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 | Jan 18, 2017 | All, Marketing, Tech/Web
If Threshold’s skilled residential marketing designers only cared about getting the most information to the customer, our websites would look a lot like this blog post. We’d see a whole lot of text and the sites would have very little visual appeal.
That approach works well for blog posts and articles, but websites are a sensory experience; a virtual market where people spend their time enlarging floor plans, scrolling down lists of amenities and clicking through gallery images.
Of course, many prospective residents don’t spend much time on websites at all. Marketing to Millennials is all about keeping their attention, but plenty of lost customers see the homepage and immediately click away after deciding the property isn’t for them. In today’s post, we’re going to take a look at the most important elements to keep residents interested in your property, and get them to click on those important action buttons.
Animation
Animation helps communicate messages with style, drawing the user’s eye towards moving images instead without them having to load a video or click a “play” button. Animation can be as simple as rotating sliders on a homepage or as complex as animated water in a resort-style pool. Even the most simple movement can be the difference between grabbing and losing a customer’s interest.
Material Design and Beyond
As anyone in the digital marketing industry knows, when Google makes changes, the rest of the web follows suit. Google was the first big company to take “Flat Design” and turn it into something with depth and layers. Material Design pairs geometric shapes with shadows, movement and overlays to create visually appealing websites and web apps. That’s not the say that Material Design is the only way to make websites, but it’s certainly a look that internet users are familiar with and understand intuitively, which is always a positive. Speaking of making sure users can understand your website…
Navigation
Most property sites need the same standard pages in the navigation bar: About Us, Floor Plans, Amenities, Gallery, and Apply Now. Obviously, there are some exceptions, but every property website needs to cover those basic pages before moving on to anything else. Navigation doesn’t have to only happen via Navigation Bar though. In fact, more and more websites are using the “long-scroll” look, where all pages are accessible when the user simply scrolls down from the top of the homepage.
The whole point of a website is to get the prospect to take action, so keeping the complex navigation to a minimum helps steer prospective residents toward the “Schedule a Tour” button or the “Apply Now” button without too much extra fluff. Most properties sell a lifestyle just as much as they sell an apartment, so it’s important to convey that lifestyle with big, bold images and impactful design. People will locate the amenities and floor plans if they are interested in learning more, but they won’t be interested in learning more without a simple, impactful message on the home page.
Customized Google Maps
Most of your website’s visitors will be familiar with the look, feel and functionality of a Google Maps plug-in, it’s very common in residential marketing. So much so, that they may just glaze right over it. Customizing your Google Map, however, offers prospective residents a totally new experience with a tool that they’re already familiar with. At Threshold, we often highlight certain locations around the property, such as restaurants, shopping centers, gyms and coffee shops. This gives residents an idea of what life will be like living in the neighborhood.
The best website designers know how to quickly — and beautifully—convey the lifestyle promised at every property. This is where animation, navigation tools, and customization come into play. Each element helps create a feeling within the website visitor that (hopefully) convinces them to explore the website and property further.
Is your property’s website up to date? Let Threshold’s designers come up with some creative marketing ideas for apartments in your portfolio. Our website development team will then create a responsive websites that drive traffic to your front door.
by threshold | Dec 8, 2016 | All, Culture
Name: Tyler Holmes
Title: Account Manager
Tyler has been working in student housing marketing since college, and now he’s absolutely brimming with apartment marketing ideas and multifamily marketing strategies. On top of that, he also owns the world’s cutest dog.
Get to know Tyler more below!
What are 3 words you would use to describe Threshold?
Innovative, Fun, and Full of Swagger
If you had an office nickname, what would it be?
The Tyl… Squirrel!
What is your favorite line from a movie?
Guys, if I don’t bleed to death pretty soon, I’m gonna die of boredom. – Suicide Kings
If you were stuck on an island, what three things would you bring?
Booze, Bacon, and more Booze
What is the title of your autobiography?
My Life with a Side of Bacon
What is/would be your motto or slogan?
It’s all good!
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Telekinesis (bascially can do anything!)
What is your hidden talent?
I use to sing in showchoir… so yeah… there’s that…
If you were famous, what would it be for?
Dog Rescuing
Favorite Austin eats?
Rudy’s BBQ
by threshold | Sep 29, 2016 | All, Culture
Name: John Wilkinson
Title: Chief Strategy Officer, CAS
John develops student housing marketing ideas like it’s his job. Oh wait it is. His extensive experience in apartment marketing helps Threshold tackle the tough projects every day.
Get to know John below!
What are 3 words you would use to describe Threshold?
Experienced. Innovative. Communicative.
If you had an office nickname, what would it be?
Yoda – cuz I’ve been around WAY TOO LONG.
What is your favorite line from a movie?
If you can’t say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me.
If you were stuck on an island, what three things would you bring?
Bug spray. Suntan Lotion. And every issue of Architectural Digest.
What is the title of your autobiography?
Against The Odds.
What is/would be your motto or slogan?
Easily Amused.
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
switching topics so fast it would blow someone’s mind.
What is your hidden talent?
Juggling. So hidden, I haven’t found it.
If you were famous, what would it be for?
Singer in a boy band.
Favorite Austin eats?
Piranha Killer Sushi
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.
