Apartment Marketing; Social Media and Contests, Do they really work?

March 6, 2010
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Contests seem to be an avenue to Social Media Engagement, at least that is the target. But how effective are contests? We have profiled two apartment marketing video contests, one past and one present, and we have reached out to those apartment operators for some feed back.
The question for debate here is do contests drive the desired result, and if so, at what cost. In both cases, the grand prize was, is a years free rent, which roughly calculated could be $15,000 plus. On one hand an argument could be made that occupancy is lower than normal, so giving away one unit has little impact on NOI, or maybe even slightly improves NOI because someone is now paying the utilities.
The question here is, how much buzz and “word of mouth marketing’ do these contests create, and is it a flash in the pan, or is there any lasting benefit. We would love to here you weigh in on your thoughts.
Here are the two companies profiled;

Trillium Residential Communities, LLC, a developer and manager of luxury multi-family communities, launched a YouTube video contest that will give one year of free rent to one Phoenix-area resident. The contest kick-off is in conjunction with Trillium’s new website, recently launched.


The “Trillium Free Rent” contest gives the public the opportunity to create a YouTube video that shows why the contestant wants to live at a Trillium Phoenix apartment community. Five finalists will be chosen (based largely on video creativity) and the contest will be open for a public vote from May 1 to May 9, 2010. The future resident with the most votes will win a one-bedroom apartment at the Trillium community of their choice for one year.

“In launching our new website, we thought it would be fun to reach out to potential renters through a video contest and give them the opportunity to live the Trillium lifestyle for free,” said Lesa LaRocca, president and partner of Trillium Residential. “We understand that times are tough, and this is one way for us to give back.”

According to Melissa Rzeppa from Serendipit Consulting who handles the marketing for Trillium,
Traffic on the new site has already doubled from normal daily unique visitors, so we’re excited to see that it’s working. Our goal was to create a modern site that was easy-to-navigate and made it easy for potential renters to rent an apartment. Our goals for the Year Free Rent Contest at Trillium:

1. To connect with potential renters via social media. It’s the way that the majority of our target audience is getting their info, and we want to reach out to them through the mediums that they are most comfortable in.
2. To increase exposure of the entire Trillium portfolio in the Phoenix metro area.
3. To give back to our target audiences in this tough economy.

The second profile was on the video contest done by Mark Juleen at the JC Hart Companies. Per Mark’s email to me;

In general, our goal was to create customer generated content and testimonials for our communities, and to build better recognition for J.C. Hart as a brand name of apartments. We strived to get 3 videos (on average) from each community. We surpassed that goal having 12 properties.

Here are the results.

Over 40 resident testimonial videos were submitted for the Live the Life Video contest showing “Why they love their J.C. Hart Apartment Community.” All posted onto YouTube and then submitted an entry form to J.C. Hart with a chance to win 1 of 6 prizes, with the grand prize being 1 year free rent.

The submitted videos were viewed over 30,000 times during the contest period and continue to be viewed. The blog website created for the finalists has been visited over 15,000 times (still gets traffic daily), and has had over 30,000 page views. Most of this viewing and traffic occurred over a 3 month period between Feb. and April of 2009. The visibility for the J.C. Hart brand and interaction with our residents was at an all time high and continues as a result of the contest.

Costs: 1 Year Rent – Approx. $10,000
Other Prizes – Approx. $5000
Administrative Costs – $5000

We justified this by canceling some print marketing saving us approx. $86,000 for the year. We took $20,000 of that and invested it into this promotion.

So, What are your thoughts on contests, are they a flash in the pan, do they have sustaining results and are they worth the cost?

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;

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  • amandaenglish

    With regard to the JC Hart scenario did occupancy increase in a way that was tangible enought to offset the expense? 40 resident video's, 30,000 page views and did it generate any leases? If most of the viewing occurred between February and April of 2009 …. what has it been like since? If it was a one time 3 month increased exposure to the website I would say no. $20,000 is not worth 30,000 page views. Did the expense get allocated back to all 12 properties?

  • UrbaneWay

    Good Morning, Thanks for stopping by, Great question, frankly, that IS the question. I will let Mark answer that one based on their experience. We have never really done a traditional kind of contest like this, so my comments are only theory, but my gut reaction with contests in general is they are a Flash in the Pan, with a very defined Shelf Life.

  • UrbaneWay

    Posted on the Urbane Way facebook fan Page;Amanda Kitts- English I wish I had more data… :-) Like how many leases did they get after the video based on the contest or did they see a % increase in retention? Did all 12 sites share in the cost or did the company as a whole pay for it?5 hours ago · Stephanie Barbabosa I would also like to see how many new leases they got and physical traffic driven to the site due to the contest or word of mouth. What was their historic change in numbers for that time period? I would bet that the contest helped retention and provided content for marketing only.Have you talked to the folks at Korman? They are giving a free year of rent but I think it is tied to a drawing and move-in date. This one is the traffic/lease generator. Guess I should do both!4 hours ago · The Urbane Way @Amanda and @Stephanie, Thanks for taking the time to comment, Excellent questions, Mark Juleen will weigh in, I will move your comments over to the blog

  • mbrewer

    Hi EI think contests are a great way to build valuable buzz… In my mind, it's not the contest or the prize that is important here – it's what you do with that audience once you have their attention.

  • UrbaneWay

    Hey Mike, Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate your input.What do you do with the audience of a video contest once you have it, in your opinion? Curious as to what you are thinking,

  • mbrewer

    Well – I have to tell you with all honesty – I don't know the answer to that question. That is not to duck the question but I think attention is becoming nearly impossible to keep anymore. There is so much out there competing for it and so much out there to fill it. All that being said, as we work through our Get Social with Mills new media initiative – we will no doubt use video contests to attract and participate with our various audiences. And, I promise to share more then…

  • Mark Juleen

    Amanda, thanks for the questions. I'll do my best to better outline our results and our goals. As we all know people use numerous sources when looking for an apartment. Because this was not a "traditional" push marketing strategy it's tough to pinpoint specific leases as a result, but I do know we did have prospects mention the contest. Yes, from a "traditional" perspective I could see that marketers would look at this as a something being difficult to justify. It's not pushing a message at people to "Rent Today" or "1 BR $600/mo. – Now Leasing", and there was no 800 number attached to it. And as I told Eric, (and you can read in my quote in this post) we did not specifically set a goal for additional leases or additional occupancy. If we got 1 more lease b/c of the promotion it paid for itself, and the additional prizes and costs for the promotion all came out of the savings we had by canceling our print advertising expenses. We still saved approx. $30/unit annually in marketing costs, our physical traffic to our properties was up as a whole 2008 vs. 2009, and we found that renewals were up nearly 10% in 2009 vs. 2008.Don't get me wrong, we of course want to see our occupancy go up, but looked at this as more of an brand strategy than a campaign. A strategy to build brand awareness, Google juice, resident relations, and obtaining resident testimonials. This was not about building “leads”. One thing we really don’t focus on at J.C. Hart is volume of leads, but instead, quality of leads. Cost per lead is not something we monitor. By focusing on brand awareness, building a better Google ranking, communicating with our residents, and sharing our resident’s stories, we feel our leads will be and are of a better quality. This allows us to actually reduce our marketing expenses, and target customers that really want to see the value of a J.C. Hart experience vs. comparing our apartments based on price. We did spread the costs of the contest to our 12 communities, and because the main prize was the rent, that did not impact the budget all at one time. As Eric eluded to, we also make the argument that the 1 apartment of free rent really wasn't a true cost as we had vacancy anyway. Renting 1 extra apartment as a result of the contest really paid for that cost, and I’m confident that we made a better connection with at least 1 new resident last year as a result of the contest. Our word of mouth, referrals, resident relations, and brand exposure was completely worth it in my mind. We've done 2 additional promos since (with smaller prizes) on facebook, and the facebook page traffic has always spiked. We're still experimenting, but with these statistics I believe running contests is a great way to up your exposure regardless of the prize. Saving $30/unit in marketing costs for the year, increased web traffic, increased physical traffic, and 40 video resident testimonials seemed like a win to me. We do continue to get about 5 hits a day just to the winners blog, and I have not checked the YouTube views recently but I can only imagine those views are up. We plan to continue to run contests throughout the year, and feel that running 1 contest every month (even with small prizes like concert tickets or iPods) can help build better brand loyalty with our current resident base. To us, that is more valuable than any rent special or listing that goes in a book right next to all our competition, and that’s how we justify the investment.It’s not a typical strategy, but while many were complaining about concessions last year we were just focused on a better resident experience and saw revenue up as a whole for our portfolio. This contest was just a piece of that strategy and it was a lot of fun. I hope that better clarifies where we were coming from and why we believe the contest was a success. Thanks for the questions.

  • UrbaneWay

    Thanks for openly sharing all of this information Mark, Much Appreciated,

  • Mike Whaling

    Social media is ideal for contests, but you need to have the right goals and desired results in mind. Thanks for sharing these examples, Eric.Mark, thanks for sharing your thought process and results. I don't think I've heard a better argument yet for the value of building a strong portfolio brand. Great job with the contest, and thanks for sharing your results. I hope Trillium and others are able to see similar benefits from their efforts.

  • UrbaneWay

    Hi Mike, Thanks for weighing in,I to am looking forward to hearing what Trillium's results are. They do have a pretty cool new web site, and I hope we hear some feedback from them. To your point, a huge kudo's to Mark for sharing the details with everyone. I hope others follow mark's example,