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 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 15, 2016 | All
Regular readers of the Threshold Blog may have noticed some unusual pictures in our Thresh Faces blog series. We call these pictures “Hero Images” and they’re actually an important part of the culture at our residential marketing agency.
When we hire new team members, one of the first things we do is ask them to tell us about some of their heroes or role models. We do this for a couple reasons. First of all, its a great way to get to know the new employees a little better by understanding who they look up to and why. Secondly, our designers like to immortalize new employees and their heroes in carefully-photoshopped pictures, which we then hang on our “Hero Wall” in the office and feature on our website.
We’re up to 20 people in the office now, which means there are 20 framed pictures of Threshold Employees hanging out with their role models. The Hero Wall features a real cast of characters these days, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Matt Groening and Rosa Parks just to name a few. These influential people and their Threshold Employee counterparts hang on our Hero Wall as a reminder that everyone here has their own values and their own way of doing things. They’re also great fodder for conversation. Asking someone why they chose their “Hero Image” is a much better conversation starter than, “Some weather we’re having, huh?”
One of the perks of working for student housing marketing firms is that we get to feel young. We do a lot of marketing to students which means we can’t act stuffy or boring. We try to keep it light while also doing meaningful work, and the Hero Images represent that part of our culture. As we grow, we’ll be adding more Hero Images to the wall in 2017. Until then, continue to look for more Hero Images featured in upcoming posts from the Thresh Faces blog series.
by threshold | Dec 1, 2016 | All
Marketing to millennials is all about positioning your property as a notch above the competition. If you have a luxury apartment complex, you’re in luck. There are housing communities with luxury amenities, and there’s everyone else. Nothing is going to convince a prospect to pick your luxury property over the budget apartment down the street quite like mind-blowing amenities. However, amenities won’t attract anyone unless they’re marketed correctly. When every luxury apartment in the neighborhood has a pool, naming and describing the benefits of your pool becomes a whole lot more important than simply announcing that it exists.
If the competition offers a pool, you should be offering an “Expansive pool, tanning space and outdoor cabana.” If the competition offers a study room, your property should be offering a “Smart Study Lounge with blazing fast Wi-Fi.” With so much competition in the housing industry, multifamily marketing is more important now than ever before.
So you know you need to do some marketing, and you have amenities you want to show off. The next step is making sure your marketing efforts are seen in the right places to effectively reach prospects and residents.
The days of putting up a website, handing out brochures and calling it a day are long gone. Marketing student apartments is a year-round job. Well maintained Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds are just as important as a cutting edge website. The first step to creating effective month-to-month social media content is actually having things on the calendar to promote. Luckily, luxury apartments are easy to market through social media.
Its easier than ever to post high quality videos on Facebook and Instagram thanks to advancements in smart phone camera technology. It takes 2 seconds to snap a video showing off your pool or fitness facility and post it on Instagram. Facebook’s cool new 360 Image feature is also an ideal way to post mini-tours available units or just a quick shot of your hardworking leasing agents.
Clubhouses and fitness centers are also great spaces to host quick and easy events like Taco Tuesdays or Waffle Bar Wednesdays. Post a couple times on Facebook to promote the event and watch residents and their friends line up outside your door. Sometimes you need to post on social media just for the sake of keeping your page up to date, but its a lot more effective when your property actually has some events to talk about. Hopefully your event calendar reaches the point where you’re able to create event pages on Facebook and let residents invite their friends. Say hello to more prospects and more referrals.
In this post, we’ve established that events are an important tool for marketing on social media. But creating a diverse calendar of events is no easy task. As the marketing agency Austin apartment experts flock to, Threshold has a ton of experience filling out property’s monthly event calendars. We’ve been doing this long enough to know which events work and which are total busts. One event that always attracts a crowd is a partnership up with a local non-profit. Not only does philanthropy attract well-meaning attendees, it also acts as a boost to your public relations image around the community.
There are more new multifamily marketing ideas where that came from, so feel free to contact our team of experts next time your event calendar is looking a little thin.
by threshold | Sep 11, 2015 | All, Marketing
Renewal season starts the day students move in to their new apartments. Property owners must be prepared, because the minute new residents walk through the front door of your clubhouse they want to grab their keys and get settled into their new digs! So, how do you increase resident renewal rates to keep your property full?
There are several residential marketing tactics that will help property managers generate more renewals from current residents. Remember, it’s more cost efficient to have a current resident renew their lease, than to have a new resident move in because of turn expenses. So, planning for and executing a great renewal season can save you time and make your property more money in the long-run.
Use Custom Communication Templates
Your residents receive hundreds of messages each day (emails, texts, push notifications, social updates, etc.), so it is important to make your marketing message stand out. Instead of sending an email blast littered with images, broken HTML and potentially “spammy” words, hire a marketing agency that specializes in residential marketing to create a beautiful HTML email template that will engage your current residents.
It’s especially important to utilize mobile-friendly HTML emails (because the majority of your residents read email on a smartphone) and HTML emails render differently on a phone than they do on a desktop or tablet.
Host a Renewal Signing Party
Hosting a renewal signing party at your clubhouse is a great way to boost your residential renewals, because what college student is going to say no to free food?!
Pull together a few of your leasing agents, and plan a fun, lease signing party in the clubhouse. Invite residents to perform (there’s a high chance someone in your property is a musician or DJ) and that’s a great way to build a rapport with your residents (and get the word out about the party).
Then, pick up a few pizzas, showcase your property’s great amenities, and even consider contacting some vendors who are willing to sponsor your event with free giveaways! Local radio stations love to party!
Distribute High-quality Print Brochures and Flyers
Print marketing is a tried and true form of marketing and is sometimes overlooked, but it can have a very strong impact because it’s puts your message in a physical format your current residents can keep on-hand. Plus, print is not limited by battery life or screen size – it looks great to everyone!
One way to remind your residents to re-sign their lease is to print the front page of each resident’s renewal lease and put it in their mailboxes – making sure you highlight the savings! This way, your residents get a physical and visual reminder of how much rent would be if they decided to renew in the same space. You can also create flyers to post around your property (mailboxes, the clubhouse, and other common areas) reminding your residents of the renewal deadline date.
Offer Renewal Incentives
Everyone loves the idea of winning a prize for accomplishing a task. Give residents a specific deadline to renew their lease and if they do, enter them to win a prize! Not sure what kind of an incentive to give away? Sometimes the people with the best ideas are your part time employees that are students.
Tech gear your residents like is usually a great giveaway, headphones, mini fridges, and anything that makes your resident’s home more enjoyable.
You can also get property specific and give away bikes, camping gear, river floating essentials, and beach necessities.
As renewal season approaches, think about these and other ways you can boost residential renewal rates at your property.
If you have questions, or want to discuss an idea with Threshold Agency, simply contact us and let us know! We’d love to help you fill your property!
