#93: The Future of Apartment Marketing with Kristi Fickert & Grady Newman
Marketing Masters Series: Part 1
I've invited several of my friends and colleagues that I admire in the marketing space to come on and teach us all things marketing for 2023. This is a special two-part episode called Marketing Masters: The Future of Apartment Marketing.
This week we are joined by Kristi Fickert, VP of Enterprise Growth at Realync, and Grady Newman, Founder at Resi.
I tell a little personal story about horse racing that has helped me approach new ideas in a new way and I know it can help shift your perspective too! You’re about to hear a lot of useful content. Don’t get paralyzed by overwhelm. You don’t have to implement every idea. Just one idea can win it by a nose.
Tune in to the full episode to hear my guest’s responses to these questions:
What marketing trends have you most excited about for the new year?
What types of marketing are underutilized in the multifamily space?
Can you share some of your recent successes/projects and what strategies/tactics were implemented?
Any other marketing tips you'd like to share?
Kristi Fickert, VP of Enterprise Growth at Realync.
“My real mission and goal in the industry, is to make technology easy to understand. I’m really a technology translator... I’m on this mission to get people comfortable being on camera so we can use that as a way to sell and showcase our personalities in the industry.”
“We focus on creating high-engagement websites for apartment properties and portfolios that are driven by organic and paid channels.”
Grady Newman, Founder at Resi.
What apartment marketing trends are you most excited about?
Kristi’s trend predictions:
Video! Video has helped in opening the door for new job opportunities, building my personal brand, and growing our business. It’s helped me reach my goals, perform better, and help my company perform better. There are a lot of other ways that we can be using video other than just a virtual tour of a unit. I’m excited to see video advertising reach new heights!
I’m also excited about chat tools and I think it's going be really fun to see where AI goes. We're so short-staffed these days in the industry and we need all the help we can get so I look forward to seeing how to marry that up with the needs of the industry.
A big virtual GIF hug from Kristi to you! See it works- you love it!
HOW TO GET STARTED WITH VIDEO
If you’re just starting out in video, something really easy to create is a gif. The great part about a gif if you're afraid to get on video is you don't have to talk and it's literally seven to eight seconds of you just creating some kind of a movement. Some gif ideas:
Sit at your desk waving hello. Use it in your follow-up and post it on social media.
A virtual high-five. It's an easy way to put yourself out there and it's something that you can use over and over again- for follow-ups with your clients or your prospects, you can send it to your team when they hit a great number, or someone gets promoted.
Here’s a tip on how to use video internally with your team:
On days when I have a lot of meetings but I still need to communicate with my team, I will create a quick video. I'm sitting at my desk or I'll do a screen share and I record that and I send it out to them. It’s so much easier than typing out an email on my phone, especially when I’m traveling. Video is more effective because your team is hearing your voice, your tone, and they see your body language. Plus, this is an easier way to start to get more comfortable on video.
Grady’s Trend predictions:
We’ll see some of the trends that have been existing in hotels make their way to multi-family. And there's been a lot more consolidation in the industry. Along with that comes centralized leasing and I think we'll see a lot of marketing trends that are based around that centralized leasing effort start to take hold this next year.
I'm excited to see deeper integrations of software. I also think there will be a greater focus on retention campaigns as we start to see some of the new builds slow. We'll see true development of loyalty programs. We've seen some great companies doing some work in that area already. I'm just excited to see them grow and take off in the coming year.
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What types of marketing are underutilized in the multifamily space?
Kristi:
You know what I’m going to say…video! We can always do a better job of leveraging what we're already using in more ways than just a single use. For example, if you create that gif and you're only using it for follow-up with prospects, there are so many other places you can use that. You can send that to your renters when it's their birthday. You can share that on LinkedIn. You can drop it into an email campaign that you're sending out. You can share it on social. So just take what you're already doing and leverage it in multiple ways.
A big opportunity that is related to video is repurposing some of those unit or property videos for your online ads.
There's a leasing agent with Proxim Management and his name is Craig- he creates this amazing video content at the property level. Craig does a unit tour, but he's in the video and he's demonstrating the apartment. Now every prospect and renter knows Craig and they all want to come and rent from Craig because he has this very nice welcoming personality. He's not just touring it, he's demonstrating it. Their marketing agency took a little snapshot of that unit walkthrough with Craig and they turned that into a video and it's actually their best-performing ad on Facebook and it gets a 346% ROI. Which is insane!
Want to see Craig in action? Check him out here.
GRADY:
I'd like to see marketing become bolder.
I feel like sometimes messaging gets a little muted because we're too afraid to offend or we're trying to appease a particular group that thinks that we need to fit into a box. Some of the more successful campaigns will be those that are really bold and unique.
Another area is educational marketing in the industry- educating renters on different aspects of a brand, aspects of renting, and its advantages.
There are tons of underutilized channels in multi-family.
But a point that I want to bring up is, although there are plenty of channels that are underutilized, I think that our teams are overutilized. And one thing that I see is that we're spread so thin or that they can't do all of these channels well enough. They become too worried about checking off boxes of all of the places that they need to be posting, and all the things that they need to be doing, without the intention behind the marketing and the messaging that they're creating.
🎙 Tune in for more of Grady’s thoughts on overutilized staff, finding great partners, centralized leasing, centralized marketing, and automation.
Can you share a project or recent success?
Kristi:
We have a micro video series called The Lens.
We saw a decline in the time that people are attending and engaging with class education. I know people want to learn, but why in the world are they not engaging? And it's for all of these reasons- we're short-staffed, we're in back-to-back meetings, and we don't have an hour to block off to join something or to attend a class.
So we created this course and it's all about video- how to get comfortable on camera and how to start using video in your day-to-day operations. All of this happens in just five minutes per day!
Click Below to Join Kristi’s Video Series
Join here.
Grady:
A big focus of ours over the years is building technology that we can scale that allows groups to highlight the actual features of the property that differentiate them in the industry.
Recently we worked on a project with a brand that was more creative than you would typically see. A lot of the website and ads were made to make the property more like a fashion magazine than anything. And it ended up being an incredibly successful campaign.
A lesson that can be learned in this industry: we worry a lot about having the look and feel of something that feels like an apartment property and forget that some of the most successful campaigns for any type of company don't necessarily have anything to do with the product.
We want to focus on the benefits and the way that it makes people feel in the end. That's what they remember. If our goal is to stay top of mind when someone's in their buying decision, we should be focusing on marketing and branding that's going to help accomplish that goal. Getting more creative with your branding has definitely been some of the basis for our biggest success stories.
Check out some of Grady’s Latest Projects
*Click below to learn more about how you can work with Grady and the Resi Team.
Additional marketing tips you'd like to share
Kristi:
Be curious and willing to try new things. Don’t be stifled. You don't have to try anything across the whole portfolio, but be willing to test new things at a handful of communities.
I will continue re-demoing products that I’m already using at least once a year. Before I cut something, I carve out time to get on and re-demo a product even if we've had it for a few years. I learn something new from every one of those meetings. The other thing that I do quarterly is I make myself get on calls with whoever the reps are for the products that we're using. I always come back with ideas on how to better take advantage of those systems. That 20 minutes turns into a pretty hefty ROI for us every time I make that commitment to do that. I would just recommend being really mindful and leaning on your suppliers and providers because a lot of times they do have an expertise that you maybe don't have time to dig into.
Grady:
Own your presence, own your data and know where it is, know how to analyze it, own your website. Don't be so dependent on third parties to take care of that data. I think that in the world that we're living in today and as we see an increase in centralization, as we see an increase in integration and in more native integration of tools in web platforms, it's ever so more important that we own our data. And then along with that, don't listen to anyone that tells you to spend more money to solve your problems.
I hope you have several pages of notes and ideas to implement and if you thought today was good, we've got so much more to come. So join us on the next episode of Marketing Home Marketing You, and let's become better marketers together!
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