In follow up to the piece I wrote yesterday, The New Apartment Marketing Metrics, I wanted to pen my thoughts surrounding the premise to implement changes in how we track Apartment Marketing Metrics, based on the fact that The Directional Flow of Marketing Has Changed.
Understanding the New Rules will help in your efforts to Break From the Pack of Apartment Commodity
I think that a lot of apartment operators entering the playing field of Social Media Marketing, specific to apartments and multifamily start out only thinking in terms of the size of their physical community, of say (300) units. I surely agree that you focus first on those (300) residents, but your over all Social Media Community must be much larger in order to be effective, and as we grow our Urbane Community we are starting to experience velocity, in that the group as a whole start to help you grow the overall community. It is pretty cool.
Another fascinating point that separates apartment operators from most other businesses types, are, They do not need to grow their business each year with year over year sales increases. Meaning, that (300) unit apartment community only ever needs (150) new rentals each year in order to stay full. (This assumes the management company is doing a reasonable job at managing the asset) It makes dialing in exactly how many leads and how much traffic you need to stay full very predictable.
For example, you know you need at or around (150) new leases for your (300) unit apartment community in 2010. To achieve that you also know;
You Know These Numbers;
- (150) new leases per year, equals (12.5) lease per month
- To generate (150) leases per year, you need to conduct (425) tours/showings per year
- (425) tours/showings per year, equals (35) tours/showings per month
- To generate (425) tours/showings per year, you need to produce (1,200) pieces of traffic
- (1,200) pieces of traffic per year, equals (100) pieces of traffic per month
So, while your actual traffic to tour conversion percentages and tour to rental percentages may vary from our math, use your known percentages, they are pretty consistent numbers. Our point here is that you know how much traffic you need in order to stay full.
At the Urbane Lab, we are continuing to experiment with new ways of measuring our Social Media efforts to determine the amount of On Line Presence it takes to keep our apartment assets full, and we think we have some compelling answers to the following questions;
1) How Many Monthly Web Visitors do you need Per Unit,
2) How many Facebook Friends do you need Per Unit
3) How many MySpace Friends do you need per Unit
4) How many Twitter Followers do you need Per Unit,
Grow Your Larger Community
The directional flow of marketing has changed, in that every one of the four above metrics are Opt In Marketing, meaning the potential prospect picks and chooses to be part of your community, and they can leave at any time. Unlike “advertising” where you are just shouting to the masses, the flow of prospects has changed direction.
What happens once you have organically grown your “Larger Community” to drive enough traffic for say (200) rentals per year, but you only need (150), Either you can stop doing something you are doing, which lowers the Cost per Lease, or Raise Rents, which is something we haven’t seen for some time.
Another determining factor, is how many Influencers does it take to pump up your “Larger Community” I think not very many, and once you figure that out, and spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources on the Influencers, that leverage takes a compounding effect on your Social Media Program.
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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