Apartment Internet Marketing Conference 2011 - Local Networking/Outreach
•Als PPTX, PDF herunterladen•
1 gefällt mir•755 views
Mark Juleen's presentation from the 2011 Apartment Internet Marketing Conference. Using social media on online tools for a new approach to outreach marketing and local networking. Please, won't you be my neighbor?
Empfohlen
Empfohlen
Weitere ähnliche Inhalte
Was ist angesagt?
Was ist angesagt? (20)
Ähnlich wie Apartment Internet Marketing Conference 2011 - Local Networking/Outreach
Ähnlich wie Apartment Internet Marketing Conference 2011 - Local Networking/Outreach (20)
Kürzlich hochgeladen
Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)
Apartment Internet Marketing Conference 2011 - Local Networking/Outreach
- 1. Mark Juleen J.C. Hart Company & The Resident Connection
- 2. Apartments & Neighbors Outreach 180◦ (WIIFM) Memorialize It Map It Broadcast It Measure It
- 7. Benefits of Outreach 180◦? Actually talking to business owners/managers Leasing teams more confident Something for you take away vs. just leaving something behind Actually building a relationship to follow up on
- 8. Memorialize ItBlogging & The Resident Hub
- 10. Community News
- 11. Map It
- 12. Share Their Info
- 13. Coupons
- 14. Broadcast It
- 15. Facebook Can Be Your Radio Station
- 16. People May Surprise You
- 17. This isn’t Field of Dreams
- 18. It’s Probably More like The Land of Make Believe
- 20. Measure It
- 21. Analytics Year over Year Overall website traffic up over 35%. Absolute unique visitors up 30% About half of that increase attributed to new properties added Majority of other increase from organic search via Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or other local search engines Facebook “Likes” increased 191% Facebook referral to websites increased 70%
- 23. Google Searches
- 25. Summary Outreach 180◦ Memorialize your efforts Map your neighbors Measure what you can Be a better neighbor
- 26. The Thank You Economy mark@markjuleen.com Twitter - @mbj MarkJuleen.com TheResidentConnection.com facebook.markjuleen.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hello neighbors. Man I love a good cardigan and a pair of sneakers. You know, what was great about Mister Rogers Neighborhood was that it was honest and classic. I’m sure that is part of the reason it was the 2nd longest running children’s program of all time. So why is Mister Rogers relevant to what I’m going to talk about today? Because in this session we’re talking about outreach, connecting and partnering with local businesses, and leveraging local PR. We’re going to review why being a better neighbor can make a huge impact. And like Mister Rogers we’re going to show you examples and we’re going to share ideas. While Fred had a television program to broadcast and memorialize his message, we’re going to share with you ways you can do that today yourself and take advantage of the Internet as part of those efforts to be a better neighbor.
- The examples I’m going to share are from my company J.C. Hart. We are a builder and developer of upscale apartment communities primarily in central Indiana, and we also manage the communities we build. Our portfolio consists of 15 properties with over 3,200 units, and we also have an additional 1000+ units currently under development in central Indiana.What I’ll share with you today are some of the things we are doing to not only connect in our local neighborhoods, but to also memorialize those efforts online.While we’re here to talk about Internet marketing primarily, I want to focus on something I feel is a key piece to successful outreach, networking, and social media. And that concept is exactly what Fred Rogers was all about in his show. He just wanted to be a good neighbor and hoped you would do so in return. It sounds so simple, but when I reflect on what I’ve helped J.C. Hart build online and with our Live the Life program it really is about being a better neighbor. It’s become that one to one human contact that is so very important. And those relationships develop into referrals and good word of mouth for your business.I’ll touch on 5 things today. - What I like to call the Outreach 180. It’s a What’s In It For Me take on networking with local businesses. - I’ll review how we are using blogs to memorialize these interactions and other local events or happenings. - Then I’ll show you an example of a new platform we’ve adopted to put these connections on a map. - I’ll share with you some examples for how we’re using Facebook as our broadcast network to run contests & promotions. - And finally, highlight some of the result we are getting from the effort and how it has impacted our web traffic.
- The way I see people doing typical outreach is by grabbing some candy, putting it in a property logoed tumbler, maybe adding a balloon, and picking up a handful of brochures to go drop off to unsuspecting businesses. What I’ve also seen is many managers and leasing agents cringe at the idea of “cold calling” on local businesses. It’s not a fun process, and usually they walk away with absolutely nothing. And after they leave my guess is that the candy is poured into a bowl while everything else is pitched. I know that’s what I do with junk people leave at my office.So that’s where the Outreach 180 comes in.
- We’ve been inspired by a couple programs we’ve titled Live the Life in the past couple years. We ran a YouTube video contest a couple years ago with this title, and like many other companies we have a VIP or Gold card with preferred vendor discounts on them that we call our Live the Life card.
- We’ve taken those titles and turned them into our entire outreach platform now.The locations of our apartment communitiesare successful because of thegreat neighbors surrounding them. Justas we wish to have a successful business,we wish the same for ourneighboring businesses.We created the Live the Life program tonot only help enhance the living experienceof our residents, but also to helpboost awareness and business of ourneighbors. Our purpose of the programis to work together to help achievethose goals, and we would love for youto join us.
- So our outreach program isn’t about us, it’s about the neighboring businesses.We want to map them, add them to our Live the Life card, Blog about them as a Featured Business, help promote them on Facebook, or just share with our residents what they have to offer through other connections like coupons or sponsoring parties/events.You may notice we have some costs associated with these programs. Our goal is not to make any money with the program, but offset the cost of printing cards or time put into building out listings for businesses on the map. And for some we will just give it away to help build the relationship and get them on board. Don’t we all love FREE or inexpensive marketing? Neighboring businesses do as well.
- We could debate for hours why it’s important to measure our marketing efforts. There are entire companies here this week built around that idea alone. However, one thing we don’t really have a strategy to measure is results of our outreach efforts or the activities/events we do on site. For us, that’s where blogging comes in. We developed a custom blog/resident portal platform we like to call The Resident Hub. A website dedicated to residents. All the tools and info a resident needs while living in one of our communities without the distractions of apartment images, floor plans, pricing, or lease applications. And because we’ve built it on a blogging platform we have a space to share and memorialize things we do everyday.
- Instead of just dropping off brochures at a local restaurant, we bring back information and write a Featured Business post about them.
- Once we’ve built relationships with these businesses they also help sponsor our resident events and we feature them again in our Community News.
- We’ve partnered with a company called EverydayMap to build customizable map and marketing tools for our properties. Business locations, icons, logos, zoom levels, etc. can all be customized on each map. It’s a great opportunity for us to highlight what’s nearby or what neighbors we’ve built relationships with.
- Once the user clicks on an icon or logo, the platform allows a business to show off an image, logo, flash animation, or in this case a video. Links for the business’s website, Google Maps directions, and social media sites can be included as well.
- Everyone loves a deal. The new coupon feature they have recently added to the platform allows us to build out even more benefits to our residents beyond just knowing what’s near by. The user can print it or even email it to themselves or someone else.
- We’ve taken the position to use Facebook as the fun or news spot for our communications. Much like a radio station we’re pushing content out there that is primarily for entertainment or news purposes. And, like a radio station we like to mix in some giveaways and contests. This concept has not only increased our followers, but we continue to see increased levels of engagement with the page ongoing.
- Radio stations have giveaways all the time. Guess what, they typically don’t pay for those giveaways. You don’t have to either. A local cajun restaurant, Yats, gave us some gift certificates to give out as a Marti Gras giveaway for people that posted pictures. OK fine. Nice giveaway, sure. What was really cool though is that one of the winners was from New Jersey. The person is a fan of our page because she had been doing apartment research for an upcoming summer move.
- In another giveaway, a local insurance agency had a block of 25 tickets he wanted to just giveaway. Who knew a local non-NHL Tier 1 league team would have fans that would snatch all these up and more in less than 45 min? The agent also gave us 4 more tickets for someone else that asked after they were all gone. Pretty sweet deal for everyone.When thinking about Facebook for business I think it’s important to remember why users are on there in the first place. It’s really for entertainment and connecting with friends. Your sales pitch is probably not going to attract a bunch of followers.
- Just because you have a blog or facebook page, that doesn’t mean anyone will come to visit. Some ideas and posts will be a bust, while others resonate with your residents and followers. You can’t expect it to be an overnight success, and you will have to put work into gaining a following over time.
- Getting back to Mister Rogers, using social media to connect with your neighbors takes some creativity. Use your imagination here. You never know what’s going to stick, and you can’t tell people about it enough.
- That includes telling people offline where you are online. We created custom window stickers for each community as well as a move-in flyer highlighting and describing how our residents can connect with us or how they will hear from us.
- OK, sure. All this sounds great in theory, but it sounds like a lot of work and where’s the ROI?Let’s first all agree that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Traditional marketing can still get the job done. I just think it’s too expensive.I could go into word of mouth marketing data and theory and I could quote Seth Godin or Gary Vaynerchuk until they kick me off the stage, but there is a reality to the data and how our web traffic continues to grow and grow year over year since implementing social media efforts and focusing on connecting better with our neighbors.Bottom line, I got frustrated asking our leasing teams to be sure to go out and do outreach (the old way), and watch them come back frustrated or with nothing to show for it. Regardless of the numbers I’ll share with you now, we’ve overcome that huge obstacle number one.
- There are a lot of factors that go into this, but traffic to our websites is up over 35% as a whole. About 15% of that would be attributed to adding two new construction properties to the site, but the rest mainly due to organic increases in results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or other local search engines. And these numbers don’t include direct traffic to our resident hubs.On Facebook we’ve increased our “Likes” by 191% from about 700 to nearly 2,100.That has resulted in more referrals to our J.C. Hart website as well increasing those referrals 70% year over year.
- So let’s go over some interesting keyword analytics.You never know which post will stick with people, or stick with Google. Last year 66 people found our new property the Legacy while searching for the local yogurt shop. Some of them stayed around for quite awhile, and now are familiar with the property. Unintended long tail click throughs that gain interest. Drawing attention to your community and brand for keywords other than apartments can be an interesting benefit.
- Why so many click throughs? Do a search for “orange leaf carmel” and there’s the property post right on page one of the Google results.
- Even more impressive was the traffic after a post about a new restaurant and winery near our North Haven community. What’s interesting to see is how the traffic has fallen off. Soon after the post went out it would appear on page 1 search results, but now more reviews and articles are out on the restaurant and you won’t find the post now until page 3.That said, I would guess that a follow up post would grab some attention with Google.
- I’ve seen us save a ton of marketing dollars over the last few years investing time and money into building a better online brand overall. Now that we have all the assets in place we’re just working on being a better neighbor, connecting with real people, and memorializing those efforts. I wanted to share one quick story before I finish…
- A couple months ago I was emailing Gary Vaynerchuk back and forth trying to get him to be a keynote speaker here this year. He wanted to do it and share his Thank You Economy message, but unfortunately he had a planned trip to Sweden right now and the timing didn’t work. I wish everyone could have heard his message in person. If you are interested in building a better online brand for your business I do recommend you at least pick up a copy of his book The Thank You Economy. If you’d like a chance to win a free copy, please go to my facebook page and leave me a question about my presentation today.Thanks so much everyone!