You’re invited! Join Apartment Guide’s Content Marketing Webinar on May 22nd

Posted on May 3, 2013 by ag-admin

With social media strategies now firmly entrenched among apartment operators, the next frontier in landing leases has suddenly shifted to content marketing. But what is content marketing, and how does it fit into your overall marketing strategy? Here’s a hint: It’s not all about you anymore, but it is about uber-local content that includes highly-compelling pics, reviews and recommendations, as well as an in-the-know narrative that tells the true story of life at your community.

Marketing in a World Gone Mobile Webinar

Posted on February 20, 2013 by ag-admin

Join Chuck Martin for an engaging thought leadership webinar highlighting the technological and behavioral changes caused by the Mobile revolution and the implications for marketers everywhere. The massive adoption of smartphones and tablets empowers apartment-seeking consumers like never before and opens new opportunities and challenges for marketers. We will identify a range of mobile applications and capabilities that are transforming the consumer experience, exploring the implications for the apartment finding process.

Click HERE to register for this FREE Webinar

Chuck Martin is the CEO of The Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center of Media Research at MediaPost Communications Inc. Through his research and public speaking, Martin has been a digital pioneer in the interactive marketplace for more than a decade.

Must-Haves for Any Gen Y Apartment

Posted on February 19, 2013 by tpham

We all have a list of what we look for to find the “perfect” apartment. From a gated community to one with a pool, and from the neighborhood to the distance to work, we all have some idea of what we’re looking for. Generation Y is no exception. They judge an apartment on more than what’s inside of it; they check out the social environment, entryways and community decor, as well as the amenities of the community. If you’re looking to market your community to the 80 million young adults who are entering the apartment rental market, consider their must-haves.

<a href="http://www.apartmentguide.com/blog/must-haves-for-any-apartment-what-gen-y-is-looking-for">img src=”http://www.apartmentguide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gen-y-apartment-must-haves.png” alt=”Gen Y Must Haves for any Apartment” title=”What Gen Y Looks for in an Apartment” width=”650″ height=”2526″ /></a><br /><a href="http://www.apartmentguide.com/college/">Apartment Guide – Find Off Campus Housing for Rent</a>

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How to Sell the Advantages of New Construction

Posted on January 29, 2013 by ag-admin

Recent findings by the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that new home construction spending was up by 28 percent in 2012 – the demand for new living structures is not only rebounding, but growing.

New construction apartment communities offer several major brand differentiators that older competitors just cannot match. While a renter in a new building may not get to choose appliances or how to paint the walls, he or she still gets to enjoy many of the same advantages that make building a home so appealing.

Sell the unique advantages of new apartment construction with these marketing tips.

New construction amenities
To a renter, newly-constructed apartments offer the best in modern conveniences. Features and amenities that are “nice to have” in older communities — things like built-in wireless Internet access, docks for smart phones and MP3 players, or state-of-the-art media rooms and gyms — are often standard in new construction properties. If you’re marketing a new apartment that offers the latest and greatest in convenience features like these, you have plenty to tout.

Energy efficiency
When you consider the unique selling advantages of new construction, don’t forget to point out how living in a new property may help renters save money. Make sure to mention when you have installed low-flow toilets, energy-efficient windows, solar panels and upgraded insulation. All of these green building features demonstrate your property’s commitment to the environment, and they can have a strong appeal to potential renters’ hearts — and their pocketbooks.

Location, location, location
The trend in new construction apartment living is to build properties in urban areas close to jobs and public transportation. For a renter, living in a new apartment that’s just minutes from work, shopping and entertainment is a major selling point.

The other major location-related selling advantage? Along with new residential construction typically come new businesses seeking to cater to residents with boutique shops, small markets and intimate restaurants. When a new-construction community features proximity to small businesses or even leases space to them right in the community, that’s a major brand differentiator.

The emotional factor
Perhaps the biggest selling advantage is the emotional factor connected with new construction.

Consider this: in a consumer’s mind, new means special. Whether it’s being the first to drive a new car, take the first bite of a gourmet dish, or slip into a new dress, new experiences make people feel lucky, unique and excited.

These feelings can also be associated with your new construction rental property. Help your potential residents envision what it would be like to live in a brand-new building, and they’ll feel like a million bucks. That’s a feeling your competitors may not be able to match.

How Do Students Search for Apartment Rentals?

Posted on July 17, 2012 by ag-admin

Want to reach students looking for apartment rentals? Moving “outside of the box” with your marketing efforts could help you tap into the high demand for college apartments.

Online search is key
Generation Y renters – most of today’s college students — seek out infrastructure to support their tech-obsessed habits. Knowing that technology plays a huge part in their lives, it’s not hard to see how going online with your marketing might be the best way to reach student renters.

Many rental property marketers have seen success using the following online marketing tools to reach students:
• Social networks like Facebook
• Facebook ads targeted to local students
• Craigslist
• Online classifieds in the college newspaper
• General searches on search engines

According to Catalyst, a Texas-based marketing firm that specializes in student apartments, general apartment searches conducted through Google were the single most popular method for student searches. This research indicates that amping up your web presence and paying attention to the SEO value of your online platforms is essential to reaching a young, targeted renting audience.

Thinking outside the box
But don’t hang your hat entirely on technology as the only way to market student apartment rentals. As the saying goes, everything old has a way of becoming new again, and these traditional marketing methods can also prove effective in garnering student apartment referrals:

• Setting up a kiosk at the student center of a nearby university
• Placing ads in the college paper
• Word of mouth from student to student

Word of mouth in particular is an extremely effective way to market student housing. To help encourage word-of-mouth referrals, you may want to reach out to the student housing office at the local college. This office may provide students with a listing of nearby off-campus housing, and that’s a list you definitely want to be on.

Don’t forget about the parents
When you’re talking about marketing college apartments, it’s important not to forget that mom and dad are often key decision makers in a student’s apartment search. In many cases, the student may do the legwork involved in the apartment search, but it’s the parent who really pulls the trigger — and pays the bills.

So don’t count out parental influence and bias as you market student rentals. As Forbes Magazine points out, parents are playing a large role in the student housing boom. Concerned moms and dads want to know that their young students — particularly their daughters — are living in private, secure spaces. And the wealthiest of these parents are willing to pay high rents to ensure their children are safe and sound in off-campus housing. If you’re marketing to college students, it may be advantageous to consider which brand differentiators and marketing vehicles could best convince their parents to sign on the dotted line.

How to Market Your Property to Generation Y

Posted on June 21, 2012 by ag-admin

Who are Generation Y? Members of the group may well be your next residents, if not your current ones. Find out how to appeal to the renting interests of this young and upcoming demographic.

The next generation
Generation Y, also known as the Millennials, are those born in the mid-80s, and after. Members of this generation have grown up in the digital age. Their love of technology is partnered with an environmental sensibility.

Generation Y tends to be savvy, well-read, well-traveled (either in person or virtually) and ambitious. Theirs is a generation that knows it can bend the world to its needs in some ways, with flexible workplaces, remote jobs, apps that do everything, and information available on multiple platforms 24/7.

The members of Generation Y recently graduated from school into the workforce and are poised to make their mark in the world using the latest technologies, while also having experienced the privations of the prolonged recession. They realize that unemployment, debt and little or no savings is a current reality.

What are they looking for?
Millennials are an interesting combination of entitlement and practicality. They expect access to information and activity via their phones, pads, computers and televisions. Generation Y renters may be willing to put up with limited square footage to save money (much of their life is spent virtually, which makes it more compact) in return for amenities like a hip location, Wi-Fi, community activity, smart design, high-tech fitness centers and green rental community practices.

What should you offer?
The option to personalize their spaces and opportunities to socialize are high on the list of what Gen Yers want in their next rental. Wall-to-wall Wi-Fi is a must, since dead spots in reception leave these tenants cold. Consider built-in iPod and iPhone docks in units.

Beyond wiring, look for ways to make rentals stylish and modular. Moveable track lighting, hardwood floors that residents can cover with their choice of modular floor coverings, accent walls painted the color of their choice, open floor plans and sliding partitions are all appealing to these tenants.

But what if you’re not developing a rental community and you can’t choose the floor plan? For property owners working with more conventional or existing housing, living appeal for these residents can be provided in shared aspects of the rental community, such as rooftop hangouts, Cyber Cafes, and wired laundry rooms. A redesign of a main entrance featuring modern furnishings and a hip sensibility can set the right tone.

As green living is important to these tenants, consider installing smart elements like rooftop catchment for rainwater, community gardens , energy-saving appliances, gray water systems, composting and, of course, plenty of recycling opportunities. Generation Y prides itself on doing things the smart way and will appreciate living environments that reinforce this self-perception.

Gen Y is also very attached to their pets; consider the benefits of being pet-friendly and offering a portion of your grounds as a pet park.

How to reach them
Begin your approach to reaching these renters using their own milieu: go online. Post vacancies on online listing sites, as well as in major social media outlets.

Online rental applications are a must for this group of tenants, especially because they’ll want to know whether they are approved as soon as possible. Consider, too, that many Generation Y prospects may need cosigners for their loans, so be prepared to work with them.

Generation Y is the world’s fastest growing group of tenants, and they will likely be your bread-and-better for decades to come. Get to know them and what they’re looking for in a rental now so that you can make them your next happy residents.

Why Your Community Should Be on Twitter

Posted on May 17, 2012 by ag-admin

If your business isn’t on Twitter, you’re missing out on potential high-quality exposure to nearly 10 million users. Here are seven reasons why you can’t ignore Twitter as a valuable marketing tool for your apartment community.

It’s free
Marketing a rental business through the usual avenues — newspaper and magazine ads, TV spots, radio, PPC campaigns — is expensive. So why wouldn’t you get your rental business a free Twitter account? Unlike the aforementioned paid marketing tools, Twitter offers you a lot of bang for your non-existent buck. Not only can your rental business use a Twitter account to reach new customers, but you can also use Twitter to broadcast news, build relationships with other businesses, establish your brand voice, and facilitate customer service. The ROI on a free Twitter account could be incredible.

Everyone else is using it
All the power players in your industry are on Twitter: MSN Real Estate, Remax, Coldwell Banker — the list goes on and on. Since everyone’s doing it — from the biggest names in property management to the guy who owns the shoe repair shop next door — you should be using Twitter as a marketing tool, too.

Street cred
Not only will getting a Twitter account help your rental business leverage a hot, new marketing trend, but your very presence on this social media platform says to potential customers that your property management team and community are “with it.” A Twitter account tells connected consumers that your business is just the kind of forward-thinking outfit that they should be interested in.

The ability to spy
A big part of marketing a successful rental business is watching what your competitors are doing. With a Twitter account, you can easily keep an eye on all of them. Following your competitors is a way to watch how they’re interacting with customers, monitor your competitor’s customer feedback, and help you find out about their promotions.

It’s fast
Another reason you should be using Twitter as a marketing tool is because it’s one of the fastest ways to distribute news about your rental business. A large number of your potential and current tenants are on Twitter, and if you want to let them know about an event, a special deal, or any other relevant information, they’ll get the news instantly when you tweet it.

Don’t underestimate the ability of a 140-character tweet to communicate your most important messages. While today’s consumers might easily delete your email newsletters, tune out your radio ads, or ignore your web site, they’re pretty likely to digest the entirety of a short, sweet tweet. Twitter is a very powerful medium for distributing information.

Better search visibility
In any given city, apartment hunters have hundreds or even thousands of choices when it comes to finding a rental property online. That’s why it’s crucial that your rental business lands among the top spots in the search engines.

Marketing with Twitter can help you achieve better organic search rankings and climb closer to the top of the page on Google or Bing. Why? While the exact algorithm for calculating search rankings is unknown, it’s common knowledge that search engines are starting to take social media activity into account when it comes to ranking web sites. The companies that make a bigger splash in social media – the ones that get a lot of “likes” and are “re-tweeted” — are winning better positions on that coveted first page of search results.

To connect
If you’re still not convinced that your rental business should be on Twitter, then consider the whole point of this incredibly powerful social media tool: to connect people to other people.

When you think about tweeting, you might imagine yourself writing post after post promoting your apartment community’s specials. But what you might not realize is that a Twitter account also lets you engage your customers to get truly useful feedback about your property. Those tidbits of insider information can help you take your business to the next level.

And even more importantly, when you interact with your customers in a personal and positive way, other Tweeters see it. So Twitter’s true value is that it makes your business visible to a wide network of folks — and that’s what every business hopes for from its marketing plan.

Tips for Optimizing Your Web Site for Mobile Users

Posted on March 12, 2012 by ag-admin

According to Morgan Stanley, mobile web is going to be bigger than desktop web access by 2015. That means that if you’ve only got one version of your web site, the time to start thinking about mobile optimization is now.

Mobile users tend to surf the Internet for different purposes than desktop users. Knowing how to optimize for mobile starts with understanding the goals and desires of both user groups. In these tips for mobile optimization, we’ll look at what makes mobile users different than desktop users and examine a few keys for designing the best mobile site.

What makes mobile users tick

What makes mobile search so useful is that it offers smart device users the chance to get quick, helpful — and usually local — information. Consider all the reasons why your customers might visit your rental property’s mobile site:

To find your nearby location(s)
To get contact information
To check out rental rates and specials
To see your rental property’s community and units

Because smart phones and tablet computers have small screens, mobile users aren’t likely to do in-depth research on your property via mobile web. Mobile users visiting a rental property’s site have likely already done their in-depth research at home in front of a PC (with a normal size screen and a fast Internet connection). They’re also less likely to spend a lot of time on your mobile site because their web connection may be slow or they may pay high data rates for their smart phone plans.

Given all of these factors, it’s a good idea to assume that anyone surfing your mobile site just wants a few quick bits of information — perhaps because they are on their way to pay you a visit in-person.

If you want to see which parts of your web site mobile users visit most, you need only turn to your web analytics. Most programs will tell you how many mobile users visit your site per day or month and where they linger longest. Refer to this behavior when you’re deciding which areas of your site to optimize for mobile users.

Designing for mobile optimization

Now that you understand the intent of the mobile user, it’s time to think like a minimalist when it comes to the design and content of your mobile site. The following considerations are important for creating the most satisfying mobile search experience:

Keep the homepage simple. Unlike your traditional web site, which should explain all the features and benefits of your property in depth, a mobile site should be more directed and limited in scope. Just the basic facts.
Go lo-fi on design details. Another thing to keep in mind is that you’re designing a mobile site for a wide audience — and a wide range of technologies. Keep your design simple enough so that it loads quickly and works on a wide range of devices. That means no Flash applet and minimal use of images and video. (Do make your mobile site’s branding consistent with your traditional site, no matter how sparse the design details.)
Test, test, test. Since a broad range of mobile users will visit your site, the best way to ensure a satisfying experience for as many users as possible to test a new mobile site on many types of devices.

As you can see, the key to mobile optimization is to keep things simple.

Maintenance required

You’d never dream of letting the information on your traditional site get outdated, and the same goes for your mobile site. As technology is constantly changing, it’s necessary to update your mobile site regularly to ensure it always works on the latest and greatest mobile devices.

For more information about Apartment Guide’s Mobile Apps geared towards the mobile user, click here or go to listonapartmentguide.com

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