by threshold | Jul 28, 2015 | All, Marketing
Mama Mia you don’t have to live in Chicago, read The Book of Mormon or be An American in Paris to deliver Wicked marketing while increasing Rent.
If you work in the residential housing business, you know its lights, camera and ACTION all day, everyday. So if this were New York’s theatre district we would focus on lighting, set design, the script and the actors. Each of these elements is an opportunity to sign a lease or a renewal. Our business offers the same opportunity everyday to roll camera, shoot and get it right. So grab the clapboard!
Lighting-What is your focus? You have to have a strong message, intent or story. If you are a new community in lease-up mode…ask what makes you different: the architecture, the location or some great new concierge-type of service?
Set Design-How is your community staged online? What does your website look like? Have you looked at your Google Analytics to access your bounce rate and time spent on each page? Does your photography draw people in? What colors are you using, does the mood reflect the lifestyle and demographic of your clientele? It’s about getting their attention, keeping their attention and getting their feet in the front door.
Script-Are your employees trained on the art of conversation and the sale. What are your best closing tools? Do you ‘role play’ proactive scenarios to get the conversation focused and meaningful? How do you answer the phone, respond to emails, and greet people as they walk in the door?
The Actors– Whether you are in student living, senior living or multi-family, you know your greatest asset is your actors (your staff) and their art of conversation and communication style. In the residential business, communication is key to success. You need ability to communicate that only comes from experience. In this business, experience is the best teacher. Whether you start as a Community Assistant at a student housing community, a General Manager on a multi-million dollar conventional high-rise, or a corporate marketing director or trainer…..the experience and language you learn in this industry is priceless. That experience is the WOW factor.
So stage your asset right, get your props set and your people the tools to blow your audience away with charm, information and a welcoming attitude. And then sit back and enjoy the positive reviews (and leases!)
-End Scene-
by threshold | Jul 23, 2015 | All, Design
At Threshold Agency we have the ability to combine important, relevant information and great innovative design. The melding of the 2 worlds is what makes us marketing experts in the multifamily industry. But how do we achieve that design? Where do our designers look for inspiration and fresh ideas? What are the trends in residential marketing design? Is your marketing design trending?
Trends in the design world are always evolving. They can be similar to any trend in the sense that they can be difficult to follow unless you keep up with it. When you are a designer, following the trends in this industry can keep you from falling into a creative rut. During my research I found a lot of information, and I mean a lot! I’m only going to go into detail about my absolute favorite trends, and the ones that are mentioned over and over again or this blog would get out of hand rather quickly.
I’ll start with the similarities in both print and web design; the most prominent being the size of the media we design for on a regular basis. In print design, you have many different projects and an immeasurable amount of document sizes per project. If they can print it, you can design on it! Web design is not as temperamental, but since responsive websites are the industry standard, you have to think about the different media your end user will be experiencing. Users can view the web on many different sizes of screens (TV, laptop, tablet, phone, etc.) and some of those screens flip from horizontal to vertical depending on how you’re holding them. That seems like a lot of different ways to think about how one website is viewed! Other similarities between print and web are the trends of using large images, large blocks of text and going back to the classics/modern/simplistic/clean design.
Sticking with the web design trends, the most commonly talked about trends I’ve come across are large background images, video background images, parallax scrolling, flat designs, mobile first websites and one/single page web layouts. My favorite is the single page website layout. With a single page website layout all the user has to do is scroll down the page, or click on the navigation bar and the website will scroll down to the part of the page you want to see. It’s easy to navigate through, looks great on all devices and is faster because you only have one page to deal with.
One of my favorite trends in my research are being made in Typography. Handwritten fonts, letterpress printing, delicate scripts, and fonts with imperfections are so much fun. I got married in May of this year and searching for invitations was my favorite part of wedding planning. I really wanted to design my own, but it was easy to choose one since there were so many beautiful ones out there (and let’s be honest, it was less time consuming than doing my own.) Handwritten typefaces seem to be more personal to me and I enjoy utilizing them for logos when I can. I think that style of personalization is a huge part of building a brand. Find it in your budget to invest in letterpress printing, trust me, it’s worth the cost. This finished quality makes your printed piece look very polished. Another trend in typography are icon fonts. Icon fonts are basically a series of symbols set to letters and numbers, so when you type (A, B, C could be a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram icon). These are more prevalent in the web world. They are clean vector graphics that help your users interact with your site in a new and simple way. They can be used in a countless ways especially as social media icons. Everyone knows if you click on the Facebook icon on a website it will take you straight to their Facebook page. This is a simple, efficient way to use icon fonts.
Logo trends are always fun to follow. A website I love to browse is logolounge.com. They posted a lengthy analysis of current logo trends of 2015 and my favorite is the contoured logos. This type of logo can be parked right in-between a logo with only one color and a highly detailed logo. If you are familiar with gradients, they are used inside of simple shapes to make up a logo that reads well in a small format and is slightly more detailed when viewed on a larger scale. Although these kinds of logos are more difficult to turn into a black and white format; I think they are visually interesting without being too over the top. Another trend in logo design is to create a singular brand and use that brand for the rest of your business, assuming your business has multiple branches. Threshold did the below logo for the Lennar Multifamily Communities called Crest.
You don’t need to be the trendy design expert or follow current designs to have something amazing—you just call me! If you’re in the creative business like us at Threshold Agency, it’s good to keep up with the trends and keep your mind fresh with new visuals. We love to thrill and exceed our clients expectations. That’s why…we’re trending! #GoThresholdorGoHome
by threshold | Jul 17, 2015 | All, Marketing
I couldn’t wait to turn 15. Just the thought of, legally, being able to drive a car, albeit with my parents tagging along, was exhilarating. The time seemed to drag on and on, though. However, I kept my eyes focused on that day in 1989. Fast forward to my twenties, where driving was more of a chore than the exhilaration I felt during my younger years (Milk? I’ll get it! More groceries? Send me!), time just wouldn’t stand still. Weeks turned to months, then years. Before I knew it I celebrated my 41st birthday but didn’t really feel like I should really be 41. That’s when it hit me – time is flying by, so much has changed, and the last 15 years look nothing like it will in another 15.
In our agency, we focus on senior living, or senior housing, apartments and communities as much as we do for student housing or multifamily marketing. However, the one thing we have noticed in the past 15 years is the growth, no, surge, in marketing to the senior community online. While some of the senior demographic may not be doing the actual search for a trusted senior community, you can bet their adult children and grandchildren are searching online. The art of senior living is also changing to offer many vibrant options for extending each resident’s talent through art, music and community. It is important to be able to relate that in a smart, inviting digital format as well as in your collateral.
Statistically, an online search for senior living is the first place people go to learn more about a community. However, finding that senior living website is the first hurdle many operators or managers face. While there are plenty of services offering paid listings and such, your competitors are also on those same pages. Here’s what we suggest for senior living communities who want more eyeballs on their website:
- Invest in a website domain name that is unique to each community. Google loves that. And if Google loves that, that means better search results for you.
- Make sure the website content is relevant to your residents and their families. Google loves that too.
- Invest in a strategic pay-per-click (PPC) campaign manager that will research the right keywords for you, adjust your website content to fit those results and monitor your monthly spend.
- Ask for reports. Data will show you whether the right campaigns are in place. Traffic to your community will show you whether the strategy is working.
- Don’t be afraid to change things up sometimes. If you have a special event or promotion that you’d like folks to know about – build a campaign about it. We recently did a similar campaign that resulted in a 200% increase in website traffic from last year.
While driving may no longer excite me like it once did, where marketing will be in the next 15 years certainly does. We Thresholdians are the leading folks driving an agency that helps senior living communities with their marketing. We’re working to provide a glimpse into the future of senior living.
If we can help you, give us a call.
Happy Marketing!
by threshold | Jul 8, 2015 | All, Marketing
If there is one thing that everyone has heard about various media outlets, it’s that “print is dead.” Across multiple industries, this mantra has been transformed into a rule of thumb for residential marketers seeking to implement a successful marketing campaign. Gone the way of the dinosaur, print seems to be settling, at least in the public view, wedged somewhere between the rotary dial phone and coal-burning stoves. Quaint and nostalgic, but ultimately inefficient. The past decade or so of dramatically declining subscriptions to printed newspapers and magazines seems to support this, and has served as a catalyst for daily publications like the New York Times and The Guardian to focus on maintaining a strong online presence over trying to regain print readership. The thing is, I don’t think that print truly CAN die, not as long as we human beings continue to be fascinated by our physical surroundings. Print: King of the Undead.
To be clear, this is not a blog bemoaning the fate of the printed word, or about how we had best not forget the skills of screen printing (although screen printing looks beautiful when done well, and I would love to learn on my own time). On the contrary, I think the evolution of digital and web design has led to a dramatic shift in how we think about the way information can be presented to reflect an apartment community’s brand, and I love being able to design something that doesn’t have to be constrained by a physical space, and won’t eventually end up as pretty landfill.
There is still value in choosing to print materials instead of opting for a digital campaign. We’re tactile beings, and I’d be willing to bet that there has been at least one instance in the last month where you have picked up some piece of collateral or marketing swag, turned it over in your hands and thought, “Wow, this is really cool.” A digital invitation would have looked great, and a cohesive web campaign is inarguably valuable when marketing to a large audience, but it was that extra detail that pushed me to mark it on my calendar.
I think the key to deciding whether or not to pursue print within a particular campaign is to ask yourself these three things:
Is it interesting? Printing just to have something to hand out isn’t always as effective as it seems. Simply giving someone something to hold onto without ensuring that it looks different from anything else in the stack of papers they might be holding isn’t going to guarantee engagement with a potential resident. A die-cut shape, an interesting fold, foil overlays, printing on an atypical substrate, there are endless ways to ensure that the materials you’re physically giving to someone looks and feels completely different than everyone else’s.
Is it useful? Sometimes, a flyer or brochure just won’t have the impact you want for your apartment community, and you’re going to need to use a more utilitarian angle. Is there a way to brand an object that has a further purpose than looking beautiful that delivers the message you want to send? Bringing utility to your marketing materials elevates them from potential junk-pile fodder to something interactive.
Is it innovative? Nothing beats the element of surprise. There are always details that often go unnoticed by both the user and producer that can be incorporated into a brand campaign. Free coffee at a resident event? Brand the cup instead of going generic. Use opportunities to make your mark in places where most people substitute anonymous materials. This attention to the “small stuff” speaks volumes about how you or your company thinks about branding and identity.
by threshold | Jul 2, 2015 | All, Tech/Web
Over the last several years, tech writers and bloggers have fiercely debated if email marketing and even email in general is a dying medium (a quick Google search reveals both sides of the debate). But the fact that the debate rages on and email is still hanging around might indicate its resilience. After all, email has been around since 1971.
One thing is for sure, email as a technology and communication tool is evolving. The method of how we send/receive email has drastically changed in the past 10 years. Emails need to have a big hook. The subject line has to grab your attention. Think about the emails you get daily—what do you open or trash? Your copy and delivery needs to be up to date or you will be sooo 2014. But what are the best email marketing practices for student and multifamily?
Overload
According to a report by The Radicati Group, worldwide consumers send and receive 87.6 billion emails per day. Add that with the number of business emails sent/received, the total number of emails sent/received is a staggering 196 billion. That number is expected to rise to 227 billion by 2018. Whether you’re a student housing, multifamily or senior living marketer, you have to stand out in the crowd.
Get Mobile – Don’t be the 31 %
This is a no-brainer. Make sure your emails look good on phones and tablets. They don’t have to be responsive, just clear and easy to read on smaller devices. According to Litmus, 48% of emails are first opened on a mobile phone. And 80% of email subscribers delete emails that “look bad” on their phones. Funny enough, 31% of marketers don’t send responsive emails. This is another chance to get ahead of the pack.
CTA and Content
Knowing that emails will be read on-the-go (in class, at the grocery store, etc) it’s imperative you keep your call-to-action (CTA) catchy and to the point. Ultimately, your end goal with emails is to push the receiver to your website.
Emails are not the right medium to include a laundry list of your communities’ amenities. Let the reader find that information on your website. Use the email as the bait to get them to there. Think quick and memorable.
Intrusion
There’s no denying that purchasing mass lists can be effective, but is this the right place for it? From a list of a 100,000 names, even if you achieve a click rate of 1% (the real estate industry open rate is 2.2%) you’re still driving 1,000 pieces of traffic to your website. Not bad at all. We encourage you to think of your audience and think of your own preferences. Many companies can purchase lists and blast away…but remember, spam is called spam for a reason. People don’t want it. The property that spams-a-lot can have this backfire quickly. Spam filters have become super intuitive and readers very savvy. Best practice? Use the relevant lists you’ve collected through use of raffle entries, housing fairs, contact forms on websites, etc. Be authentic. Be relevant and memorable.
At Threshold Agency, we build brand. We also build best practices from experience and create custom solutions to keep the leases rolling in! So let’s hit “Send” together!
by threshold | Jun 24, 2015 | All, Tech/Web
At Threshold, the anti-vacancy agency, we know that designing a cool website is much like planning your dream home. It’s exciting! But who wants a home that wins design awards for curb appeal but doesn’t have a front door? How about a kitchen without a sink? Or a living room without windows? To be truly cool, a website has to serve many purposes, just like a home. As experts in branding and residential marketing, Threshold concentrates on attracting your future occupants by focusing on their needs before we ever begin construction. What makes a website COOL? So what are the important questions to ask?
- Who is your target resident/group/audience?
- What is the top benefit you have to offer your target audience? Price? Location? Amenities?
- Do you have property application forms, floor plans, and maps available in downloadable PDFs?
- What categories do we need for concise navigation?
- Do you have a strong logo, color system, and font set?
- Are there plenty of photographs to show the beauty of the renovated pool, updated workout rooms and the layouts of the rooms?
- Are there competitors close by that we must exceed?
Once we gather the information that answers those questions, we can establish the new web structure. What about the visual look of the site? Which style, look and feel is appropriate for your target audience? Rustic? Modern? Playful? Vibrant? Elegant? The Threshold design team will delve into the creative process using our design strategy to craft a custom and unique look. Done well, great design helps future residents see themselves living the good life at your property.
The Threshold consulting team knows that, even then, the evaluations aren’t over! We’ll scrutinize the site using important principles for successful websites:
- Does it clearly tell the viewer who you are?
- Is the site eye-catching and design-appropriate for your target audience? (Whether for student housing, senior living, or multifamily units)
- Is it simple to navigate?
- Is there a value proposition for the viewer?
- Is there a call to action?
- Does the content change often?
- Is it viewable on all media – i.e. responsive?*
Speaking of viewable, an adaptable or responsive website is a must. Although Cameron Adams demonstrated it as early as 2004, in 2010, Ethan Marcotte coined the phrase “Responsive Web Design” or RWD. That means cool websites “respond” by interchanging the elements of the site so that it they are always legible on the media on which they appear: computers, laptops, iPads, monitors, and various cell phone platforms. How? We must program liquid layouts using media inquiries. Liquid layouts are when elements and images adjust their size and aspect ratio according to the size of media. Media inquiries are the set of programming rules and scripts that enables the elements on a web page to always be legible. When these strategies are applied, as you open your web window larger, the images, text, and ad banners change with you! At Threshold, the design and development teams will program multiple layouts for every page so that you always shine.
Whether it’s a website for student housing, senior living, or a new residential development, we are your best advocate to make sure vacancies are few and far between! As THE residential marketing experts, we will create well organized, visually stunning, and responsive websites for you.
