In today’s rental climate, focusing on resident retention has never been more crucial. And let’s face it…resident turnover is a pain in the you know what! It costs us time and money and leaves you feeling like you’re just spinning your wheels. When we’re faced with turnover we can either hustle to find new residents with flashy move-in offers, or we can double down on creating meaningful connections with the residents who already call our community home. We’re a fan of the latter. Here’s why: Small touch-points can make a big impact.

If you're a property manager feeling overwhelmed by managing social media alongside your existing responsibilities, listen in as we explore how to make social media doable and easy by laying a solid foundation for your strategy and building scalable systems for consistent content creation and engagement.

On this episode of Marketing Home, Marketing You we're diving into the power of a three-day reset. Making small changes over a three-day period can truly transform our lives and make us feel like a different person.

We've identified three often underestimated areas that can empower property managers to maintain their joy, even in the face of challenging circumstances. These keys revolve around effectively managing your morning, attention, and energy.

Get creative this month with some fresh, unique ideas for your apartment marketing. We have ideas to check all your boxes and meet all your goals - resident events to increase resident retention, resident notices, outreach marketing, resident renewals, and follow up initiatives. The best part? They won’t break the bank or take up all of your time. We don’t believe you have to sacrifice your time or your money to reach your marketing goals.

Today I’m sharing five skills that have been the secret sauce, or an invaluable aid, in helping my marketing career and creating my multifamily marketing business. Whether you’re an apartment marketing director, aspiring marketing director, or entrepreneur, these are five skills that every career can benefit from.

How do you create a company culture that wants to work and make big goals happen? How do you have a team succeed during difficult times?

Learn from a manager, who considers herself an entertainer first, what it takes to really lead.

Some people are just natural fits for this industry and Julie Garcia is one of those people.

Learn what it takes to move up, to face challenges with honesty and empathy, when you should take risks and when you should stick to basics.

Maybe all it takes is looking at the big picture?

Moving is stressful so it’s important as leasing agents, real estate professionals, and property managers that we are empathetic to our new residents and take the time to understand their circumstances when they move in. Taking the time to help make sure their move in process goes smoothly and showing them some gratitude for picking your community will go a long way in gaining their loyalty. Making sure to take the move in process as an opportunity to ‘wow’ your new resident will help in your resident retention as well.

Food centered resident events are great for encouraging resident retention and building loyalty for your apartment community. This cooking class resident event is a great way to get your residents mingling with each other and creating relationships, plus it doesn’t have to be overly complicated for you as the property manager or leasing agent. Utilize social media to market your event and encourage your residents to post about it using a hashtag.

Do your residents know how much you appreciate them? It’s so important to show them that you are grateful they picked your community to make their home. It's easy to lose a little steam as the year is winding down. It's like our bodies and minds want to go into hibernation mode! But we can't let our marketing and retention go into hiding. Have you ever heard it said, "Summer bodies are made in the winter"? It's the same thing with our communities. The work we do in the winter months pays off all year round, so don't stop hustling!  

We’re winding down 2019 (like, what?? How did this happen so quickly?) and as we always say at Sprout, this is not the time of year to take your foot off the gas, but rather keep going and finish the year strong.

We know that the end of the year can feel even more busy than usual but we don’t want you to neglect planning for this last month of the year. In fact, this is a great time to celebrate creative holidays with your residents while they’re already in the mood to celebrate. This season is also a great time to get out there and do some outreach marketing around your community. 

If you want to make your marketing efforts as easy as possible, while still being effective, then these done-for-you bundles in our Sprout Shop is the way to go. Couple those bundles with a FREE download of our Creative Holiday Calendar and you’re GOLDEN for the rest of the year.

Black Friday is right around the corner and who says that stores are the only ones that get to take advantage of this huge marketing monster? We have an entire Black Friday collection that will no doubt be able to catch the attention of all the right people. Why would you want to jump on the Black Friday bandwagon? Well… think about it. When Black Friday rolls around it’s like a switch flips and people are in the mood to spend shop and spend money. Since people are more willing and open to spending money, they are more receptive to marketing for it. They are looking for the sales promotions. Whoa, did you miss that? They are LOOKING for the sales. That means for once your prospects are actively looking for marketing that is letting them know about sales and are more inclined to take action. If that doesn’t make you want to jump up and happy dance, I don’t know what will!!

It’s no surprise that attention spans today aren’t what they used to be. Studies say that in 1920 the average attention span was 20-minutes. Today? Eight seconds...the same as a goldfish. As a property manager trying to market your apartment community, this fact should stop you in your tracks. Breaking through the noise of day to day life is a real challenge. Twenty years ago, we were just trying to stand out from the competition with nice curb appeal and a good photo in our For Rent ad. But today’s online world has created a new set of complicated problems for apartment marketers. Your community is no longer just competing with other communities. You are competing with EVERYTHING for your customer’s attention.

Most managers would agree that a proactive marketing approach is ideal, still the large majority default to a reactive approach. Why? Often, managers start with the best of intentions to have a well-crafted marketing plan but then things happen onsite that take away our focus. Mid-month they can find themselves with dipping occupancy, unaccounted for skips, or a lower renewal rate than anticipated. In the shock and misunderstanding a hail mary is thrown in hopes it will correct all the missed goals. But let’s be honest, does the hail mary ever work?

Being a property manager is a rewarding career, but it can have it's rough days. Especially when that day consists of dealing with resident complaints. How you handle complaints can either build that resident loyalty that you want, or it can break their trust. Read our sneak peak of our webinar with Rommel Anacan where he'll teach you a step-by-step method for positively dealing with complaints.