Holli Beckman discusses how apartment rental companies can get the most out of their online content and customer conversations. She notes that people dislike apartment hunting and are constantly looking for help online. Her suggestions include listening to customer conversations on social media to understand their needs, then jumping in to offer relevant information to help in a natural, human way. If the help is good and promises are delivered, it can turn a customer into an advocate for the company.
This awesome infographic from DOMO shows you how much content is created by the minute….And NOW there’s periscope and meerkat…how many people are periscoping this right now?? See? It’s so easy to create content, we are buried beneath it! Am I really asking you to create more content? Maybe. But before you do I suggest you check what’s already out there. See if you can repurpose it.
SOCIAL PROOF. This is survey done by Bright Local and published by search engine land puts it all in perspective. Let that sink in for a minute. Basically 9 out of 10 folks trust the word of a complete stranger as much as review from a friend. So leverage the heck out of that!
While we don’t ask for reviews directly, we do ask for feedback. We send digital surveys. Move/anniversary/move out
In 2014 we made a concerted effort at WC Smith to focus on ratings + reviews. Increased in our portfolio score from 66-88%. As you can see from this incredibly boring graph behind me that increase referral traffic from the review sites to wcsmith.com by 110% from Yelp and 60% from apt ratings
Boring graph # 2. Conversion rates of the traffic went up 75% for Yelp and 317% for AptRatings. This is what our Csuite actually cares about. Why? Because I know that the lifetime tenancy of my residents is roughly 4 years. At $2k a month in rent that’s a customer lifetime value of just under $100,000.
So, if I am increasing traffic and conversions at this rate, in one month 10 renters visit instead of 3 and I renting to 5 people instead of 1…that’s $400k of added value in ONE month....oh and all it took was my attention. These sites are free.
We took it one step further. These reviews were gold it’s social proof handed to you on a golden platter, so we picked our favorites, hopped on Canva and created these testimonial slides. We have them on our website, pinterest, blog, instagram. People love word art. I can’t explain it. It’s just a thing.
Using the same testimonials we created a board map on Pinterest. You can do this very easily and I’ll be chatting about this more in the workshop right after this.
This goes even further when you engage media
Remember what I said earlier about people trusting online reviews as much as brands? That extends even further when you apply it to bloggers.
Tell Jamie party story.
Now let’s transition to social…Jay mentioned some of our strategy earlier.
Listen
Set up your dashboard to identify conversations you want to be a part of. Just read what the back and forth is.
Identify reoccurring themes and FAQs. Design your content strategy around those topics.
We can argue all day about when in the process we should be reaching the customer or when is most effective or when they will actually absorb our marketing message or we can shut up and listen to our customer. Let them tell us.
Your Profile & Supporting info
Set up your accounts as personable as possible
Identify that you are an actual apartment community/management company
Think about the conversations you are having right now
Some properties are trying to replace the classifieds with Twitter.
Please understand, do not use your blog or your FB or Twitter page to talk about your available apartments. No one is interested in that….on those channels. Your website should be chock oblock full of that and it should be easy to find…but your social content should be clean and helpful. Twitter is not your replacement for the classifieds.
Notice…the prospect is stalking you, too!
Final Thoughts: Don’t Make promises you can’t keep. Over deliver on the promises you do make. Your customer will take care of letting the world know.
Saw the question on twitter, wrote the blog, tweeted out the answer with a link, pinned it on pinterest, Tumblr FB, etc. Use it over and over
Invite them to an event or offer to put them on the VIP list