At work I helped to create and drive the branding process of our apartment marketing site (www.cypressbayapartments.com). My company decided they wanted to take marketing in house, to the owner level. As part of taking property marketing to the owner level, we needed to come up with a new name, separate from Hamilton Zanze. This was a four month process in which we brainstormed elements of branding the property on the physical site. In the end, we decided the best place to start the brand was on the internet. I worked with a team that specializes in multi-family apartment marketing sites called MyNewSite to create our website. I directed the design of the landing page and created the logo. Once the Cypress Bay website was live we needed to trademark the name (we should have done this before launching the site in case the mark was taken.. but we did things the way we did). I worked with our lawyers at Foley to conduct searches for similar companies, names, alternate names in federal, state, common law, and internet on the name and trademark.
Cypress Bay Apartments Landing Page
The mark is currently being filed and should be officially protected in six months. Cypress Bay Apartments is set up with google analytics.
Hurdle Rate equation is used to calculate amount of leads needed to stabilize and provide an idea for the monthly advertising spend.
Do social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter really work?
How is the manager able to manager the page to ensure positive comments? Will residents really network with one another to create a sense of community?
As part of the web campaign design two sites for each property. Create one for pay/click that is well designed and create another that is optimized for SEO. One could also design a basic html site intended for PDAs, but this doesn’t seem like a good resource because not many people search for apartments via their PDA.
How do you track the referrals you’re getting from other sites to your site? What are consumer behaviors that lead people to your property website? This is a gray area that google analytics does not track. –Solution — Use a script that will change the e-mail and phone number (tracking information) per source site as a user is directed to you site. Example: a prospect is routed to the property website from apartments.com and the phone number/e-mail listed on the property site is changed to the apartmetns.com tracking number. You will find out your prospects behavior and discover what back end network (secondary network) sites are driving traffic to your property site. Keep the secondary networking sites that work, dump those that don’t drive traffic.
In November I went to the Executive Brainstorming session hosted by Multifamily Pro.
The conference brought together people in the multi-family housing industry to discuss marketing, advertising, best practices, management of the onsite teams, including motivating the teams to keep them energized and inspired, especially considering current economics. The executive session placed representatives from ownership groups, management groups, and vendors in a round table discussion environment.
Some of the issues we discussed:
Marketing and Outreach, Considering the Current Economy: No doubt that the times are difficult as owners need to hold onto assets as equity is not available, the price of real estate has dropped, and Cap rates have risen. Acquisition/disposition teams need to change gears and operate as owners because deals aren’t happening. Unfortunately, there is even more bad news on the operational side as vacancies are higher and rents are lower.
We discussed the importance of resident retention and the need to outreach to foreclosed homes.
Retention: The most cost effective approach to keep a property stable is to retain residents. Because the housing industry is so competitive it is important to reach out to residents weeks before their lease is up for expiration. They should be offered a competitive renewal bonus that will keep them on the property, vs. moving across the street because they can receive a fantastic move in package. Because the market is expected to become uglier in the next year or two, we discussed the idea of offering all good standing tenants a renewal now, no matter what stage they are in their lease, with large concessions so that they are signed in and wont be able to leave for more competitive concessions one year down the line. Another incentive to retain residents is to offer a partial payment plan as an amendment to the lease contract. Best practices to create a happy healthy living environment is to create a sense of community. Resident activities, if done correctly will bring the residents closer to one another, closer to the onsite management team, and will overall create a better living environment. Resident referrals are another facilitator for the creation of community, as residents are likely to recommend the apartment building to their friends and coworkers.
Outreach: Outreach: Outreach to the homes that have been listed for foreclosure. Send direct mail to a recent foreclosure list emphasizing the benefits of renting vs. owning. Outreach to single family home brokers by offering double referral fees so they will be incentivized to refer their clients.
Green Initiatives in the Apartment Industry: What can owners and managers do to market their properties as green? It is not economically feasible to convert an existing apartment building to meet LEED qualifications. However, LEED will come up with new qualifications specific to apartments that are attainable. As the market is now, residents are not wanting to pay more for green benefits. So the question is, what can owners do with little overhead investment to cut costs in a green manner?
