Archive for the ‘Apartment Marketing Website’ Category
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Hey everyone,
We have found a post by Chris Thorman on his Software Advice website about Property Management Software. This article briefly explains the many problems property managers face such as keeping track of resident leads, managing marketing your apartment, building an apartment marketing website, and much much more. Also he brings up a great point on how a recent report by Apartment Internet Marketing shows that 46% of prospective resident leads come in past the normal 9am-5pm operating hours. The article touches on the importance of an online rental application and how collection information from your website can help you know more about your prospective residents such as where they found out about your apartment community… click Property Management Software for more on this post.
Tags: Property Management Software, Software Advice
Posted in Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Support, Apartment Marketing Website, Marketing Apartment, Marketing Apartments, Marketing Green Apartments, Online Property Management, Online Rental Application, Property Management, Property Management Service, Property Management Services, Property Management Software, Property Management Solution, Rental Application | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Signage is still one of the most powerful marketing tools available to business and that includes multifamily. In the coming 12 months, we are focusing on signage in a much more significant way. The questions we are asking are:
- Where can we get more,
- How can we gain more attention,
- How can we improve consumer response.
- What is the right information on our sign.
As always marketing to a potential resident is much different than selling a night at the local hotel, products at the local clothing store, etc. Our customers are making a lifestyle choice that they will have to live with for the next 12 months or more. If we can facilitate this in the right way, the consumer is more likely to rent and once having rented more likely to stay for the long term.
Posted in Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Website, Find Good Tenants, Find Renter, Find Renters, Find Tenant | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Today, Urbane Lab posted an insightful blog about Craigslist posting. Actually, the ideas can apply to much of our marketing effort in the apartment industry. Using the same Craigslist ad format is likely to become stale and ineffective. As apartment marketers we should have a stable of ads. Perhaps our goals should not be to earn the lease on every ad. Also, shouldn’t a sub goal be to capture contact information from every viewing prospect.
I recommend viewing Urbane’s post at Multifamily Insiders. You will find some real gems you can put to use at your property.
Posted in Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Website, Find Good Tenants, Find Renters, Find Tenant, Find a Tenant, Finding Good Tenants, Finding Renters, Finding Tenants, Get Good Tenants, Get More Renter Traffic, Get More Renters, Get More Tenants, Get a Tenant, Getting Good Tenants, Getting Tenants, Help Rent Apartments | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
U.S. consumer debt fell another $10 billion last month. Current predictions are the average savings rate for the coming decade will exceed 9%. Retailers believe spending has shifted long term to necessities and away from luxuries.
So, the question becomes how can we as owners squeeze more into less. I see a few areas we intend to act upon including:
- Bunking options with safes for valuables in properties with space for more tenants,
- Storage options for folks downsizing from homes,
- Fixed income rent plans with utilities built in (reimbursed by the tenant is our plan), and
- By the bedroom leases and roommate management.
Managing in this environment is challenging, but with some imagination, these type changes may offer higher occupancy and higher margins even as pressure on price is increasing.
For folks looking at new units, I believe smaller floor plans are likely to regain a great deal of luster as total cost of living including rent and utilities become more important.
Posted in Apartment Management, Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Website, How to Find Renters, Increase Apartment Occupancy, Increasing Apartment Occupancy, Marketing Apartment, Marketing Apartments, Obtain More Leases, Obtain More Renters, Obtain More Tenants, Receive More Renter Traffic, Receive More Renters, Receive More Tenants, Tenant Acquisition, Tenant Finding | No Comments »
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
Urbane Apartments offered a great tip for operators. Instead of asking where resident prospects found out about your community, ask what search terms they used as well. In this way, you can improve your competitive position on the web.
Posted in Apartment Management, Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Support, Apartment Marketing Website, Apartment Rental Application, Find Renter, Find Renters, Find Tenant, Finding Good Tenants, Finding Renters | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
Why would a great website not necessarily make an effective website for an apartment community?
Prospective renters don’t consider renting apartments in the same way they look at purchasing a good book, a computer, or perhaps selecting a dry cleaning service. There are some similarities. Once a consumer purchases a computer, they are commited for an extended period of time to make use of the product along with its weaknesses and strengths. However, a computer is a decision that is not impacted by many external factors. Choosing a computer doesn’t create a need to know where you will go to the doctor, or how far it is to the grocery store, or where the nearest fast food may be, etc. On the other hand choosing to rent an apartment can and should raise all these issues for prospective multifamily residents.
While over 50% of apartments searches begin on line and over 70% if they are moving in from out of town, as individual complexes achieving Internet visibility can be tough. This has led many apartment communities to conclude that they do not need a website. Instead they rely on the ILS community to provide web visibility.
Allowing the ILS to be your initial Internet contact is a reasonable approach to gain access to consumers, but it is not reasonable in a world where the consumer increasingly would like to make a decision without speaking to anyone that this is all the consumer will seek to know.
Consumers and therefore renters are seeking providers that will show them what they need, clearly explain what their service offers for their need, and allow them to purchase without further use of their time. The ILS is not and should not be positioned to do this for you. As the apartment manager, operator, or owner, you are uniquely positioned to provide robust and compelling community information.
Because of this the website for an apartment community is NOT equivalent to a typical “great” website. Because of this, the Apartment Marketing Site is a bit different animal. First, there is no need for glitzy high cost web design for a strong multifamily community website. The key is well organized information that allows the consumer to fully understand the services, shopping, sites, etc. that the community offers.
Posted in Apartment Management, Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Website, Apartment Website, Find Renter, Find Renters, Find Tenant, Help Rent Apartments, Help Renting Apartments, Hispanic Market, Housing Market Facts, Marketing Apartment, Marketing Apartments, Multi-family Renting | No Comments »
Monday, September 28th, 2009
The Apartment Marketing Blog has a very interesting and actionable post on salesmanship ideas that can improve close rates. We all benefit from attending to ideas like these and others such as:
- Dress codes,
- Name tags,
- Fresh cookies in the office and
- Many others
Good luck and good leasing.
Posted in Apartment Management, Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Support, Apartment Marketing Website, Find Good Tenants, Find Latino Residents, Find Renter, Find Renters, Find Tenant, Find a Tenant, Finding Good Tenants, Finding Renters, Tenant Acquisition, Tenant Finding, Tenant Getting | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
I recently wrote an article highlighting some key points for lead generation online on ezines. The address is:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Apartment-Leasing-Leads—How-to-Find-Them-and-How-to-Win-Them&id=2884453
You will find this article different because of the focus on what the process is in the prospect’s head while working with the Internet during the apartment search. I’d recommend checking out the UrbaneLab for some good ideas regarding how to further decipher this process. Their address is:
http://www.apartmentveteran.com/
Posted in Apartment Management, Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Support, Apartment Marketing Website, Apartment Rental Application, Find Good Tenants, Find Latino Residents, Find Renter, Find Renters, Find Tenant, Find a Tenant, Finding Good Tenants, Finding Renters, Finding Tenants, Get Good Tenants, Get More Renter Traffic, Get More Renters, Get More Tenants, Get Tenant, Get a Tenant, Getting Good Tenants, Getting Tenants, Hispanic Market, Hispanic Tenant Finding, Housing Demographics, Housing Market Facts, How to Find Renters, Increase Apartment Occupancy, Increasing Apartment Occupancy, Latino Prospects, Leasing Management, Leasing Support, Marketing Apartment, Marketing Apartments, Multi-family Renting, Obtain More Leases, Obtain More Renters, Obtain More Tenants, Online Property Management | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
I was recently in the market for a 2010 Honda Odyssey, fully loaded plus options. My wife is expecting twins in February, and along with my 2-year old, we would soon outgrow our old vehicle. The difficult decision to buy a (gulp!) mini-van was made; we settled on the Odyssey and figured out what options we wanted. Being a member of the internet-savvy generation, I started by getting online price estimates from Autobytel.com and Edmunds.com and also researched what others were paying for the vehicle. The only decision left was where to buy it. I hope the next part will shock you into action…
I began by sending an email to twelve local Honda dealers, thinking I would find the one that offered me the lowest price and use that as a starting point for negotiations. I was very surprised when only nine of the twelve dealers had valid email addresses listed on their website! Even more shocking, of the nine dealers who got my message about buying a new car, only FOUR responded! I replied to all four with a few clarifying questions, of which only three followed up. I ended up purchasing my very expensive mini-van from one of those three dealers.
It’s amazing to me how quickly those three dealers increased their odds of making the sale from 1 in 12 to 1 in 3 by doing only the bare minimum of what is expected of any sales team. Here I was, a prospect who had already done all his research, didn’t need a test-drive, didn’t need to discuss various options and features, and wasn’t going to take a long time haggling over price – and 75% of the dealerships I contacted never even got a chance to make the sale. The similarities between purchasing a car and leasing an apartment are many.
Is your Sales team missing opportunities? You should be able to complete these steps in 20 minutes or less to make sure you don’t have cracks in your Internet Sales strategy:
1. Review every page of your website to ensure the contact information (phone and fax too!) is up to date and that none of your pages are broken.
2. Test any automated contact forms on your website to make sure they work properly.
3. Send a test email from your website to each listed email address and make sure they work properly.
4. Clearly define whose job it is within your organization to respond to emails and how often the email inbox should be checked.
5. Clearly define a follow-up strategy for all email/internet prospects.
6. Determine how you are going to audit your organization’s adherence to Internet Sales procedures. This should include scheduled website testing from steps 1-3.
Don’t let your competition get the jump on you just because they remember to answer their email!
The original article can be found at: Multifamily Insiders
Posted in Apartment Marketing, Apartment Marketing Ideas, Apartment Marketing Website, Apartment Website | No Comments »
