Outreach marketing can be an overwhelming beast to conquer but here’s the thing… it doesn’t have to be complicated. Sprout Marketing has done-for-you bundles that are the easiest way to accomplish your outreach marketing goals and are sure to resonate with your prospects. We’re giving you unique and easy ways to hand out these bundles so that you can standout from the crowd and get ahead of your competitors, as well as some social media marketing tips.

Outreach marketing is alive and well and working wonders for apartment communities and real estate professionals everywhere. It might take a little more work and effort than you want to put in initially, but it will pay off. Outreach marketing is important just in this digital age, if not more so to help you break through the marketing noise your prospects have all around you. Listen to learn the best tips on when, where, and how to go about outreach marketing.

This is the season for throwing some great resident events that can really draw a crowd. Piggy back on some of those big name events like the Grammys, the Oscars, and the Super Bowl to make your marketing efforts a little easier. Learn some best practices for throwing events like these for your residents - everything from pre and post event marketing, decorations, food and drinks options, as well as games to keep the party going.

Resident Events for your apartment community residents are important in creating resident retention and resident loyalty. As property managers, leasing professionals, and real estate professionals we often need quick, easy, and simple resident events to throw that are also effective and generate high resident participation. It’s important to be have creative ideas for resident events so you can keep each event fresh and exciting.

Renewals start on day one of a new resident moving into your apartment community and continues throughout their resident journey. As property managers and leasing professionals, it’s important to continually create loyalty through creative ideas for resident retention. Train your teams to get comfortable with renewal conversations to increase overall retention rates.

While outreach marketing can be intimidating, the easiest way to get started is to focus on your home turf…with current residents. They have already bought into your community. So the easiest way to turn one resident into three is with a kick butt referral program. The trick is to make sure referring is on our residents’ brain often by reminding them often. As property manager, leasing agent, leasing professionals, and realtors, a referral is as good as it gets.

Moving is one of the most stressful things your residents will deal with, so it’s important as property managers, leasing agents, realtors, and leasing professionals that we take the time to make sure we’re doing everything we can help make it a little easier. We need to be empathetic and look for ways that we can delight our residents in unexpected ways when they move into our apartment community.

Career development and work-life-balance can be difficult to navigate, but Mark Hurley is giving advice here that will help you feel encouraged and empowered to better yourself and impact those around you. Property managers and real estate professionals are some of the busiest people on the planet, so acquiring balance is no small feat. Tune in to learn how creating a healthy balance of ambition and home life can benefit you, how to operate differently in wartime versus peacetime and why setting rules for yourself is a good thing.

Resident notices are a place we can really step it up and wow our residents with our message. Sometimes our residents need a gentle reminder about our community policies, but we can still keep it fun. As a property manager, leasing agent, or realtor, notices are important in keeping your community looking good so don’t skimp on making sure they’re a show stopper.

The average shopper begins looking for a new home six weeks in advance and is going to look at four to six communities before they narrow down their search. If you're going to stand out, you must follow up. But here is the sad reality: More than 50 percent of prospects never received one form of follow-up. So just by following up, you increase the odds of getting that new lease. This is why it’s so important for property managers, leasing agents, and realtors to reach out and follow up with their prospects in a timely and personable way.

Outreach marketing is the act of marketing or promoting our community. It involves creating rapport, building and strengthening business and customer relationships, and seeking out new clients. In a nutshell, it’s telling businesses (and people) in our surrounding area who we are, what we're all about, and what our community is all about. Building rapport is more powerful when someone can put a face to the (brand) name. When we go visit local businesses, they start to associate us with our community. We go from a faceless brand to a personal connection. Marketing is a numbers game. Increased marketing equals more prospects and more prospects allow us more opportunities to close. If we follow that logic, more opportunities to close leads to higher occupancy. And we all know the benefit of that!

In this episode I have a conversation with multifamily hall of fam-er Mark Hurley. Mark talks about the importance of other people’s influence on your core values and how you carry those with you throughout your personal and business life. He also talks about the importance of genuinely caring for people in our industry, as well as life in general. If you’ve felt bogged down and uninspired in where you are in your career, this is the episode you need to listen to.

Social media marketing is hard to tackle and can be overwhelming for property managers and real estate professionals to manage. Everyone knows they should be using it but how to use it is a different story. In this episode, Barbara discusses ways to simplify your social media efforts while still getting the results you want. We answer all the big questions like when to post, where to post, and other content creation tips and tricks for social media marketing.

Marketing your apartment community or your real estate business can be a real challenge. In today’s Marketing Home, Marketing You episode we uncover the top four marketing mistakes made in 2019 and we show simple ways to fix them in 2020. Fixing these four mistakes will lead to huge gains in time, energy and return on your investments. Tune in.

If you’re a part of the Sprout Community in any way then you know that we just released some BIG news and our new project has finally launched! Our new podcast called Marketing Home, Marketing You is now available for all you awesome peeps to dive into. Our CEO, Barbara Savona, being the lifelong learner that she is, launched this podcast out of a passion for creating content that is easy to consume while still being jammed packed with education and value for the listeners. This podcast was born out of a desire to create a space where all housing professionals can come and discuss all things marketing, business growth, and career development. Seriously, ALL housing professionals - multifamily, student housing, senior housing, affordable, brokerage, real estate. 

There’s something so exciting about January. Everyone seems a little extra inspired this time of year and encouraged to make steps towards their goals. There’s an optimism in the air that you just don’t get any other time of year. People setting New Year’s resolutions should inspire your team to see how you can meaningfully contribute to helping your residents and prospects achieve their goals. Seth Godin, Master Marketer and Author, speaks about how important it is for companies and brands to have a meaningful impact on people's transformation. That’s where real connections happen. 

In this episode of Marketing Home, Marketing You, you’ll get to know your host, Barbara Savona. Throughout this podcast she’ll help you navigate the ins and outs of marketing your apartment community, real estate property, and career development. Learn Barbara’s background in the industry, how she built Sprout Marketing with her BFF Lauren Emmot, and more fun facts! Be sure to tune in.

The new year is coming up and if you’re anything like me, it has you looking back at the year and reflecting on what went well and what went…not so well. When you’re in that state of reflection, don’t let it pass without taking the time to use that information to your advantage. At Sprout, we use the KISS method to reflect on things we’ve done to see how we can improve the next time around. What we love so much about this method is that it doesn’t take long to complete and once it’s implemented, you’re able to see real, positive changes. All you have to do is reflect on the event or situation and think about what you want to Keep, what you want to Improve on, what you want to Stop doing, and what you want to Start doing.

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!  

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!!