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.
by threshold | Mar 13, 2017 | All, Culture
Name: Haley McCarley
Title: Digital Marketing Specialist
Haley takes apartment marketing ideas and turns them into dynamic social media campaigns, effective PPC ads and a whole lot more. Her student housing marketing knowledge helps the entire digital team get a leg up on the competition, keeping CTRs high and spirits even higher.
Get to know Haley below!
What are 3 words you would use to describe Threshold?
Organized, Excited, Inventive
If you had an office nickname, what would it be?
“The lone female on the digital team”
What is your favorite line from a movie?
“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
If you were stuck on an island, what three things would you bring?
Paddleboard, Dos Equis, and The Harry Potter series
What is the title of your autobiography?
How Haley Got Her Groove Back
What is/would be your motto or slogan?
Hook ’em horns m/
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Flying, so I wouldn’t ever have to drive or park in Austin again
What is your hidden talent?
I am pretty awesome at doing makeup, even though I rarely wear it ;P
If you were famous, what would it be for?
Longest Netflix binge in the world
Favorite Austin eats?
Homeslice Pizza and Hopdoddy Burger Bar
by threshold | Mar 2, 2017 | All
The first challenge for any senior living marketing team is to make sure their target audience finds their property. Whether that’s online or through word of mouth, it doesn’t matter so long as you’re getting in front of both the potential residents and their children, as both end up playing a role in the decision making process.
Unlike with multifamily marketing or student housing marketing, senior housing marketing requires convincing decision makers that your community can play the role of both host and caretaker. A fancy apartment is great, but the community must also display an understanding of the senior’s individual needs. That’s not to say senior living industry doesn’t follow the “luxury amenities” trend. Just take a look at the luxury amenities available in some assisted living communities.
- Beauty salons
- Treetop dining terraces
- Virtual workouts
- Demonstration kitchens
- Destination dining at local bars and restaurants
- Locally-sourced food prepared by executive chefs
- Golf simulators
- On-site concierges
- Art galleries
Some of the communities we work with go as far as to offer Smart Home technologies, giving seniors the ability to turn off lights, adjust thermostats and even close their blinds without ever having to get up.
Memory Care is another emerging area that some communities are really beginning to focus on. Some high end senior living complexes use sight and smell therapy to revive their residents’ memories. By decorating with carefully selected objects and styles from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, community caretakers are able to continuously take seniors on trips down memory lane. Care providers are finding this to be an extremely effective way to to enhance their residents’ memories.
This nostalgia-based approach has been shown to take the stress out of memory care for seniors. Its a more passive approach to memory improvement. Instead of framing memory care as a sort of class where seniors have to work hard to improve their minds, this approach integrated memory care into everyday life. Besides room decor, certain kinds of music can be another form of memory care.
Some of our senior living clients actually partner with a group called Music and Memory, which provides seniors with iPods that contain preloaded, personalized playlists. The music can tap into deep, long forgotten memories that have not yet been lost to dementia. In some instances, it can even bring back certain parts of a resident’s personality. Caretakers have reported instances in which a resident has listened to the playlist, then rediscovered their ability to converse and socialize.
Beyond caring for their residents, many senior living communities are beginning to care for the environment too. After all, Baby Boomers were once—and in many in cases, still are—the generation responsible for bringing the issue of climate change into the mainstream consciousness.
Most new assisted living buildings are built to adhere to the EPA’s Energy Star standards. A smaller, but still significant percentage of new buildings use renewable energy like solar power, or have eco-friendly practices like serving their residents vegetables grown in organic gardens and providing locally sourced food in the dining room. With so much competition in the senior living market, new communities have to find ways to set themselves apart.
If your community needs to set itself apart with beautiful marketing materials, Threshold can handle all your senior living design needs for websites, brochures, information packets and more. We can also improve your community’s digital presence, which might be necessary since more and more seniors are using smartphone technology. Give us a call today.
by threshold | Feb 15, 2017 | All, Marketing
The demand for creative residential marketing ideas for apartments is higher than ever in this saturated market. After all, the seven year luxury apartment boom may finally be ending. U.S. apartment rental rates have increased 26% since 2010, however, rents only grew by 3.8% in 2016 compared to 5.6% growth in 2015. Furthermore, the Commerce Department has released figures that suggest fewer newly-constructed apartments being rented out this year than last year. In short, rent prices have stopped skyrocketing and new developments are slowing down.
Differentiation is more important than ever in a saturated market. In Threshold’s many years of experience in residential marketing, however, we’ve learned that differentiation is an easily misunderstood concept. Differentiation is not just a unique amenity or industry-first service offering. Differentiation is answering the question, “Why would your ideal resident choose your property over the property down the street?”
Some communities try to differentiate by offering services like bike repair, tanning beds, and even dog washing areas. While the overall service and amenity offering is important at any apartment community, it’s unlikely than any one amenity will convince someone to choose your property over the competition.
Differentiation is as much about identifying your target audience as it is about having a unique marketing message. Here at Threshold, we work with many different residential industry clients and as a result, we end up creating marketing collateral for many different audiences.
When crafting a marketing strategy for senior living communities, we must consider both the potential resident and their child who is often the final decision maker. The same holds true for student housing, though the audiences are obviously vastly different. It’s vitally important in that industry to create messaging that speaks to Generation Z students, but to not do so in such a manner that we alienate the parents who are actually paying the student’s rent.
Multifamily housing presents a different challenge altogether. In that case, the potential resident is also the decision maker, but that person could be anywhere between 22 and 70 years old. Marketing to millennials is just as important as marketing to empty-nesters, and we often have to accomplish both using the same messaging, design and marketing collateral. Advancements in apartment digital marketing tools have helped target specific audiences, but market research and understanding the client’s property is still just as important.
Differentiation doesn’t happen just because your property has the biggest pool in the market or the lowest rent. Differentiation happens when your property is properly positioned—through strategic messaging and design — to fill a gap in the market. Threshold has positioned over 3,300 properties during our combined 242 years of residential experience. Here are a few examples of positioning the client’s property as filling a gap in the market:
- The no-frills, affordable apartment that still offers a hint of luxury.
- The place to gather for a diverse community of young professionals
- The rustic living space in an urban environment
- The senior living community that helps residents maintain an active lifestyle
- The student housing community closest to campus
- The student housing community that doesn’t feel like student housing
As you can see, positioning can be as simple as a location or as complex as a lifestyle promise. Of course, each of these positioning statements requires many hours of research and competitive analysis. In the end, by identifying the target audience and comparing the client’s property to the competition, we’re able to find the differentiation opportunity. It then becomes a matter of crafting the messaging, digital campaigns and residential marketing collateral that best speaks to the primary differences between your property the one down the road.
by threshold | Feb 1, 2017 | All, Marketing
A recent survey of 2,352 marketers revealed that content marketing and big data are expected to be the two biggest marketing trends in 2017. We say trends, but these two residential marketing tools are going to be around for a long time. The truth is, property managers can no longer expect to drive digital traffic or foot traffic with advertising alone. The market is so saturated and the competition is so fierce, brands need to provide something of value before they can expect to receive any customers. That’s where content marketing comes into play.
Effective content marketing is both highly valuable and remarkably difficult to get right. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as, “creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content.” The problem is that the definition of “valuable” changes depending on your property’s target audience, as does the definition of, “relevant.” At Threshold, we combine audience insights from our digital team with copywriting services to create effective content marketing strategies for our clients. Understanding the pool of potential residents is the first step toward developing creative marketing ideas for apartments.
Big data will steer marketing decisions in 2017 in many ways. Modern data measuring tools haven given marketers the ability to accurately measure the success of marketing campaigns, reveal and analyze target audience demographics and target potential customers by filtering through dozens of audience identifiers.
Marketing automation is another digital marketing tool that will drive leases in 2017. Marketing automation can take on many different forms. At Threshold, we developed HOLA (Handy Online Leasing Ambassador) to nurture our clients’ leads from the first point of contact through the signing of the lease. HOLA and other automated marketing tools are much more valuable than simple e-blasts because they’re dynamic. Prospects are funneled into different channels depending on their level of interest and follow-up. Automated marketing systems are especially popular in the residential industry for a number of reasons. For starters, automated systems like HOLA free up the leasing staff to focus on in-person leads and community tours. Secondly, marketing automation can be used to build and maintain digital relationships with current residents, increasing the likelihood they’ll renew.
Geo-specific mobile marketing is another way to increase leads and draw residents away from your competition. Everyone carries a GPS in their pocket these days, which makes marketing to millennials a whole lot easier. Savvy residential marketers are now able to use smart phone location functionality to target prospects within a certain geographical location. We take advantage of this in a couple ways here at Threshold. First, we use geo-targeted advertisements to display a client’s mobile ads to prospects who happen to be near that client’s property. The other method is to target residents who currently lease from the competition. Geofencing allows us to define areas as small as a single building (like the other luxury apartment building down the block) in which to display mobile advertisements. Hey, it’s a competitive world out there.
If your properties don’t have the latest apartment digital marketing tools, contact Threshold today and let’s get your property on the path towards 100% occupancy.
by threshold | Jan 25, 2017 | All
Name: Ashley Germaine
Title: Creative Operations Manager
Ashley keeps the gears turning in our multifamily marketing machine by seeing projects through to Completion. She is a big reason why our apartment marketing ideas come to life every day.
Get to know Ashley below!
What are 3 words you would use to describe Threshold?
Collective | Inspired | Neoteric
If you had an office nickname, what would it be?
Ca$hley
What is your favorite line from a movie?
“It’d be a lot cooler if you did.” – Dazed & Confused
If you were stuck on an island, what three things would you bring?
Honey / Sunglasses / a solar Kindle with unlimited books
What is the title of your autobiography?
Plan Plan Plan (Or just wing it….)
What is/would be your motto or slogan?
You have total freedom to choose, but you are not free from the consequences of your choice. Choose wisely. (Also, never make eye contact while eating a banana)
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Teleportation
What is your hidden talent?
Baby Whisperer
If you were famous, what would it be for?
I have zero desire to ever be famous!
Favorite Austin eats?
Chi’Lantro for the win!
