PropertyManager.com » branding

Everything Sends a Marketing Message

Lisa Trosien — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:09:57 +0000

When is the last time you reviewed all of the materials you provide to your prospective renter or resident? And I mean ALL of the materials, including papers left behind after a service request, applications, notices, event invitations, ads, flyers, outreach materials, stationery…the works. Here’s what you need to do:

Take all of those items I mentioned above (and any others I may have missed) and lay them all out.
Review each one carefully. Then ask yourself the following:

Are all of the logos the same on each piece?
Should the logo be updated for a more contemporary look and feel?
Are all of the fonts consistent?
Are the colors consistent?
Are the colors contemporary, or do they need an update?
Are there any typos or misspellings?
Have any of the pieces been copied to death (and show it)?
Is the contact information for the leasing office correct?
Does the contact information include the leasing office email address?
Do the pieces include social networking logos and ‘follow’ information?
Should the leasing office hours be included on any of the pieces? Are they included?
Are there photos on the materials and if so, are they current?
Do the photos contain images of people and if so, do the images comply with Fair Housing?
Do you have the Fair Housing logo on all of the materials?

After completing your audit, you may have some work to do. If so, get started as soon as possible. Find a graphic designer if you need to create the strongest possible statements.

Remember, anything that ‘touches’ the customer sends a strong marketing message. What are your materials saying about your company?

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Representing Your Company Well

Lisa Trosien — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 23:36:19 +0000

Word to the wise; if you’re carrying anything with your company logo on it, wearing anything with your company logo on it, or are well known enough to be associated with your company, your behavior needs to be upstanding and professional at all times.

Flashback to last week when I was traveling back to my hometown Chicago from Las Vegas. Hewlett-Packard’s national convention was last week in Las Vegas as well and the airport on Friday was full of HP employees wearing HP shirts, carrying HP backpacks and some carrying what appeared to be ‘executive’ HP briefcases. I knew they had their convention as they happened to be staying at the same hotel as myself. And it was a large convention. You don’t get to have a private concert with Paul McCartney if you’re not a big player if you know what I mean.

While standing in line to board my flight, I was literally pushed out of the way by two men from HP as they decided they could board ahead of me. A little history here; I’m what you call an ‘elite flyer’ with my airline. I am allowed to board in the very first grouping immediately after active military personnel in uniform. I guess these men didn’t think I had that status, even though I was in the elite line. As I stood there with my HP laptop in my briefcase, I have to admit I didn’t feel all that good about HP at the time.

Two men behind me in line were appalled at how the men had barged passed me. One said, “I apologize for my gender.” The other, an HP employee based upon his shirt logo, went further in saying, “They had no right to push you, or anyone for that matter, out of the way to board the plane. After all, it’s not going anywhere till we are all on board.”

Listen up everyone. Next time you’re in public, pay attention to your behavior. People are definitely watching.

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Low-Cost Ways to Upgrade Your Leasing Office

Marc Courtenay — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:00:53 +0000

When you’re meeting someone for the first time, you only get one chance to make a good impression. That’s also true when someone sees your rental-leasing office. How your office is arranged and the ambiance it presents will leave a lasting impression on owners, prospective residents and potential employees.

So, without further ado let me share with you some inexpensive ways to upgrade both the looks and the feel of your office.

If you have a reception room or lobby you can spruce it up easily. Consider a display case to show off company awards, publications and services. You can accomplish the same thing by framing and strategically placing your licenses, property management credentials, or photos of properties that you manage and are especially proud of.

Area rugs or runners can add some color to wood or cement flooring, and tiles are another option that provides a polished look. Although fluorescent lighting saves energy, a few well-placed lighting fixtures or track lights can provide your lobby with a style update and call attention to your most pleasing artwork and wall presentations.

It may seem obvious, but a new coat of paint is a simple way to brighten up your workplace without having to fork out a lot of money. While mainstay shades like traditional white or gray are more subdued, branching out with a bold color – be it a vermilion red wall or a sunny yellow pastel – can really liven up a lobby or waiting area.

I’m a big fan of thoughtfully placed indoor plants and trees. Select some nice looking planters for your lobby and use them for items that you can rotate seasonally. For example, in the winter they can hold Christmas trees or poinsettias, and in the spring, you can fill them with sunflowers and tulips. In addition to being inexpensive and low-maintenance, plants and indoor trees will keep the air fresh and oxygenated, and can even decrease the temperature in your office, lowering heating costs.

Let your office have some quality touches and accent points. Some Crown Molding can accomplish this brilliantly. They come in a wide variety of styles, materials and prices – from standard unfinished wood molding to pre-finished polystyrene that looks just like wood.

Even nicely stained floor moldings can go a long way to spice up walls and give a room some character. The idea is to reflect what a quality management business you are operating.

Let your office say to visitors, “we care about our work environment like we care about the homes we lease.”

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4 Facebook Lead Generation Tips for Property Managers

Charity Hisle — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:04:24 +0000

Can apartment communities increase their Facebook audience AND acquire leads?

Absolutely! We can take a page from a few top brands using Facebook today and apply similar techniques to our own marketing strategies. Here are 4 tips for getting leads on Facebook.

1. Talk WITH Fans
No, I don’t mean broadcast your specials! If you’ve been watching the trends lately, you’ve probably heard about the Old Spice YouTube campaign? Basically, Old Spice created impromptu videos in response to comments from their fans on Facebook and Twitter. (If you visit their Facebook page, click on the “Talk to OS Guy” tab. WARNING: Be prepared to spend some time watching the videos! They’re addictive!)

By having a 2-way conversation, the Old Spice Guy was able to increase sales by 107%. Sure, it was risky. People made negative, and stupid, comments but the campaign was a raving success. Old Spice was able to reach new customers with Facebook as a 2-way communication tool.

2. Get In Their Inbox
Does your community have a place for a prospect to request more information from you via Facebook? What about newsletter sign-up? The average Facebook user spends 7 hours per month on Facebook. Chili’s Facebook page has made it possible to target the users email Inbox. If commercial email campaigns return $43.62 for every dollar spent, then can you afford NOT to integrate your social strategies with your email strategies to generate more leads?

3. Offer Exclusive Incentives
A & W Restaurant knows what time it is! Friday, August 6th was National Root Beer Float Day. When a user “liked” their page a coupon became available for a “Free Float”.

What unique holiday can your community build on? How can your community offer a unique incentive worth sharing with their friends? Here are a few ideas:

National Dog Day is August 16th, National Cat Day is October 29th; fans could receive no pet deposit coupons for the months of August or October.

National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week is November 5-11th; with donation of supplies you could forego the pet deposit.

National Talk Like a Pirate Day falls on September 19th annually. Pick something creative and RUN with it Mate! Like no deposit for applicants wearing a pirate hat or an eye patch!

4. Make It Easy to Share
We all know Best Buy is the BEST at using social tools to their advantage. From Facebook to Twitter, Best Buy makes it easy for their customers to communicate online. BestBuy’s Facebook page allows customers to shop and share their thoughts and on Twitter they can ask questions to learn more about products from the Best Buy team.

How Can Sharing Generate Leads?

Photo and video tagging is very effective. Once a user tags themselves or their friends in photos taken at your community, that photo is then visible to all of their friends and on your Facebook page. As your residents to upload and tag photos from apartment community events to your page.

Refer-A-Friend contests have been extremely successful, if the right sharing tools exist on the Facebook page. The user that refers the most fans or generates the most leads wins! (Word of caution: acquaint yourself with Facebook’s terms of service before initiating contests.)

Leasing happens on Facebook. Now is the time to be unique and differentiate yourself from your competitors! How can you communicate with your residents and prospects in a unique way on Facebook?

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5 Steps to Get More from Your Online Marketing (Aug. 26 Webinar Recap)

Aimee Miller — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:26:03 +0000

Our webinar on Wednesday 8/26 (5 Steps to Get More from Your Online Marketing) was a great success! Thanks to Brent for co-hosting this event and to Mike Whaling from 30Lines for being so knowledgeable and fun to listen to. Here is the entire recorded webinar including the audio.

Mike did such a great job – the average rating for the webinar was 4.3 out of 5. We didn’t have time to get to many of the questions so Mike took the time to answer many of the questions (see below) we didn’t get to in the webinar – in fact this is just Part 1…there are even more questions and answers we’ll post next week. Thanks again to everyone for your participation!

We’ve included the presentation slides below for your convenience.

View more presentations from AppFolio | 30 Lines.

If you’re interested in more presentations like this one, check out our September 15th webinar, Website Best Practices for Property Managers.

How do you deal with negative untrue comments about your company or people that are posted on social media sites? – Mike
Even if the comments are untrue, responding to comments can show future readers that you’re listening and you’re trying to improve your business. ALWAYS BE PROFESSIONAL … take the high road, and avoid responding with any kind of personal attacks.

Why would you type in staff names in Google? – David
You never know where people may be having conversations about you or your brand online. When staff members are spending time building personal relationships with your residents, there’s a good chance that a resident may mention the person by name rather than naming the property itself. You may also want to plug in staff members to follow personal achievements or identify employees that may not be representing your organization appropriately away from the office.

What was that link for Google Local? – Morgan
You can claim your business listing on Google .

Has anyone had any experience with 10ants? – Kathy
10ants.com is a website that allows apartment communities to set up a private social networking site for their residents. Other similar services you may want to look at include AptConnect, LifeAt, Ning, and CollectiveX.

Can you tell us a little more about how to set up a property ad on Facebook? You mentioned that we should not develop the ad as a personal profile? – Suzanne
On Facebook, advertising, Business Pages and personal profiles are all different things.

Advertising: For ads that will show up across certain parts of Facebook, you’ll want to buy ads at www.facebook.com/advertising.

Business Pages: A business page is a public presence that enables you to share your business with Facebook users. Pages are very easy to create, yet they are very customizable – they are a very easy way to share information and send updates to customers and fans. To create a business page, start here: www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.

Personal profiles: Personal profiles are the general accounts that everyone gets when they first sign up for a Facebook account. It is against the Facebook terms and conditions for businesses to use personal profiles for commercial use.

Are there websites that allow you to start a blog? Or do you have to create your own? – Michelle
You can easily start your own blog with services like Blogger, WordPress.com, Posterous or Tumblr. All of these services are free. Sites like MySpace offer a blogging feature, or you can use the Notes feature in Facebook, although I wouldn’t recommend these for your primary blog.

For additional customization, I would recommend having a unique name for your blog (avoid blogspot.com) and I would use a service like WordPress.org.

What’s the advantage of only talking about the community and not the property itself? – Morgan
Talking about the community helps in several ways. It helps expand your audience to people who may otherwise not have been aware of your community. It positions you as a resource for your residents, which they will appreciate. It also opens opportunities to connect with local business owners and influencers who can become advocates for your property.

Can you give more specifics as to why the Facebook example violated Facebook terms? Also, do you have an example of a strong Facebook page for apartments? – Monica
It is against the Facebook terms of service for businesses to use personal profiles for commercial use. If Facebook finds pages violating their terms like this, they will shut you down and you will lose all of your contacts. Additionally, business pages are opt-in for the user, which is better in the eyes of the law when considering Fair Housing issues.

There are many good examples of properties doing a nice job with their Facebook pages, including Watervue Apartments and Studio Green at UD. What is the average cost, in TIME, for keeping up all these services? – Heather, Julia
I don’t know that there is an average time in cost, but I would plan to spend 20-60 minutes a day building your web presence … maybe more at first. Focus on ways to save yourself time, either by automating parts of the process using tools like RSS, or by getting other staff members, residents and locals involved. Create a platform where people can share what they’re passionate about — you’ll find that others will be excited to help.

Craigslist recently has allowed Vaultware links (real time availability), yet our ads started getting flagged after we added them. Any insights? – Kim
You may want to try asking for feedback from the Craigslist help forums (www.craigslist.org/about/help), but be prepared for people who will use this as an opportunity to have some fun at your expense. Understanding the Craigslist terms and the expectations of the Craigslist user community will go a long way toward ensuring your ads stay up.

How do I see tweets on Twitter from this seminar? – Morgan
You can see any of the tweets from the webinar by searching for the hashtag #mfimktg (Twitter search link: www.bit.ly/dlA7o).

Do you see Facebook becoming a search engine? – Matt
Yes and no. Facebook is certainly providing more tools to make business pages, personal status updates and other information more accessible via search. However, most users will continue to see Facebook as a platform for social interaction. Use the search function for business research and insights into real-time data, but also don’t forget about the interactions that will enable users to share your content with their networks of friends.

What are the “not to do’s” with social media? – Jonathan

Don’t start by promoting yourself. Think of social media like a cocktail party – you don’t walk into a party, introduce yourself and immediately go for the sale. You get to know people, have a conversation, learn their interests then find ways to help them.

Don’t be boring. No one will want to interact with you or share your information with their contacts if it’s not interesting.

Don’t ignore multimedia.

How can you make it easier to give feedback? – Mark
Be accessible, and be approachable. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to find your phone number, your email or a contact form. As an example, online retailer Zappos.com puts their 24/7 customer service number at the top of every page on their website. You can also use feedback sites like Yelp.com, GetSatisfaction.com or UserVoice.com to encourage customer feedback and Q&A … put links on your own website so your customers know where to go to provide feedback and reviews.

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New Opportunities to Market Your Company

Aimee Miller — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:16:20 +0000

I was walking out of Trader Joe’s today and noticed a beautifully painted garbage can. Typically garbage cans are not really my area of focus but this one looked good. It was freshly painted (green) and the paper below it warned “Fresh Frazee Paint.” Kind of clever – they probably gave out the “wet paint” hand–outs when purchasing the Frazee Paint. If you think about how paint works, the paint–viewer really doesn’t know the brand used (and do we care?) but Frazee figured out a non-intrusive way to get a little bit of airtime with the general public.

I’ve shopped for paint before and it is really confusing, there are a LOT of brands and choices – beyond just which color to use, which is paralyzing enough. Do you buy the more expensive brand? Save some money with the cheaper one? What could possibly be the difference between brands…is it how easy the paint goes on? How long it lasts? Someone probably has an entire blog on this topic but as a regular consumer I don’t know. But, as a person who appreciates marketing, I like how Frazee found an easy way to warn me about not getting dirty while also reminding me who they are.

Whether the customer is an owner, tenant or a potential software buyer, it is our job always to look for these opportunities to remind them who we are in a casual and informative way. Some great examples I’ve seen from property managers are providing welcome kits for new residents that go beyond just the logistics of what is needed to live in the property (like information on how to use the appliances). These welcome kits have the property management company logo and contact information on every helpful item – from listings of local restaurants who deliver to a customized map of great walks or hikes in the area. When your logo and contact information are on these items that will help your residents have a better experience in your property you build a stronger relationship. On the owner side, sending a regular newsletter that offers updates on what your company is doing to better manage their properties builds trust. We received a great suggestion from one of our customers – they wanted to send their owners a quick overview of AppFolio with sample reports. This gives owners more insight into what you’re doing and the investments you’re making and reinforces that their decision to work with you was a great one.

At the end of the day it is a lot of these little things that build up your brand identity. It is more than just printing your logo on your standard marketing material – people already expect to see that and often overlook it. Find ways to associate your company’s brand with something of value to your customers and it will pay off in the long run…you might even see me at the hardware story buying Frazee paint!

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