not consistently implemented in all aspects of your marketing. Your digital ads should have the same look and feel as your landing pages; your email copy should use the same overall voice as your social media posts; your lease space should have similar design features to those gracing your print media. You’ll employ slight variations of course, in accordance with the needs of different channels, but everything you do should be in step—recognizable to the casual observer as all part of a single brand.
Inconsistent integration breeds confusion and sets you up for poor brand recognition. In order to be compelled by your branding, and hopefully even become loyal to your brand, consumers need to get a clear sense of what your brand is all about.
- Not Speaking to Your Audience
Understanding your audience is key. If you’re looking to appeal to millennials, for example, but you use messaging or design that would resonate better with an audience of 40- and 50-year-olds, your branding isn’t going to do good work for you. To see real ROI, you need high-quality leads, and in order to get high-quality leads, you need to make sure your branding is speaking to the right people.
Consider your intended audience carefully, and seek to learn all you can about them. What are their values? What kinds of media are they used to? How do they spend their time? How do they prefer to make their purchasing decisions? What makes them trust a brand?
- Not Following Marketing Trends (or over-adhering to them)
This one may seem like a Catch-22, but what’s really important here is balance. You want to be in-step with marketing trends enough that you don’t seem out of touch with reality, but you don’t want to be so reliant on current trends that your brand appears gimmicky or impermanent.
We recommend having a backbone of tried-and-true branding strategy but allowing yourself a little flexibility to incorporate trends as they ebb and flow. Just make sure the trends you’re incorporating speak to a core part of your branding that can stand the test of time even when that trend fades away.
- Not Considering the Big Picture
We get it: creating a brand can be a big project that demands a lot of personal investment, and as a result, it can be easy to become personally attached to the brands we create. However, it’s important to balance personal motivations with a degree of dispassionate perspective. In other words, it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture.
So for example, the personally-invested part of you may feel it’s best to avoid the color red in your logo and color palette. Maybe you hate the color red. Maybe it feels like a brash color to you, or maybe you’re even red-green colorblind and reds just kind of look boring to you. In spite of these things, red might still be an excellent branding choice. It might differentiate your brand from the competition around you, and it might communicate the qualities you want your brand to embody for your target audience. Your gut feelings are often valid, but it’s essential to maintain enough perspective that you can check your gut and make sure it’s not leading you astray.
Having trouble with any of these common mistakes? We’d be more than happy to offer some guidance that will help you steer clear of real estate branding pitfalls. Get in touch with a Threshold team member to find out how we can help!
