by threshold | Apr 20, 2017 | All, Culture
Name: Emily Barker
Title: Graphic Designer
Emily takes apartment marketing ideas and turns them into apartment marketing masterpieces. She has been creating next-level multifamily marketing brochures, websites, and logos for Threshold for some time now, and we just want her to have her moment in the sun.
Get to know Emily below!
What are 3 words you would use to describe Threshold?
weird, friendly, evolving
If you had an office nickname, what would it be?
Office Daria
What is your favorite line from a movie?
Listen up, Fives. A Ten is speaking. — Jenna, 30 Rock
If you were stuck on an island, what three things would you bring?
coconut radio, a Kindle full of books, notebook & pens
What is the title of your autobiography?
Why Are These Fonts Not Syncing! The Emily Barker Story
What is/would be your motto or slogan?
You can’t have it all, but you can always have pizza.
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Flight
What is your hidden talent?
I’m pretty good at using a Chinese Yo-yo
If you were famous, what would it be for?
Making delicious Kimchi
Favorite Austin eats?
Las Trankas for street tacos
by threshold | Apr 20, 2017 | All, Marketing
When you think of someone figuring out a name for your property, don’t imagine a creative-type at an advertising agency sitting up late at night, waiting for that perfect name to pop into their head. When Threshold names properties —be it a new or old community— our approach is never to just sit around spouting out names until we hear one that sounds cool.
That approach might work for startup tech companies, but naming ideas and marketing ideas for apartments emerge from a more nuanced approach. When property owners and developers come to us for a new naming project, they’re not only looking for a name. We certainly start with the name, but that name evolves into a color scheme, which evolves into a logo, which turns into tagline, messaging and whatever other apartment marketing collateral the property needs.
How a Name is Born
Before we can do any of that, our team needs to gather information about the property. The most important piece of information is the target market demographic. The property name must be geared precisely towards the target audience, because they’ll be seeing, saying and writing the name most often. Think about it; you wouldn’t assign a name to someone’s house without first considering who they are, what they like and where they work.
After we determine the characteristics of the community’s target resident, we consider the property’s other characteristics such as location, amenities, building style, and whether it will be considered a luxury apartment complex, a student housing community, or another kind of property. A name is only one or two words, but those words must be whittled down from a huge amount of information.
Of course, we don’t just collect information ourselves. We always sit down with property owners to talk about their vision for the property. At the end of the day, the client chooses from a list of names that Threshold provides. That’s why it’s so important to listen to the client’s ideas and incorporate them into the final naming considerations.
Be Unique. Don’t Be Weird.
Once we’ve compiled all the preliminary information, the creative naming process can begin. We look to bring out names that are unique, but not just for uniqueness sake. We’ll always consider the competition names, and avoid names that bear any similarity to other properties in the area. We want the name to stand out, but we also want it to make sense. Prospective residents should see the name and know exactly what their life will be like if they live there, or at least be intrigued by what their life might be like.
There’s no rule of thumb about whether your property name should be made up or be a real word. Each property is different, and each naming process requires a thorough investigation into which names will attract the most residents. There are rules about properties that are undergoing a rebrand, however. If your property is being rebranded, it’s probably for good reason. You don’t want to make the mistake of keeping certain parts of your old property name. A renaming effort requires total commitment to the new brand. That way, you’ll be able to attract people who are new to the market without any extra baggage that may have been associated with the previous property name.
Those are all the secret marketing ideas for apartments that we’re able to divulge today. When your property is ready for a new name, or if you’ve recently purchased a new property in need of an identity, Threshold has you covered with innovative apartment marketing ideas. We don’t do cookie-cutter and we don’t do boring —unless that’s what your target audience wants.
by threshold | Apr 6, 2017 | All, Marketing
Reasons to Rebrand
We get a lot of requests for rebrand projects from new property owners, especially those who’ve bought older properties. If you’re an owner taking over a property, you might want that property’s branding to fall more in line with the other communities you own. A rebrand makes a statement to the surrounding community that your property is serious about its image.
Recent renovations also cause property owners to come to Threshold for marketing ideas for apartments in the midst of a rebrand. The big payoff for big renovations is the ability to promote them. When you make renovations, and do a rebrand, you can promote your property in a whole new way to a whole new audience.
Finally, poor reputations can also cause owners to consider rebranding. Past a certain point, your property’s reputation cannot be saved, no matter how much time you dedicate to reputation management. If that’s the case, a rebrand can give your property a fresh start.
Obstacles to Overcome
Losing a name associated with negative reviews is great, but you’ll also lose plenty of equity in the community from people who’ve knew about your property’s old name. Online, you’ll have to take certain steps to combat the loss of domain and page authority that your website has built up over the years. At Threshold, we combat this by mapping your old URLs to similar pages on your new website.
There are a million moving parts to take care of when your property gets a new name, especially in today’s age of multiple online social media pages and apartment finder websites. It’s a complicated process to update every little detail, but it’s worth it—and entirely necessary— when launching a new brand into the market.
Your new site will have to build up trust with Google over time, no matter how much work your advertising agency does to combat the loss of SEO mojo from your old brand. However, property managers can drive traffic to their site right away by launching Google AdWords campaigns.
With AdWords, you can show up in search results right away because you’ve paid to be there. That will immediately drive traffic to your new site and speed up the trust-building process with Google.
Take Good Care of Your New Brand
As property managers know, renters care deeply about the lifestyle their chosen community projects. Sometimes, that projected lifestyle is even more important than the amenities or the square footage. Doing a rebrand can help your property show off an entirely different lifestyle than the old brand was putting out there. You can do all this without making major renovations.
We talked about changing the property’s social media pages to suit the new brand, but the voice and tone on social media should change as well. When we create new brands at Threshold, we don’t create them to be permanent. Instead, we develop brands that have the chance to grow and evolve as time goes on. We want our clients to be able to take ownership of their brand and wield it how they see fit. Social media is a perfect place to start trying out your new brand—your new voice.
A rebrand can involve anything from naming and a logo to a full-blown collateral update, including digital apartment marketing materials such as your website. We’re here with game-changing apartment marketing ideas when your property is ready for a rebrand. Whether you’ve just purchased a new property that needs to present a new face to the market, or you’re just sick of looking at a stagnant logo, Threshold can help.
by threshold | Mar 22, 2017 | All
Here at the Anti-Vacancy Agency, we understand that housing fair season can be a stressful time for property managers and their staff. That’s why we filmed this short VLOG to reveal some of our favorite tips for marketing to students at campus housing fairs.
Watch the video below and don’t forget, Shop Threshold can supply your property with all the promo items you need to bring your student housing marketing ideas to life at your next event!
by threshold | Mar 22, 2017 | All, Marketing
Why Combining Content Marketing and PR Strategies Is a Good Idea
To achieve business success in today’s digital environment, it’s always best to have content marketing and public relations help on staff.
Until very recently, both teams had similar agendas, yet worked separately from one another.
Things are very different now and content marketing and PR teams now seem to be working together more and more. Especially since most are remote workers, it’s easy for them to work together on modern approaches.
This makes sense since they both work in a similar fashion to achieve additional exposure online.
Each one of these teams can deliver the goods as far as online exposure is concerned. But when they work together, their efforts are magnified and together they achieve much greater heights.
Are you thinking about integrating your PR and content marketing teams?
We feel this is a no-brainer, but maybe you haven’t come to the same conclusion.
To help you better understand why these team should always work together from now on, we will share a few different reasons to help you finally see the light.
Putting Everyone’s Head Together Makes Idea Generation a Snap
Whether you’re trying to gain media attention for a hot new restaurant, an app, or a website focused on tech solutions, it’s never easy to come up with story placement ideas that meet the latest trends.
Separately, both of these teams had to find out precisely what bloggers and journalists wanted to publish online. And they also had to discover precisely what their target audience wanted to know more about.
Working together, both teams have the ability to stay far ahead of the curve. They can brainstorm ideas together, research together, and ultimately get better publication placements by working together as a group.
As each team figures out what to expect with placements, the content marketing side will achieve better results because they will target their audience correctly and share relevant content that everyone wants to read.
PR teams will also improve by working with content marketers because they can use all resources to find better placements, better story ideas, and keep the brand message consistent at all times.
Working Together Helps Amplify the Reach of Your Content
Content marketing is specifically focused on creating blog posts, webinars, articles, and other brand identification materials.
On the other hand, public relations work well because they have personal connections with the biggest influencers in your market.
By utilizing these connections, they can get better story placements and additional exposure during product launches and other times when they need an extra boost.
The combination of both of these teams creates an influential and powerful way to touch base with your target market. With every successful product launch they will be able to repeat the successes in a new mission.
But there is one other amazing benefit that you get when you combine PR and content marketing.
Sure, you’ll definitely find your target audience a lot faster. And that’s a great thing that everyone should strive for.
Guess what?
Combining PR and content marketing also makes it possible to reach a new, broader, hungrier audience as well.
Most companies are already investing in PR and content marketing.
By combining both of these avenues of outreach, you’ll have a better chance at increasing your ROI since both teams are already working toward the same objective.
Achieving Brand Message Consistency
Finally, having your PR and content marketing team working together means your brand message is always going to be on the same page.
Why is that?
Well, both teams always know what the other is doing.
By having access to this information, they can share similar stories and focus their content in a similar way so that their message is clear at all times.
Conclusion
As you can see, having content marketing and PR teams working together is definitely a great idea. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should give it a shot and see the amazing results for yourself.
Author Bio
Wendy Dessler
Title: Super-Connector at OutreachMama
Wendy is a super-connector with OutreachMama and Towering SEO who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition.
by threshold | Mar 16, 2017 | All
We’re all busy trying to fill vacancies, right? Let’s jump right into it then. These are the questions you should be asking yourself to see if your apartment digital marketing is working.
1. You may have followers, but are you getting engagement on social media?
An engaging social media post usually ends with some kind of call to action. It can be as simple as “comment below” or as complex as “like, follow and share to enter.” There are a few ways to engage through social media posts, although some require more effort than others. The easiest way to get your followers to engage with your social content is by promoting a contest. Whether you’re giving away something expensive like a TV or something simple like a Starbucks gift card, you should ask your followers to like, comment and share your post to enter. By encouraging all three actions, you get the most possible engagement out of each follower. Of course, you don’t have to give away TVs to get engagement. You can also do something simple like post a trivia question and ask people to comment their answer.
So why does engagement matter? Because engagement is a great way to measure the effectiveness of marketing to millennials. When Person A has friends who like and comment on your post, that post will show up on Person A’s feed, even if Person A doesn’t follow your page.
2. How much are you paying for each lead you generate?
Cost-per-lead is an important metric to monitor because it reveals your residential marketing ROI. You pay for marketing so you get leads to drive revenue. But do you know how much you’re paying for each lead? All you have to do is divide the cost of each marketing method by the number of leads generated directly by that method.
Here’s why digital marketing is so important: Even though digital marketing costs less than printing flyers or running a magazine ad, digital is able to reach more people than those methods and thus generate more leads.
It’s not easy to track each lead back to the marketing method that brought the lead into your leasing office, but if you can, you’ll be able to accurately measure your marketing ROI.
3. Is your website getting new visitors, and if so, where are they coming from?
It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that a high number of visitors to your website indicates success. In fact, you should be looking at the number of new visitors that find your site each month. If that number’s high, you’re doing well.
Next, try to find out where those new visitors are coming from. Is it your social media page? Organic search? If they’re coming from Google, that means your keyword optimization is working, and people are beginning to see your site in search results. If they’re coming from social media, that means your content is engaging, and its being shared so it can reach users who’ve never heard of your property.
4. Does your site have a high bounce rate, and if so, why?
Your bounce rate is the rate at which people come to your site then leave without clicking any other page. High bounce rates can be a result of ineffective homepage strategy. A good homepage should reveal just enough information so that the user is tempted to click on other pages, but not so much information that the user gets what they want and leaves.
Creating a blog page is a good way to combat a high bounce rates. It’s true, blogs are good for more than just SEO. Putting a link to your blog on your homepage gives visitors a reason to click around. Once they arrive at your blog page, they should find more links —embedded in the blog— to guide them to different parts of the site. It’s all about keeping users on your site until they convert.
Follow Threshold on social media for more creative marketing ideas for apartments, courtesy of the Anti-Vacancy Agency.
