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

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?

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

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,

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.

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.