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’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 The Urbane Way, 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 Eric_Urbane on Twitter.
Eric also writes regular articles for the following publications;
Related Posts -
The Year of the Blogs We have long been solid proponents of Community Blogs here at the Urbane Lab, and feel our own Community Blog, The Urbane Life drives rental leads, and helps us Rent More Urbane Apartments We aren't basing this on theroy, but on Results, Rental Results.Hub Spot Marketing makes the claim that...... -
Apartment Marketing: Measuring web traffic conversion. Over the past couple of weeks the conversation on Apartment Marketing Gone Digital, which is a weekly Pod Cast with a handful of us in the industry every Tuesday evening, has started to drill down into how we are, or how we aren't measuring web traffic conversion on our apartment...... -
The Perfect ILS (Internet Listing Service) for Apartment Marketing I have been noodling on some ideas as of late as to what would the perfect ILS (Internet Listing Service) look like reinvented. Many apartment marketers (present company included) and apartment operators are quick to point the flaws, and what they don't like about the present structure, but few have memorialized what the changes would look like. There...... - Apartment Internet Marketing So I have been thinking a lot about why apartment operators do not seem to get the importance of showing up high on a Google Search. Along with that that goes the whole Internet Marketing Campiagn, meaning how many apartment operators even have an Internet Marketing Campaign?Your Prospects Are Looking......
- Video Marketing for Apartments: Entertain the Prospect We are fooling around with Video Marketing here at the Urbane Lab. Our latest series of videos, which are intended to poke fun at the "Beige Box" down the street are starting to gain some traction. Three of the five videos have been up on our web site for about ten......
Related Websites - Teaching Needed To Be Successful In Social Media Internet Marketing - Turn Out To Be Profitable On Social Media Platforms best social media for businessone. Your Mindset The initially education needed to succeed in social media marketing consists of ourself as a person. You need to have to get a good search at yourself, your mindset, character, enthusiasm, intention, your degree of communication with individuals and your personal want to......
- Elevate Your Business Using Social Media Marketing There are many uses for social media marketing, and increasing brand awareness is just one of them. Here are a few excellent guidelines to follow for your next, or first, social marketing campaign. Regardless of whether you need to promote your weber propane grill related product or any other product,......
- Latest on Flex Accounts As I discussed in Flex Accounts at Risk a couple months back, congress is looking at reducing the benefits that a Flexible Savings Account can offer you. Right now, there's no specified limit on the amount you can put away pretax to be used for nonreimbursed medical expenses, although most......
- Use These Forum Marketing Tips To Make Money Forum marketing is a tried and true method of growing a business; every Internet marketer has used it at some point or other. Of course there is more to it than just posting in forums--especially if you really want to succeed. This article is going to look at three of......
-
Health Care Plan: How Will It Affect Our Aging Parents? Health care plan: how will it affect our aging parents? Or, how will it affect us? Frankly, we don't know yet. What we do know is it will be expensive. Most likely taxes will go up, probably on the state level. But here's one of the most disturbing situations some......
