By all accord, 2009 may be a banner year for Social Media Marketing as companies’ scramble for the next cool thing to help solve their traffic woes. We are gaining a better understanding of early adapters, sometimes referred to as influencers, evangelists and ambassadors. Specifically, just how many evangelists does it take within your core Resident Base to “Self Rent” your apartments, and how do you properly nurture and cultivate them. The great Seth Godin has coined the word Tribes and eludes to “Leading Your Tribe”
Where Are You
An article by Robert Scoble touches on the importance of early adapters,
Today the angst is onto things like Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. Even older Web 2.0 properties like Flickr haven’t really gone mainstream. Last week we spent some time with Ansel Adams’ son. He had never heard of Flickr. Ansel Adams son!!! That dude should be the first that photo sharing sites pitch, since he’s always talking to press about photography and his company does tons of classes for photographers in Yosemite and other places. Heck, Flickr should figure out how to sponsor the Ansel Adams’ Gallery. But they don’t.Why not? Because convincing late adopters to change their behavior is VERY hard and VERY expensive. It’s why Amazon doesn’t do TV advertising. Rather they build a product that early adopters, passionate computer geeks, and influencers like. How does that affect their business performance? Well, compare Best Buy’s price/earnings ratio to that of Amazon’s. According to Google Finance Best Buy’s is 13.91 and Amazon’s is 67.03. I know which one I’d rather have. Early adopters DO matter. Anyone who says that they don’t needs to go back to business school.
Break From the Pack of Apartment Commodity
Based on these observations and our own experience of push back and naysayers regarding the manner in which we market our own boutique apartment management company, convincing other Multifamily Owner/Operators to embrace Social Media may well be a long time in coming. Perhaps the best way is by example, to the Lead the Charge and Break From the Pack of Apartment Commodity, creating our own “Blue Ocean” and to show by metrics everyone in this industry understands, increased NOI, double digit Cash on Cash Returns, and high occupancy. Apartment Operators across this country are very smart, they are just very late adapters.
Let Something Go
We have ditched traditional market because we found a better way. Does that mean traditional marketing doesn’t work, nope, not at all. But for us, when it is our money on the line that I am spending, I want to employ the strategy and tactics that best serve our needs, our lender requirements and our partners return on investment. With that, we have and continue to focus on the Residents Experience, and we are doing that through the various forms and phases of Social Media and we are seeing stealer results.
Eric Brown
Eric’s background is rooted in the rental and real estate industries. He founded metro Detroit’s Urbane Apartments in 2003, after serving as senior vice president for a major Midwest apartment developer. He established a proven track record of effectively repositioning existing rental properties in a way that added value for investors while enhancing the resident experience. He also established Urbane Media, a social media marketing and PR laboratory, where innovative marketing ideas are tested. Eric has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine. You can connect with Urbane_Media on Twitter. Eric also writes regular articles for the following publications; Multi Housing News Social Media Examiner Search Engine Guide
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