CLASS Leasing: Facebook Phone?

Facebook is constantly evolving to keep up with the times of new developers and websites flooding the web with unique ideas and concepts. This is one such development that Facebook just recently implemented that actually allows you to verbally talk, or leave voice messages, to people via Facebook. Facebook chat was a great concept in itself in that you could see if a friend of yours was online at the same time as you, then simply click on their name to begin chatting. Now with the same concept in mind, if a friend in online at the same time, you simply click on their name and they can hear your message verbally as opposed to the basic typed message. It is advances like these to this powerhouse website that can only make you wonder...what will they think of next??

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Break The Buying Cycle

Often times when prospects begin their apartment search, it becomes a monotonous routine of visiting apartment community after apartment community. On any given Saturday afternoon, a prospect could potentially visit five to ten apartment communities and then finally sit down at the end of the day to review their findings from each potential home. With so much information between all of the different flyers and handouts a prospect will accumulate over a day's time, it can be very tedious for a prospect to remember the unique benefits of each property.

Therefore, it is very advantageous for a leasing specialist to break the buying cycle after a prospect visits their community. A very simple and full proof way for the leasing specialist to accomplish this goal is to convince the prospect to go out to lunch/dinner after they tour the property and through a co-operative marketing plan with a local restaurant, this would be very easy to accomplish. The leasing specialist can guarantee traffic for the restaurant in exchange for some free lunch/dinner vouchers that can only be used up to an hour after the prospect visits the community. In doing so, the leasing specialist will not only be driving traffic to the restaurant, therefore providing the restaurant owner with more business, but will also be breaking the buying cycle of apartment shopping. This will give the prospect time to really discuss and ponder about the most important apartment community they saw, yours, and potentially make their decision right then, since they will be full from a great free meal thanks to visiting their new home, your property.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: What Are QR Codes??

I felt that the title for this blog as "What Are QR Codes" was very fitting considering the circumstances under which I learned the answer to this very question.

I was in the Denver airport about a year ago and as I was walking through the terminal, I noticed a small gathering of people at the bottom of an escalator facing the underneath wall. Each individual had their phones out, which were all mostly Iphones, and had their phones pointed at the wall at three very large square barcode shaped objects. Above each of the three barcodes was the title to three well known novels: Moby Dick, Gulliver's Travels and A Tale Of Two Cities. Finally I asked one of the individuals what exactly they were doing and the response was where my answer to the question "What Are QR Codes??" came into fruition. These individuals were using an application on their smart phones that allowed them to scan the large barcode, or as I now knew was called a QR code, and in doing so, downloaded each of these novels to their phone for free.

QR codes, short for Quick Response codes, have been used for quite some time in Japan, but are just recently starting to make a surge in the US industry as a means for consumers to learn more about a business at the convenience of a touch of a button.

QR codes have started to infiltrate the apartment industry, but are still a new entity in the grand scheme of things. Where these codes could be very beneficial in the apartment industry is that they are yet again a new and unique way for a community to market to future residents. Instead of having a piece of marketing material with the lots of wording about a community, how about something as simple as the property's name, a QR code and a slogan at the bottom? A flyer like this would intrigue an individual, just as the billboard at the Denver airport did me, to take their phone out and scan the QR code, even if they weren't interested in an apartment!

These QR codes are just another example of how marketing is continuing to rapidly develop to more convenient and technologically savvy means. QR codes are an incredible technology, relatively inexpensive and I am excited to see how they revolutionize the marketing field for the apartment industry.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Google Insights Study

One of the topics I briefly cover in our online portion of training is the usage of Google Insights. Google Insights allows a user to see what the search trends are for a certain topic based upon location and time of the year. This is a very beneficial tool if one is trying to figure out the wording for a blog, link words, or just a headline for a website. By knowing how individuals search for any given topic, a user is able to gear their information towards the masses in hopes of accruing views from those searching for relevant information.

Here is an article about a study done by Michael Leander Company that shows just how Google Insights can inevitably increase the hits on your specified topic.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Foursquare And Your Community

Foursquare is one of the newest social media outlets for apartment communities to benefit from. It is still only about two years old, but Foursquare is continuing to spread at a rapid pace as more and more people are starting to utilize the discounts offered by this site. I had been searching for an article that described the direct benefits of Foursquare to an actual apartment community and stumbled upon this one in Multifamily Insiders this morning. This article is a great read and I strongly encourage everyone to implement Foursquare to your property in coordination with Facebook.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Your Craigslist Ads!

We always push everyone to post Craigslist ads on a regular basis, because it is such an effective marketing tool that can be done throughout the day and most of all, it is completely free!

It is very beneficial to utilize numerous templates and formats when designing ads in order to see what exactly prospects are responding to. By making different ads, one is able to gear more marketing time towards designing the ads that are grabbing individuals' attention and therefore, drive in more traffic.

With that being said he are some great examples of ads that leasing specialists have used that have shown success by either driving traffic in the door and in some cases, leading to leases!

Ken
Tina
Kimberly
Mike
Chris
Heather
Natalie
Caroline
Alicia
Seth
Crystal
Jessica
Bryan

Great job everyone and sorry if any of the links stop working, or if I missed anyone. There were some technical difficulties loading a few ads.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Building A Facebook Page

Building a Facebook page for a property from the ground up takes a great deal of time, patience and persistence in order for the page to become successful.

Sean has done a great job getting future prospects involved at his current assignment at 560 On Main and it is only a matter of time before the leases start rolling in. Facebook pages are a game of numbers, so the more individuals that "like" the page, the more people that will be able to see how great the property is.

560 On Main

Keep up the great work Sean!

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Great Idea For Facebook Involvement

I have written numerous blogs about Facebook and how it only becomes beneficial as more and more individuals "like" a property's site. The question that can often stump a property is: How do we get more people to like our page?

There are many ways to get viewers engaged on a property page and here is a great way to do so. Make an announcement to all residents via flyer, community blog, etc. letting them know that the property will be donating to a charity once a month/quarter/year. The residents will be the ones that get to choose which charity receives the donation and the voting will be done via Facebook "likes." Therefore, in order to nominate, or vote for a charity, each resident must join the property Facebook page as someone that likes the page. Once a person likes the property page, then they can nominate, or vote, for their charity of choice. The charity that gets the most likes over a specified period of time, receives the donation. Great idea for a great cause!

Awesome idea Monica!

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Google And Social Search

Google has yet again come out with a new feature that is designed to enhance the web browsing experience for it's users. Social Search is very similar to Facebook's "like" button, in that the user can +1 a particular search result, which will let Google know that this particular user/Google account was pleased with that website in correlation to their search. In turn after a particular user has searched on Google for various items, Social Search will save whatever +1 results there have been, thereby steering any future search results towards the users preferences. This will in effect make it where no two individuals will receive the identical search results for the same item due to each person having unique preferences and +1's.

The great debate with this new concept is how exactly will websites that have succeeded at being a top search result be affected. Will a website's SEO diminish since a user's search results will be geared towards their specific preferences? Many already have their opinion about this new search tool, but it will be ultimately be interesting to see how this new concept revolutionizes the search experience.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Is Craigslist Disappearing?

Craigslist has been a staple in the online word as a virtual classified ads website for the better part of a decade. It is a very functional website and allows for individuals all over the world to connect in ways never thought possible. The kicker to Craigslist is that it is also free (unless you are postings/finding a job, in which then, there is a nominal fee). With that being said, in comparison to other major sites of Craigslist's stature, Craigslist is slowly falling behind the times as there have been no major innovations in the actual site to date. As can be seen in the above picture, more and more websites have started to take over popularity from certain classified sections of Craigslist. Statistics have also shown that Craigslist is beginning to receive less and less visits as a result of numerous other websites being created. This brings up the question...will Craigslist slowly disappear??

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

Facebook Case Study

Last week we decided to implement a marketing idea from the Multifamily Insiders Social Media Webinar featuring Virginia Love and Ed Spiegel. Here are our results:

Property: Autumn Breeze Apartments. 300 Unit class B+/ A property

Location: Noblesville Indiana. suburban Indianapolis

Strategy: To engage resident of the community by utilizing the Property Facebook Fan Page. The event is titled “2011 Cutest Pet Contest”. Residents will submit photos of their pets and the pet with the most “Likes” will win Free Pet Rent for 1 year.

Implementation: Flyers were posted in common areas advertising the contest. Contest rules were as follows.
1. Resident will submit a photo of their pet by March 31st via email
2. After the deadline, the photo’s will appear on the Facebook Page
3. Visitors can vote for a pet by “Liking” the picture of the pet. 4. Residents are encouraged to get their friends to vote for their pet.
5. Everyone must “Like” the Facebook Page prior to voting

Results: Prior to the contest, the Facebook Page had 104 fans. Traffic to the page was sporadic, as was posting. Within 72 hours, the Page received over 230 additional fans.

Follow Up: We are now posting links, jokes, polls, and other contest on a daily basis to keep our new audience engaged and returning to the Facebook Page. A property scavenger hunt is in the works, and the Community News Letter will soon be only found online.

CLASS Leasing: Encouraging ApartmentRatings.com Posts

I was reading through Multifamilyinsiders.com this morning and came across a great idea that could really help to bolster any community's ApartmentRatings.com percentage numbers. Typically any individual that is seeking out to post on Apartment Ratings is doing so with the intention of venting about a particular issue, whether it is fabricated or factual information. It is very rare that one will see a tremendous amount of positive postings on Apartment Ratings due to the sole fact that happy residents are just that...happy! They typically may not even know about the Apartment Ratings site, since it is often used as a pedestal for disgruntled residents to blast a property.

Therefore, it is advantageous to encourage positive postings by having a tag line in one's email signature that says to "let us know how we are doing on apartmentratings.com." In doing so, residents that are happy at the property may visit the site in order to share their positive experiences with others. Keep in mind though that if the encouraging of apartmentratings.com postings is going to be done, it is important that the manager subscribe to the Apartment Ratings site in order to be able to respond to any positive or negative postings. This will show that the manager truly cares about what is being posted and will do anything possible to make sure all residents are happy.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Resident Participation In Facebook

Facebook is obviously one of the most successful websites to date in the history of the World Wide Web. It is pretty hard these days to find someone that is not on Facebook, because it has become another form of communication and a very effecient way to remain in contact with many people at one time.

Facebook has slowly made its way into the apartment industry as more and more communities are beginning to develop property pages for their communities. With that being said Facebook is not necessarily going to be a miracle worker when it comes to driving in future prospects to a community. The reason behind this is that Facebook only becomes beneficial as more and more people "like" the page, because without likes, or followers, then it's just another page amongst the millions on Facebook. Therefore, it is very important that any leasing specialist that establishes a page for his/her community get as many residents involved in the page as possible. By involving residents, or getting them to "like" the page, any friends of these individuals will see the community page pop-up in their news feed when the resident has any new information about the community on their page.

Rentmineonline is a company that specializes in getting communities involved on Facebook as a means to increase the impact that resident referral can have on a community. By getting residents involved in this effort, a community can essentially flyer thousands of Facebook walls thereby increasing the amount of people that can potentially hear about the community.

Allison Williams is doing a great job getting her community involved on Facebook by holding a community-wide competition. The competition is based upon the concept of who has the cutest pet on the property and the only way that a person can vote...they must like the property Facebook page.

Great job Allison!

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing