After writing the post All Blog Posts Are Not Created Equal, I have really been thinking more and more about just how much our prospect know and understand our Urbane Brand when they arrive at the Urbane Underground to start their apartment search. With that understanding come perceptions and expectations about what they are going to see as features in the apartment once they actually tour. I don’t think our experience with this is dissimilar to that of other apartments communities. When those expectations align with your product offering all is well, and most of the time it does.
The point here is, I think that prospects group like product together with like product, and therefore, unless you have some hidden feature, the prospect knows your product offering pretty well before they ever arrive to your leasing office. Our UrbaneApts.com web site is loaded with pictures, so they can see, our apartment features without us telling them about them, or at least, not solely focusing on Apartment Features during the Tour / Showing.
Although our Urbane Product differs significantly from our competitors, product differentiation will only carry you so far. What it seems that prospects really have a keen interest in knowing are things about the neighborhood, where are the cool bars, who has the best burger, and where is the best dry cleaner.
Providing great Hyper Local Information can be another differentiation to help set your brand apart. We are just starting to experiment with this concept here at the Urbane Lab, but we are seeing some interesting trends. Mike Brewer recently also posted on the value of understanding and selling the local neighborhood, and we think he is right on target.
Maps, Maps, Maps
We blogged about the recent survey by the folks over at Lifehacker Blog, who conducted a survey titled The Five Best Apartment Search Tools. Of the five recommendations, only one is a Major ILS (Internet Listing Service) The most compelling piece of the article was that three of the five effectively used Maps.
On that map hunch, we quickly changed our UrbaneApts.com web site around, and added additional code to the Walk Score widgets we had previously installed, so that when you clicked on the page for a specific apartment community, the Walk Score for that community comes up automatically, and you can expand it to show everything in the neighborhood.
Now Comes Hyper Local
With that little task behind us at the Lab, our Urbane prospects can now easily see whats around, what they can walk to, and close they are to things. Now, lets add real value, like,
- What are the coolest bars
- Who has the best burger
- Who are the great merchants
Drill Down
When you stay at a hotel the concierge knows the best places to dine, shop and all things local, right, well so should you. We have set out with our Flip Video and we are setting up, by community page six to nine Urbane Best Picks, so our prospects don’t have to guess.
We will have a single video with all six to nine venues per community on that community page, and we will do a like video for each community and surrounding venues. We are also embedding the venues logo on that community page, with a link to a single page mini web site that we set up that will provide a more detailed description of the venue, also laced with rich keywords and key search phrases. (Note to any ILS executive reading this, YES, We are letting the prospect leave our web site for a link to the local burger joint, but betting we just credited enough value with the prospect to cement the relationship, and be the prospects apartment comunity of choice by Not Gating them in)
We expect to be able to ad significant content to our web site, and thus enhance the SEO performance of our site. The point here is, what if your apartment started showing up on a Google Search for Best Burgers in (Your Town) Will you garnish more rentals, we think so, but think about the extended Brand Recognition, But mostly, you become the Hyper Local Expert for your Prospects and Residents, which is priceless,
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 -
Apartment Marketing Outreach; Jazz Up Your Outreach Efforts and Results Hello Apartment Marketing Friends! Hope your week has gone well, We have a few new Apartment Marketing Outreach Ideas for you to think about here at the Urbane Way Laboratory. At the Urbane Lab, We believe the advent of Social Media Marketing has changed the dynamics surrounding typical apartment outreach.Apartment...... -
How Many Channels Can You Manage The folks at eMarketer floated the question this week, Are Fewer Channels Better? It is an excellent question, and one that every apartment marketer should incorporate into their strategy, how many different places, or digital channels can you really be effectively. And does it matter how many? “There is a fair amount of learning...... -
Apartment Marketers; Learn How to Spot Web Trends Digital Web Traffic TrendsIf you are an Apartment Marketer, are you paying any attention to the correlation of your digital web site traffic to your physical traffic at your apartment communities? Are you looking at your web site analytics regularly benched against your leasing traffic numbers? Perhaps you have a...... - All Blog Posts Are Not Created SEO Equal We have been working on lots of different ideas here at the Urbane Way Laboratory about how to show up differently on Google Search Results. Urbane Apartments recently entered a new market, and wanted to get to Page One of a Google Search for "Apartments Birmingham MI"Community BlogsWe have long......
- Ning Mike, Excellent Post, Ning is likely the coolest single Social Media tool to come out yet, We are launching our Ning Site, tomorrow which will be imbedded into our Web Site and will be a main feature of our Home Page, Here’s the direct link for a sneak peak: http://urbaneapartments.ning.com/,......
Related Websites - Leading Five Methods To Generate Low Cost Web Page Visitors There is certainly 1 tough and rapidly rule in generating income for your internet site: A steady flow of website visitors. If nobody goes to your web site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Several sites have tried and failed in performing so, and these outcomes to......
- Strengthen Web Page Ranking In Three Uncomplicated Steps Substantial site list is important for every small business owner, specially Online Business. The larger your site has a high ranking on google success, the better website traffic it becomes. And we all believe that more site visitors usually means more income. So how do you in fact boost web......
- Do People With Fan Pages On Facebook Buy Likes? You considered social networking was all about obtaining in touch together with your friends and meeting new persons, proper? Not any more. Now, social networking media could be the quickest and easiest way of advertising your items. As well as ideal component is, it is probable to buy likes in......
- Using Social Bookmarking Websites In Promoting Your Business The goal of most business owners is always to make funds. This often results while using selling of a particular products or services. However, to offer that products or services business owners must alert everyone. Customer cannot buy a product or a service if they just don't know so it......
- I'm Even More Impressed With The Revamped Article Marketing Automation (AMA) I have already been utilizing the traffic generator tool Article Marketing Automation (AMA) for about half a year now to market approximately seven web-sites that I have established. I was impressed in the beginning by the technique and wide-ranging, easy to follow mini seminar materials. Nonetheless subsequently Article Marketing Automation......
