How Do You Measure Success in Social Media?

When it comes to proving the value of a digital multifamily marketing strategy, return on investment (ROI) is the keyword all executives want to hear. It may seem a simple enough request, but calculating social media ROI can get pretty tricky.

While social media ROI is definitely important, there’s a different way to think about ROI that’s critical for marketers; the foundation that a strong initial multifamily marketing strategy can provide for all future multifamily marketing endeavors.

While it may seem minimal compared to the numerical value that a multifamily marketing strategy can provide a company, it’s important to remember that the work done in an initial strategy can make or break any future marketing efforts.

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Why Strategy Lays Important Groundwork

It’s easy to espouse demographic information about a brand. For example, most Oreos purchasers are parents between the ages of 24 and 39. But what does that information mean? This explains a core distinction between digital marketing strategy vs. traditional marketing efforts.

For traditional marketing, this information is simple enough for Nabisco to put out a commercial during daytime hours for stay-at-home parents that heavily features children enjoying Oreos.

For digital marketing, the approach is more complex. From this demographic information, what do we know about these parents? Where do they spend their time online? What does their buyer’s journey look like? What is a deciding factor in their purchase?

As Oreo is an established brand with years of name recognition under its belt, it’s unlikely that it would have to consider these factors to find marketing success seriously. For other companies entering the world of digital marketing, this information is “make or break.”

Knowing the important factors of your digital multifamily marketing strategy is important in your first campaign and campaigns developed down the road. Not addressing this information upfront could lead to catastrophe, forcing marketers to return to step one.

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Multifamily Marketing By the Numbers

For multifamily marketers, content marketing can take time to show real results. That being said, it’s a long-term approach that improves your brand’s visibility online and helps you nurture stronger customer relationships.

While it can be difficult to assign a dollar value to marketing ROI or ROMI (Return on Marginal Investment), numbers are still important to the marketer, more focused on marketing and results than the value of the marketing.

Consider the following statistics to understand the value behind marketing beyond ROI further:

• Companies that blog 15 or more times per month see 5x more traffic than companies that don’t blog.
• 82% of businesses report actively using content marketing, up from 70% last year.
• Marketers with blogs receive 67% more leads than those who don’t.
• Marketers who prioritize blogs are 13x more likely to have a positive ROI.
• Video content is 50x more likely to drive web traffic than plain text.
• Using photos of real people rather than stock photography can result in a 35% conversion increase.
• Video was the primary form of marketing media created in 2021, followed by blogs (used by more than half of marketing teams), and infographics.
• Social engagement as a success metric was also on the rise, up 187% from 2020.

These statistics are developed from analyzing a widespread amount of marketing data and are incredibly important as marketers decide what tactics work well for their strategy. For example, knowing that blogging daily can have a large effect on the chances of customer acquisition is helpful. It may lead to a heavier blog focus in a group’s digital multifamily marketing strategy. But if persona research suggests that the key personas won’t read a blog, it might be wiser for the strategy to put less emphasis on blogging.

While marketing statistics don’t guarantee that a tactic will work for all marketers, they allow us to see important trends. Though innovation is important in multifamily marketing, it’s also vital that you’re not constantly seeking to reinvent the wheel. By utilizing trusted statistics, marketers can make educated decisions about the tactics to funnel their efforts.

How to Plan Your Next Inbound Campaign for More Renters

How Companies Are Rethinking the Value of Social Media

Social media reigns supreme in the marketing space, even above multifamily websites. Last year, a website was the No. 1 marketing channel for business. This year, social media is the top dog. In fact, it’s at an all-time high. 

What does this mean for your multifamily organization? If you aren’t on social media in some capacity, you are already behind and missing out on qualified leads.

Did you know that 8 in 10 companies invested in social media marketing in 2021, and 39% plan to invest this year? Over the last year, companies had to rethink their strategies and some even hired customer experience officers to help lead the charge in this realm. 

The Easiest Way to Determine Your Target Renter

But how do you measure success on social media? Engagement metrics are helpful to track, but how does that translate to conversions and social media ROI? The primary tactic for social media marketing in 2021 was listening — something that will continue into 2022 and beyond. 

The true value of social media lies in the relationships you make. By establishing relationships with your followers, you can learn how to engage with them, support them, and  — most importantly — convert them into sales and loyal brand advocates.

While the most popular platform for marketers is Instagram, many teams are starting to see the most social media ROI and conversions from Facebook. This is likely due to Facebook’s robust advertising platform and ability to run lead-form ads. While listening to social media is critical to your marketing strategy, you can still achieve social media ROI with lead-form ads and an effective Facebook advertising strategy.

Assigning Value to Your Marketing Efforts

Assigning value to marketing efforts doesn’t have to be solely numerical. Instead, it’s important for marketers to understand that marketing strategy offers an important starting point to all future endeavors. A digital multifamily marketing strategy also offers social media ROI that is not necessarily easily measured but impactful.

3 Keys to Multifamily Branding That Attracts Renters

Despite the economic tribulations brought on the U.S. in the last few years, the real estate industry is hot. Aside from the increasing demand for more homes and commercial spaces, the multifamily industry is expected to grow remarkably up until 2030. So, how can you harness some of this data in your multifamily content marketing?

Let’s discuss …

A report from the National Multifamily Housing Council (NHMC) and the National Apartment Association (NAA) states that demand for multifamily real estate will be so great that at least 4.6 million units will be constructed within the next decade.

However, to make the most of these promising forecasts, multifamily real estate companies must learn to optimize data when creating multifamily content marketing.

Why Data Is Crucial in the Multifamily Industry

Data is crucial in every industry as it can improve conversion rates, increase traffic, and prevent knowledge gaps. To illustrate, a Bain & Company study states that businesses in the U.S. could increase profits by over $2 billion annually by utilizing data. Thus, data literacy is integral to professionals — including those who don’t work in the data analytics field.

In fact, today’s business degrees are becoming more interdisciplinary, covering topics like contemporary technologies and data methods. Modern online bachelor’s in business administration even have concentrations in data analytics and management information systems, which are taught alongside traditional business concepts, such as accounting, management, and business law. This shift only shows the growing expectations placed upon business people to be more data literate. 

And this translates to the multifamily industry as harnessing data effectively can lead to more intimate understandings when it comes to trends, more accurate insights into future movements, and more effective multifamily content marketing creation.

How to Integrate Data Into Your Multifamily Content Marketing Strategy

1. Use data to drive contextual storytelling.

Good communication should paint a vivid picture, even if the topic is technical. After all, consumers need to understand the material for it to be impactful. However, multifamily marketing campaigns must also present information that audiences can relate to or find use in to have a lingering effect. This is where gathered data comes in. Using soft and hard data, you can create a well-rounded customer story that provides context, evidence, and insights. Thus, when crafting multifamily content marketing for your customer story, use data collaborations to maximize relevancy.

2. Leverage data visualizations.

Nothing hypes an exciting data set more than visuals. Though some data diehards may disagree, the truth is that visualizations make data more appealing and digestible. In fact, a study by iScribblers found that humans process visuals 60,000 times faster than plain text. Thus, should you have any pertinent data that needs sharing, explore doing so via infographics, interactive tables, or even videos. 

Aside from being more immersive and interactive, data visualizations can increase recall value by upwards of 65%, making it a critical medium in data dissemination, externally and internally.

3. Only pick the most salient data points.

Although publishing every bit of data you gather may be tempting, the best way to share them is to circulate the most notable highlights in your multifamily content marketing. This benefits you two-fold. First, more succinct datasets allow you to retain an audience’s attention span (only eight seconds). And, second, shorter data — and content, in general — is more digitally compatible. 

Considering that mobile compatibility and software development is credited by 59% of those in the multifamily industry for improving customer service, it’s also no surprise that there is now a demand for software programmers with a degree in computer science. However, whatever platform you use, your audience won’t be engaged if you present them with a hodgepodge of figures and statistics. 

In line with this, data expert Dr. Stephanie Evergreen told Forbes that “cutting to the chase” with your findings is a better way to engage the 50% of audiences who view such content on their mobile devices.

Although experts agree that the real estate market’s long-term future remains unclear, the influence of multifamily content marketing and the power of data is undeniable. As multifamily businesses aim to adjust to the New Normal, data-enriched content can act as an anchor and a propeller for industry stability and profit.

Selena Perkins is a freelance digital marketer, with a keen interest in data analytics. She believes that knowing how to use data to make decisions is a must-have skill for everyone. When she’s not busy with work, Selena unwinds by watching shows on Netflix.

Technology moves fast, as do digital marketing trends. As we live and breathe commercial real estate at our multifamily marketing agency, we understand where the industry is headed.

The following is our breakdown of the current trends in social media, augmented reality, and more — plus where we think the multifamily marketing space is headed in the future.

1. Content still reigns king.

Content marketing certainly is not a new concept and it certainly is not going out of style. By now, most companies know they need to create content that engages prospective customers. However, the question is how to do it more effectively. As the year continues, we will see commercial real estate companies creating more meaningful content than ever before.

As the commercial real estate industry turns to content marketing, the smart ones will be more targeted. The key here is that you don’t need a thousand views per blog. Rather, you only need your target audience to view your content. Once you segment your audience base properly, you can launch individualized advertising campaigns and target those segments specifically. This approach will help you gain more apartment leads and conversions from these retargeting ads.

Truthfully, there’s no way around this. The success of your digital multifamily marketing campaigns will depend on your use of originally created, high-quality custom content — as content continues to reign in the realm of digital apartment marketing.

2. You need to pay to play.

Now is the time to focus your efforts on paid social media apartment marketing. The organic reach across most social media platforms is dying. By investing in paid social media apartment marketing you will increase your engagement and get high organic reach, as well as better search marketing.

With paid social media multifamily marketing, almost all social media networks will give you clear metrics to measure your performance and ROI. Another benefit to utilizing paid social media marketing is the ability to reach completely new target customers and enhance your apartment lead generation. By paying to promote your post, you increase the chances that people might share your content or engage with your organization.

3. Social media for apartments is where it’s at.

Social media has come a long way since its early days of simply sending a message, selfies, or favorite links. It has matured enough to become an effective tool in digital multifamily marketing for engaging with targeted customers on an interactive channel. However, oftentimes those in commercial real estate forget to actually be social on social media.

Unfortunately, many property professionals do not take advantage of social media for apartments. Many times, they don’t reply to the influx of messages on social media. They also don’t maintain a frequent presence or put marketing dollars behind campaigns. Social media is an untapped market for properties to set themselves apart from the rest and can be the difference between turning a prospect into an apartment lead.

4. Instant messaging and chatbots are game changers.

Connectivity is another great advantage of social media. The simple ease of using functions such as direct messaging makes it easier than ever to engage with your residents. However, the conundrum that property managers now face is how to respond fast enough and accurately to prospective residents.

Cue multifamily marketing automation bots, also known as chatbots.

Today’s consumers want to engage with a company when and where it’s most convenient for them. For real estate, this could mean losing possible apartment leads if we are not able to respond to needs instantly. Chatbots seem to have cracked the code, quite literally, on instant communication. According to Botpress, a chatbot is defined as “any software that performs an automated task … the most intuitive definition is that a bot is a software that can have a conversation with a human.”

In addition to being programmed to have realistic, human-like conversations with prospective clients, chatbots are also able to gather specific information relevant to the seller or the marketer.

In the context of commercial real estate marketing, a chatbot can mean providing 24/7, instant responses that do not require an individual behind a screen scrambling to answer a question. Chatbots also provide a smoother user experience for the resident, and user experience is always critical.

5. You need to utilize live video to increase engagement.

Video’s popularity as a multifamily marketing medium continues to grow yearly, and this year is no different. Particularly, live video is where we see social media platforms migrating. Live video contains much more engagement and fares better with many social media algorithms. More and more companies in commercial real estate are recognizing the power of video as a digital multifamily marketing strategy.

There are huge opportunities for leasing agents to really innovate and get away from traditional apartment marketing by utilizing Facebook Live to conduct virtual tours or answer real-time questions. Likewise, property managers can get in on the fun, as they may use Snapchat or Instagram Stories as a way to engage with current residents and alert them to fun events.

6. It’s time to embrace virtual real estate.

Where do we see the future of multifamily marketing efforts? Virtual and augmented reality. As our industry rapidly embraces technological innovations, integrating VR and AR can set you apart from competitors.

Implementing VR elements into your apartment marketing scheme can prove effective when done correctly. Virtual reality opens the door to prospective clients that may have otherwise not been able to see your property, as they digitally tour units and enter a lifelike simulation of your multifamily property. Moving forward, we see this trend taking off as we can expect more and more companies to design 3D commercial real estate models through virtual reality.

Augmented reality is used by multifamily industry thought leaders today. It brings blueprints to life by taking a traditional flat layout and turning it into a lifelike 3D model. AR will provide a unique opportunity at every level of commercial real estate as it continues to evolve. Professionals believe that AR provides great value at the early stages of a construction project, and at the final stages of selling and multifamily marketing.

7. Drones can set your multifamily marketing apart.

Drones are a defining piece of technology for commercial real estate. Just a few years ago, it was conventional to hire a professional photographer for aerial shots of a property. Sellers now are capable of capturing stunning images and breathtaking videos of their property with camera-equipped drones, all while cutting back on costs.

Drones can depict a great layout of the entire property, especially when recording video. For larger areas, the unique benefit that drones provide is navigation beyond the property and into the surrounding area. They are able to capture incredible bodies of water, beautiful landscapes, and nearby neighborhoods. This particular feature can be optimized if paired creatively with live streaming.

Drones also allow high-rise offices to capture images of the entire building along with attractive neighboring hotspots. Drones are one trend guaranteed to set your marketing apart from competitors, and will surely spread within the commercial real estate industry.

What does all of this mean for multifamily marketing?

It’s a game-changing year for apartment marketing, especially in terms of how to reach prospective buyers in your area. Up until now, the marketing landscape has remained more or less the same, with social media for apartments claiming the throne in every corner of influence. However, we are now seeing increasingly fast-paced developments in the form of new and updated features such as live streaming and instant messaging. 

What does all of this mean for multifamily marketing? Put simply, it means that content will have to be creative and engaging in order to gain more activity online. Are you ready to get creative?

If you want more qualified leads, your work is cut out for you.

Gone are the days of traditional inbound marketing methods because the buyer’s funnel is no more. In its place is the flywheel, which focuses more on customer service and retention than on closing the next deal.

What does this mean for your business? Simply put: out with the old and in with the new. Savvy marketers will use inbound marketing methodology to attract and convert visitors, as well as monitor and support every aspect of the consumer’s sales cycle with the guidance of the flywheel.

What Is the Flywheel?

Grasping the attention of your customers has become a tough business. The solution is inbound marketing, where you earn the attention of prospective buyers by creating compelling content, nurturing them through the buyer’s journey, and delighting them with superior customer service.

However, the new buyer’s journey no longer starts at the top and flows down a funnel to the finish; rather it’s a continual cycle that progresses through stages.

The flywheel, introduced by HubSpot earlier this year, features a cyclical, continual journey, the way the buyer’s journey should actually be. This new way of thinking offers a system for scalable, repeatable revenue generation. In essence, the faster the flywheel spins, the more revenue you will generate.

More importantly, the flywheel places customers at the center with marketing, sales, and service revolving around them.  With customers at the center of the process, rather than at the bottom of a funnel, this challenges marketers to focus on harnessing the power of word-of-mouth marketing and retaining customers.

The key to adopting the flywheel framework is to identify points of friction your customers face when scaling their business and help those customers reduce that friction through reorganization, shared goals, and automation.

Forget the Funnel. Embrace the Flywheel.

Today’s consumers are tech-savvy and more educated than ever about their purchasing decisions, so the buyer’s journey is no longer linear. Buyers often flip back and forth on their purchasing decision, entering or exiting different stages of the buyer’s journey as they check online reviews, do their own research, and evaluate vendors.

According to HubSpot, 55% of consumers don’t trust companies they purchase from as much as they used to, 65% don’t trust press releases, 65% don’t trust advertisements, and 71% don’t trust social media ads.

As trust in business continues to erode, it’s more important now than ever for businesses to adopt the flywheel methodology to support their customers better. Continual support and superior customer service will better the odds that those customers will offer a good review, refer the company or product to their friends, and remain loyal.

Harnessing the Power of Testimonials to Build Trust in Your Multifamily Brand

When people hear a great story, they look for an opportunity to tell it again to someone new. The same holds in the business world: When you receive exemplary service or purchase a great product, you want to spread the word.

As a multifamily branding agency, we have seen word-of-mouth communication as a powerful force — especially when building brand trust.

Are you more likely to watch a video advertisement or a video that a close friend shared on Facebook? Most likely, you answered the latter because your friend is someone you know and trust.

For most businesses, building multifamily brand trust is of utmost importance, particularly when consumer trust is declining. However, creating an honest brand built on consumer trust does not always require deep pockets or extensive resources. In fact, building apartment brand trust all starts with customer testimonials.

Why Are Testimonials Important for Building Multifamily Brand Trust?

Customer reviews are pure gold for businesses. Why? Because your prospective customers will trust the opinions of your current customers more than they trust your website content, blog, or advertisements.

According to BrightLocal, 85% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Moreover, 91% check reviews before making a purchasing decision.

As people research your company and check out your reviews, they become leads that are virtually free to generate. Further, those buyers are more inclined to purchase from you because they trust your customers and your multifamily brand.

At Criterion.B, many of our current clients are from word-of-mouth referrals. As a smaller multifamily branding agency, establishing and maintaining an honest apartment brand is something our team prioritizes for ourselves and our clients. This is why we designed an entire page on our website dedicated to case studies and customer testimonials.

We have also helped our clients incorporate customer testimonials on their websites. (See below for an example from property management software provider ResMan.)

The True Impact of Testimonials

The numbers speak for themselves when using testimonials to build multifamily brand trust.

• 72% of consumers claim positive reviews make them trust a business more.
• Consumers read an average of seven reviews before trusting a business, up from six last year.
• About 50 reviews per product or service can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Consumers are 58% more likely to convert when interacting with your review.

Additionally, testimonials can also drive traffic by increasing SEO. Product-specific content can increase your keyword rankings and search traffic. For example, a business earning 10+ product-specific reviews can increase search traffic by 15 to 20%.

Test the Waters With Experimentation

From multiple-page case studies to video reviews or quick quotes from customers, there are a wide variety of testimonials that you can incorporate into your apartment branding. The important thing is to experiment with the different formats to find what resonates best with your audience. Use your discretion of where and how often you want to display them, and include different types of testimonial content throughout your website and collateral.

Testimonials are one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to build apartment brand trust, so it’s time to take advantage. 

Fostering Collaboration Between Departments for Enhanced Reach and Engagement

The dynamics between marketing and sales have historically been closely-tied and wildly different. At a basic level, marketing teams manage promotional tactics while sales teams fundamentally warm leads and close deals. Together, they go hand-in-hand to drive business for their company and impact the bottom line.

Despite some distinct differences between the two departments, marketing and sales should be strongly aligned with goals, projects, and analytics. Yet, when a business looks at its marketing and sales teams, it often finds this to be far from the truth. Developing a strategy that creates strong interdependence to optimize success is the key to bringing these two together.

Different Departments, Same Goal

Our previous blog outlined the clear differences between marketing and sales teams. While these differences exist in many companies, it’s important to empower both sides to work together cohesively to generate success in both departments.

According to HubSpot, 87% of the terms that sales and marketing teams use to describe each other are negative. This can only be counterproductive for creating a strong alignment. Marketing has been known to refer to sales as simple-minded, incompetent, and lazy. Meanwhile, sales use terms like “arts and crafts” and “irrelevant” to describe marketing.

However, this could not be further from the truth. Without marketing support, sales teams would not be able to get the warm leads they need to close a sale quickly. Without a solid sales team, marketing would not have on-the-ground insights from specific markets to create relevant content.

Marketing and Sales Feedback Loop

Developing an interconnected strategy that creates a feedback loop is the key to marketing and sales alignment. Marketing teams do heavy market research on a company’s target personas to understand their ideal customers’ demographics, lifestyles, and behaviors.

All information created and used to sell to the customer should reflect their specific interests, pain points, and concerns. Without this detailed research, both teams struggle to target the right lead accurately. While sales can use this information to address their customer better, their team receives feedback from regional markets that may differ slightly from the more generalized personas that marketing created. This regional-specific information is vital for marketers to understand their audience better.

This is just one way a feedback loop is essential to seeing positive communication and successful campaigns for sales and marketing. The feedback loop is where both teams communicate continuously, providing back-and-forth communication and adapting their approaches based on this feedback. To ensure communication, the teams must regularly meet through onboarding, weekly sales, and management meetings to review goals and analytics.

Incorporating marketing and sales alignment into the company’s culture and processes is a great practice to ensure this feedback loop stays strong. Therefore, leadership and managers must reiterate that neither sales nor marketing is the king of the mountain. Rather, they are both pivotal generals in the company. Ensuring an equilibrium between salaries of lateral sales and marketing roles will help the mentality.

Finding Harmony Through HubSpot

It is important to embrace the tools that facilitate marketing and sales alignment. Meetings are a great way to stay on track, but they aren’t enough to ensure your teams are in sync.

Marketing automation tools like HubSpot are built to blend marketing and sales teams into one well-oiled machine. HubSpot coins Smarketing, which refers to marketing and sales alignment created through frequent and direct communication.

Companies that practice Smarketing ensure that two departments have one goal and established measurements to achieve that goal. They also make goals together and review them frequently.

For instance, according to DemandGen, 74 percent of organizations that use marketing automation and CRM said their sales and marketing teams are aligned.

As the lines blur between marketing and sales, empowering both teams to be experts in their field is crucial. HubSpot separates its software into a Marketing Dashboard (complete with analytics, blog performance, and content creation tools), and a Sales Dashboard (highlighting deal forecasts, sales performance, and prospect tracking). HubSpot brings the two together while amplifying each with its productivity tools.

HubSpot’s tracking allows marketing and sales to determine when a lead visited a website, how long they were there, and what they searched for. Not to mention its ability to create complex workflows for email nurturing to ensure no lead goes unnoticed. This gives both teams more information to do their job better and convert the lead into a customer.

Marketing and Sales Alignment

As a digital multifamily marketing agency, we practice what we preach. We combine sales and marketing efforts to drive traffic, warm leads, and send a potential customer down the buyer’s journey. Through marketing and sales alignment, we can drive results and ensure success for our clients and our agency.