In this episode of Marketing Home, Marketing You I interviewed Tony Sousa to get insight on all things personal branding and employee retention. Cultivating a positive personal brand is important in adding value to yourself that makes you more valuable to your workplace. Tony also gives tips on how to recruit, hire, and retain employees that are high quality and add value to your apartment community. He also gives insight on what makes a good interviewee and allows you to stand out from the other candidates being interviewed.

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.

It can be tough to stop yourself from bringing home all the stress, tasks, and thoughts that come with being a property manager, leasing professional, or real estate professional. Being onsite at an apartment community can be taxing and walking out of the door often does not mean that your work is over. We’re giving you some tips and tricks on how multifamily professionals and realtors can create a work-life balance that lets you be fully present at work and home. In this podcast episode of Marketing Home, Marketing You you’ll get tips like how to break a bad habit, creating boundaries on when to put work down, how to mentally disconnect from work, how to identify triggers for anxiety, and the importance of an accountability partner, plus a bonus tip. Listen and subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.

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.

Communication is a skill that everyone know they need, but not many people have taken the time or put in the effort to actually hone the skill so that they can use it to help them succeed. Rommel Anacan, president and founder of “The Relationship Difference”, gives us tips and tricks on how to learn your communication style and how to respect others’ communication styles. This is especially important if you are in a management position. As a property manager, leasing agent, or real estate professional communication skills are of upmost importance.

We have some creative ways to show your residents that you appreciate them that your residents are sure to love. These ideas are unique and will get you out of your marketing rut, and will help you surprise and delight your residents which will help them build a personal connection and loyalty to your apartment community or to you as a real estate professional.

Resident appreciation is so important in creating loyalty from your residents. There’s no better time to show your residents some love than February. We want you to think outside the box when it comes to resident appreciation and we’re giving you some ideas of some quick, easy, and affordable ways to show your residents some love.

Follow up is so important for your apartment community or real estate property, especially since only 50% of people ever receive a follow up. This statistic means that the moment you put forth the effort to implement and follow a follow-up plan, you have a leg up on your competition. We’re giving you some ideas on how to plan your follow up and start see results from your outreach marketing. Tune in to Marketing Home, Marketing You on iTunes or Spotify.

There are a lot of reasons that Outreach Marketing can be scary and one of the biggest reasons is figuring out what to say at the businesses you visit. You’ve worked up the courage to go, now what? In this episode of Marketing Home, Marketing You we talk about what to say when you reach your outreach marketing location. It can be difficult to get your point across without feeling like too much of a salesperson. We’re giving you scripts that you can tweak to make your own so that you can start seeing results from all your hard work that you put into your outreach marketing.

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!