Time for Simple

Read a great post over Brains of Fire Blog titled: Creating Problems (Instead of Solving Them). In the post Eric Dodds speaks the point of reinventing for the sake of the exercise. And, all under the guise of presenting the perception that we, as providers of service; be it branding, marketing, financial or otherwise, are creating value for our constituents. The otherwise obvious point for me is that simple stuff works. Simple stuff gets results. Simple gets participation. And, simple is simply a process of filtering out the noise.

In this excerpt, Eric sites a very cool example of an agency filtering out the noise in the way of building the right website for a brewery in the amazing state of Oregon:

…in a moment of absurdly common sense, we asked real beer drinkers what they really wanted from a web-site before we actually built it. –North blog (3)

What did they want? What all beer-lovers want. To know where they can find good beer.

Turns out, it’s two things. (A) Directions. (B) Mobility. Simply put: “Where can I find your beers and beer unveilings”. –North blog (3)

This hit me right between the eyes this morning as I grappled with our new media strategies and overall apartment marketing and branding efforts.

Righting My View of the Apartment Marketing World

Many times I am guilty of viewing our strategies based on what I want to see happen, what I want to participate in, what I want our Mills Properties participants to see, what I want them to do and experience. When the simple reality is that It is and has always been about getting heads on beds under a sharp curb to commode premise. Under the premise of people’s needs. And, people want simple things done in simple ways for simple results.

How To Create Simple

1. Create a culture that is conducive to very good but simple customer service. Say please, thank you and how can I help – always!

2. Create great partcipatory sales routines. Invite people to tell you their view of the world. Ask how you can make things simple.

3. Be relentless about follow up and follow through. Simple phone call. Simple thank you card. Simple thank you.

It’s that simple.

Major on the majors that get you to simple and guess what - You’ll ROCK!

Your getting simple contributer,

M

It looks like @earlybird is positioning itself as a socially acceptable way to broadcast your current promotion. Brian Solis puts it this way in On Twitter, The Early Bird Gets the Worm

If you can imaging the possibilities for @EarlyBird, it goes beyond just one-off deals and specials through a generic account [push marketing], it can be themed into opt-in channels for almost any area of interest, food, music, entertainment, events, etc. [relevancy] emphasis mine.

As it relates to apartment marketing, I can see the value in an opt-in channel for apartments as a good thing -

What do you think?

…..been here just over 5 years and really like it. My main interests include Conservative talk shows and Trance/Techno music. Odd combination……

I can’t wait to get some discussion going with this resident. 5 years – can you imagine the change she/he has seen in five years? Can you imagine the potential value he/she might add on the premise of that 5 years of history?

What are you doing to leverage the power of your networks?

Power in Mystery

After working through the logistics and contract negotiations we settled on a spot and let the construction begin. What happened next was pure entertainment – are you building a pool? Are you building a new building? Volleyball courts? – Wait, it’s too big to be a pool! Arg, what is it? All the common questions begin to filter through the wifi lounge, the community and into our leasing center. That is until we could not take it any more and we disclosed.That said, we learned a real time lesson as it relates to WOM.

Apartment Marketing Stimulants

Tell them but don’t tell them. We have a number of other amenities and improvements that we are doing to this property over the next one to three years with each one major in scope. Taking the lesson from the dog park mystery – we will leave the community to – guess it out – if you will. I can see some cool social media apartment amenity mysteries playing out over Facebook and other social platforms. In the spirit of – give them something to talk about – mystery takes a front seat. And, besides who doesn’t like a great guessing game or mystery? Who can resist talking about it with their friends, family and otherwise? Which is part of the point, right?

Over the past few weeks we have started to quietly roll out some of our Facebook Like Pages as we gear up for the Get Social with Mills Initiative . One of the issues we’ve run into with this slow roll out is anxious PMs and MSs like Teresa and Mike at Park Clayton Apartments. They were ready to run – so, we let them go and in just over two weeks they took the like numbers from 7 to North of 225.

How to grow Your Apartment Facebook Like Page numbers

How did they do it? To make a long story short Mike brought an orphaned stuffed yellow duck to the leasing office for Teresa to see and each time they tried to put the duck away – residents asked to have it back as a mascot. With that T and M – [I often use the first letter of peoples names - with that T is for Teresa and M is for Mike] decided to have a – Name the Duck – contest . In conjunction with that contest they decided to give away a few fun prizes for the resident who yielded the biggest number of Likes to our page in a weeks time.

The Apartment Like Page Results

T and M put on North of 200 Likes inside of two weeks time. Not only that – they yielded something much more important in my opinion – check out the page and I think you will quickly discern what I mean. That point brings me to the email below -

How to use Facebook Like Pages to Rent Apartments

I will let the email speak for itself -

Have a compelling weekend – M

—–Original Message—–
From: Park Clayton <parkclayton@millsproperties.net>
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 12:55 PM
To: ‘Mike Brewer’ <MBrewer@millsproperties.net>; ‘Tracy Seubert’ <TSeubert@millsproperties.net>
Subject: Great news!

Hey guys,

I have some awesome news about our facebook fans. One of my residents came down to tell me that his friends in Taiwan are watching us on facebook and they think it’s great that we do resident events and have contests. He says they told him they want to move here when they get to town just because of what they see online!

Also, he brought down his laptop and we spoke with a couple of his friends in Taiwan who want to move here in August. The program they use to chat/talk internationally is called, “skype.”

Teresa Richardson

Property Manager

Park Clayton Apartments

photo credit: blog.hubspot.com

The following quote from his post struck me most…

Here’s the twist that makes this event so interesting to me; The 15 customers Dell will meet on the 15th are customers that have issues with Dell, and want to voice those issues to the company.  The 15 customers Dell will meet on the 17th are evangelists of the company.  So over the course of 2 days, Dell will be meeting with 30 of its most passionate customers, from both ends of the spectrum.  I think this event is also an example of the next evolution of social media for companies.

Invite thirty and learn the dirty

The dirty little chatter that could work to make the your apartment living experience [read: offering] one that escapes the hand-cuffs of commodity. More times that not we as operators gather our troops in our conference rooms across this great land and decide on the next best thing for employees, prospects and residents alike. Imagine if we brought the thirty in like Dell is doing? That is once we have taken the time to understand who they really are.

Being a part of something bigger than yourself

Play along with me on this for a second – remember the last time you felt compelled – really compelled as a result of something you participated in something bigger than you? Remember how you felt leading up to, during and after the event? Do you still talk about it to this day? Did it shape your view of the world? Do you feel compelled to share not only the event but the organizer or organization that put on the event?

There is, innate in all of us, an underlying need to belong, to feel appreciate, to feel heard, wanted and important. As marketers – it’s not our job to exploit that but rather harness it and use it for a greater good.

Is it possible in our business? You bet it is. The questions is – are we willing to get those people in a room where there is no monitor to hide behind – where canned corporate speak is left to improv at the risk of authenticity and transparency? The second half of the thirty could be fun – it’s the first half I would be anxious about.

We have done our fair share of surveys and focus groups over the years but never did we go after the downside hardliners. Mack and Dell have me thinking hard about the obvious value of doing so…what do you think?

]]> http://mbrewergroup.com/2010/06/apartment-marketing-2/feed/ 15 http://mbrewergroup.com/2010/06/apartment-marketing-creating-community/ http://mbrewergroup.com/2010/06/apartment-marketing-creating-community/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:17:34 +0000 Mike Brewer http://mbrewergroup.com/?p=1224 Meet Lisa Zagoren – Property Manager at Mills Properties. She is responsible for the amazing and over the top performance of a 758 unit asset in North St. Louis County named Oak Park Apartments. This summer she has taken on the responsibility of producing a full on kids camp. She and her team are hosting twelve children from in and around the community and running them through all kinds of fun and educational activities aimed at keeping them off the streets and actively involved in her apartment community.

The camp runs daily from 9 to 4 and each of her team members to include herself are responsible for facilitating the activities. I got my first chance to observe the Kid’s Club last Thursday during a weekly site visit. At the time the kids were playing musical chairs and having a blast. The program goes beyond just having fun, however.

As you can see from one of the fliers created to promote the program, they are offering math, reading, language and arts, exercise programs, entrepreneurship training along with a host of other activities aimed at helping the children. Many of the educational programs are facilitated by four high-school students who also participate in the Kid’s Club. Their participation will yield them school credit for participating in a community service over the summer.

I had the privilege of meeting one young man who definitely exuded a community spirit. His firm handshake and confident demeanor assured me that he was aiming for a bright future somewhere in the world. It jazzed me to know – in the mean time – that he would be serving the Oak Park children this summer.

I got the real sense that this program is just the beginning of something of something really special as it relates to building community. And the marketing benefit? A whole host of kids and parents are talking about the Oak Park Kid’s Club and how cool it is…as such we will be checking in and reporting out often.

I’d be remiss to avoid sending out some major crazy cool – hat’s off to the Oak Park Team! Great Cause! And, thanks for rocking the house – always!

If you recall the Google commercial that ran during the Super Bowl you will have a really good sense for what this is. Google has created a way for you to mimic their Search On commercial. It’s really ingenious if you ask me. And, simple to do.

Here is a link to the site where you can build your own. And, here is the one I built for Mills Properties:

In Lisa Trosien’s recent post: Dear Mr. (or Ms.) Property Management Executive , she speaks to ten complaints from site teams across the country. It strikes me that every single one of these have been relevant to our industry for as long as I can remember. And, every single one of them impedes progress. Which, according to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, is the number one motivator of employees.

Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer penned: What Really Motivates Workers in the Jan-Feb 2010 issue. In the article they sight the following five factors as being significant drivers of motivation;

1. Recognition

2. Incentives

3. Interpersonal support

4. Support for making progress

5. Clear goals

All important but Amabile and Kramer contend not the number one motivator. After conducting an intense multi-year study tracking a multitude of levers – progress – it seems is the number one motivator.

“On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak.”

Seems to me progress, not unlike every item in Lisa’s list, is completely in the control of executives across the country. The article suggests the following ideas for helping progress;

1. Avoid changing goals autocratically

2. Be decisive

3. Provide support in the way of rolling up your own sleeves

4. Celebrate progress – no matter the stretch

I have always believed that a happy employee is a productive employee and that the property management organization exists to serve the people that serve it. And if those two mantras are employed as a premise for all decision making the rest will happen by default.

For those who would huff and puff about about the soft stuff, there is the alternative;

“On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest.”

I trust the week to come will be one of smashing progress…

Related post: Can Apartment Marketers Afford to Disconnect a 24/7 generation?

Related post: Make Sure You’re Not De-Motivating Your Team

Related post: Eight Things Your Employees Want From You

(Photo credit: Dan Pink’s: A Whole New Mind)

I have included the chart here again for reference:

What is Education?

Education, according to Princeton.edu is defined as; a gradual process of acquiring knowledge. From the time of birth we are taking in information, processing it, making decisions and acting. All the while we are layering information on top of information, taking in the new and purging the old to make new assumptions about the future to come. In any case, we are subject to the people and the environment we choose to hang around and participate in. There is a Dave Matthew’s song called: The Space Between. In that song Dave belts: “the space between – the tears we cry – is the laughter keeps us coming back for more – the space between – the wicked lies we tell – and hope to keep safe from the pain” I would contend that space between is called – choice. And, that choice is the byproduct of a catalyst and the result is action – all couched in education or better said, knowledge.

Value Exchange

Education would lead us to understand that the single most important catalyst in today’s business environment is garnishing a individuals attention. With no equivocation – it is the most important determinant of business success. When asking someone to give you their attention, you are asking them to give you their most precious possession – time. Ask for that attention in the way of a negative event caused by you and or your organization and expect a less than positive consequence. Ask for that attention in the way of a positive event and expect – nothing. In the Internet age this is the price of admission. In the context of apartment marketing ideas, ask for that attention in the way of educating apartment patrons and you plant the seeds necessary for true engagement.

Consumer Expectation

There is yet another thing that human beings have in common – the need for insight. Insight is often a vibrant, happy and emotionally loaded space in any person’s life. At some level we are all after it – we all want to be in-the-know. The emotion and desire is hard-wired into our system. That is to suggest that consumer’s want – innately. It’s imbued on their hearts and minds. When we apply that fact we can quickly see the overarching need to embed listening, understanding, interaction and feedback into our concept. It all adds up to meaning for the apartment patron. It all adds up to the willingness to give us their attention. As an example – people spend an average of 25 minutes per session on Facebook – why? The need for insight is being met.

Offer it and They Will Come

We see examples of this all over the internet today but my favorite is Wine Library TV – dial into the 3:50 min section of this video – it is the point. You get people to this and you are on your way to what I will end this series with.

Have a over the top and compelling end to your week – we will be back in a couple days with another installment to this series.