Thanks for checking out my blog. I just discovered this blog posting by Maureen Lambe and wanted to share it with you. Of course, I am overjoyed that the Apartment All Stars made the top of the list. 10 years strong and loving it!! - Kate
David Letterman isn’t the only one with a Top 10 list. We have our own list here at the National Apartment Association Education Institute, and ours doesn’t include the “Top 10 Things You Don't Want To Hear At A Barbecue” or the “Top 10 Superhero Pet Peeves,” though we did like the one about people not understanding the difference between “tights” and “leotards.” No, our Top 10 list identifies the most highly attended sessions at last month’s NAA Education Conference and Exposition. (Yes, we do count, halfway through each session; after people have discovered that they are in the wrong session and leave.)
Before I unveil this year’s top conference sessions, let me share with you some of the feedback I have received about this year’s conference. In the past few weeks, I have talked to a lot of people. The ones who attended the conference cannot stop raving about it. They were overwhelmed – in a good way -- by the trade show and the opening party, where they had fun reconnecting with friends and making new ones. They also enjoyed the variety and the useful information of our education sessions. I couldn’t agree more.
Now, without further delay, take a look at the Top 10 Most Highly Attended Education Sessions at the 2012 NAA Education Conference and Exposition. Note that the number in the parentheses following each identifies the number of attendees.
Drum roll, please.
1. Apartment All Stars – Idea Factory 2012 (500)
2. Trends in Resident Technology & Communication Preferences – What Do Residents Want? (500)
3. Did I Just Say That Out Loud? – 468
4. Grass Roots Marketing at Its Finest - Riding Your Creative Edge (468)
5. Five Trends Changing the Face of the Multifamily Industry (468)
6. Improve Performance through Personal Accountability (400)
7. Law and Order — Fair Housing Implications for Criminal History Screening (325)
8. The Epidemic of Hoarding (302)
9. How To Own Your Busy...Stop Wasting Time Getting Productive! (300)
10. Put Your Best Facebook Forward – The Benefits, Dangers and Pitfalls of Social Media (270)
It’s a great list, but what does it say about those of us working in the industry? Obviously, many of us are worried about hoarding – whether among our residents or people we know. This list also tells us that we are all trying to stay ahead of the game. We want to hear what is working for others, how we might apply that to our own jobs and what is looming on the horizon. We see the importance of social media, and we are demanding more from ourselves in terms of improving our own job performance and how we interact with others.
It’s a good list. Hopefully, you’ll use it to come up with training programs at your company or your local apartment association. In the meantime, know that you can order the complete set of 20 video and 17 audio-synced PowerPoint recordings here. You will also access and view these sessions at this website. These are great resources to have unlimited access to, so I encourage you to take advantage of them.
Byline: Maureen Lambe, CAE-National Apartment Association Education Institute | Published: 7/31/2012 10:07 AM
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Old Leads Are Cold Leads and My Olympic Experience
This is one of the hottest summers on record. I live in Phoenix, just ask me what 113 degrees feels like. Yuck! All over the country, our leasing teams are feeling the heat and it can be truly exhausting. By mid-July we are wearing down from this long hot summer yet we need to keep our leasing productivity HOT! The quickest way to get there is to touch something COLD, your Internet leads.
80% of potential sales are lost due to lack of follow-up. This is one of biggest mistakes people make in marketing. Do you want to know how you could increase web conversions and sales by as much as 400%? The secret lies in what you do after you generate a qualified lead. The steps you take next to build a relationship and help your prospect get what they want make all the difference. Most people are so focused on getting qualified leads that they neglect to put their web site marketing and Internet Listing Service follow-up systems in place to convert leads to sales. It’s so important that I’ll say it again;
…with better follow-up, you could increase web sales by 400%.
In just a few days the World’s attention will be on London for the start of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. This is always an exciting time for me as I reminisce about the 1996 games in Atlanta. I tried out to be a placard bearer in the opening and closing ceremonies and got picked! The day of the opening ceremonies it was 111 degrees on the tarp that covered Turner Field. Our energy was draining but continued to be refueled by the excitement of meeting our teams and seeing Mohamed Ali light the torch.
I ushered the great country of Azerbaijan into the games proudly holding their county’s sign alongside the flag bearer. I call them a great country and it has nothing to do with their politics which I know very little about. What I know is about the athletes that represented their country in 1996. It was their first year competing as an independant country after breaking off from the “Unified Team” also known as Mother Russia. Azerbaijan’s uniforms were mismatched and used. Russia looked smashing in their red suits and hats. (Did you think I would get through this blog without a little fashion commentary?!?) It was clear they had little resources and training opportunities but they had a lot of ambition and a plan to win. At closing ceremonies we gathered again for a celebration in the stadium. It was truly exciting to see these inspiring athletes wearing medals they had won. They were singing and dancing with athletes from all over the world. As for me, I was just proud to be a part of the biggest moment in their life and wear a silver medal won by a hot wrestler named Namik!
Imagine you were training for the upcoming summer Olympics. You’re a runner and want to win gold this year. You get a new pair of shoes to help you in your medal quest. Then you map your workout plan. With your coach at your side you identify which exercises to do and when to do them. Each day until the coming Olympics you eagerly show up at the weight room and the track. What happens? Each week your strength and speed improve and you become a stronger competitor increasing your chances of winning a gold medal.
Now imagine a competitor who wants to win but after signing up for the team, didn’t show up for practice. Who do you think is going to win? The person who follows up on their commitment with a series of planned activities or the one who neglects these? Web site marketing is like training for the Olympics but with a whole lot more gold medals available! Start with a lead, regular follow up and you can win many more customers.
You could continue marketing the same way and get the same results, or you could discover the lead generation and follow-up activities that can increase your sales by 400% or more. Just as in training for the Olympics, what you do and when is critical. Use these 7 follow up ideas you to increase your sales.
1. Act Immediately
Old leads are cold leads. Use automated email responses or voice messages to instantly acknowledge a prospect’s interest and give them the information they requested. If you plan to call them, let them know when you’ll call. If you’ve offered something free to entice them to respond, deliver it instantly.
2. Use Curiosity to Motivate
The most powerful motivator in marketing is human curiosity. Tempt your prospects with something they want and pique their interest to prompt them to visit your community or to call you to get the details. I feel it is important to have a contact from that asks questions that give you the clues you need to understand their hot buttons. When you use these hot buttons in your response, you will capture their attention.
3. Create A Sense of Urgency
People are prone to procrastinate, just ask me, I started writing this blog in June! We put off doing things even when we want and need something. Give them a reason to act immediately, such as a limited time offer.
4. Educate Your Prospects
Customers may not have an immediate perception of their need for what you provide. What makes you unique compared to the competition? This product differential must be front and center in your marketing. Use each contact to help them define a problem or concern and demonstrate that your product or service is the solution.
5. Build a Relationship
The stronger your relationship with your prospects, the more likely they’ll be to turn to you when they are ready to make a purchase. Do most men or women propose on their first dates? Of course not! And if they do it is my personal experience you should RUN! It takes time and repeated contact to establish the basis for a long lasting, mutually beneficial relationship.
6. Give Special Attention to Prospects that Demonstrate An Interest
Let’s say you sent out a special $100 discount email offer to your prospect list. Typically, 10-16% of your prospects will open the email, and a much smaller percentage will act on it immediately. Go back with an even stronger call to action to the people that opened your initial email. You’ll find that approximately 50% will open it and you’ll sell a lot more of your product and services.
7. Use Automated Systems to Follow-up
Set up your email auto responders to do your follow-up for you. Use each email contact to educate and motivate your prospects and tell them about your limited time offer. Remember that prospects are more likely to buy after six contacts, so use a series of six emails spread out over two weeks. However, this does not excuse the need for human contact. Reach out!
Want to earn gold with your business? Like Olympic athletes you need more than goals. You need a follow up strategy and system. Put these in place and you can capture the 80% of potential sales you’re missing.
80% of potential sales are lost due to lack of follow-up. This is one of biggest mistakes people make in marketing. Do you want to know how you could increase web conversions and sales by as much as 400%? The secret lies in what you do after you generate a qualified lead. The steps you take next to build a relationship and help your prospect get what they want make all the difference. Most people are so focused on getting qualified leads that they neglect to put their web site marketing and Internet Listing Service follow-up systems in place to convert leads to sales. It’s so important that I’ll say it again;
…with better follow-up, you could increase web sales by 400%.
In just a few days the World’s attention will be on London for the start of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. This is always an exciting time for me as I reminisce about the 1996 games in Atlanta. I tried out to be a placard bearer in the opening and closing ceremonies and got picked! The day of the opening ceremonies it was 111 degrees on the tarp that covered Turner Field. Our energy was draining but continued to be refueled by the excitement of meeting our teams and seeing Mohamed Ali light the torch.
I ushered the great country of Azerbaijan into the games proudly holding their county’s sign alongside the flag bearer. I call them a great country and it has nothing to do with their politics which I know very little about. What I know is about the athletes that represented their country in 1996. It was their first year competing as an independant country after breaking off from the “Unified Team” also known as Mother Russia. Azerbaijan’s uniforms were mismatched and used. Russia looked smashing in their red suits and hats. (Did you think I would get through this blog without a little fashion commentary?!?) It was clear they had little resources and training opportunities but they had a lot of ambition and a plan to win. At closing ceremonies we gathered again for a celebration in the stadium. It was truly exciting to see these inspiring athletes wearing medals they had won. They were singing and dancing with athletes from all over the world. As for me, I was just proud to be a part of the biggest moment in their life and wear a silver medal won by a hot wrestler named Namik!
Imagine you were training for the upcoming summer Olympics. You’re a runner and want to win gold this year. You get a new pair of shoes to help you in your medal quest. Then you map your workout plan. With your coach at your side you identify which exercises to do and when to do them. Each day until the coming Olympics you eagerly show up at the weight room and the track. What happens? Each week your strength and speed improve and you become a stronger competitor increasing your chances of winning a gold medal.
Now imagine a competitor who wants to win but after signing up for the team, didn’t show up for practice. Who do you think is going to win? The person who follows up on their commitment with a series of planned activities or the one who neglects these? Web site marketing is like training for the Olympics but with a whole lot more gold medals available! Start with a lead, regular follow up and you can win many more customers.
You could continue marketing the same way and get the same results, or you could discover the lead generation and follow-up activities that can increase your sales by 400% or more. Just as in training for the Olympics, what you do and when is critical. Use these 7 follow up ideas you to increase your sales.
1. Act Immediately
Old leads are cold leads. Use automated email responses or voice messages to instantly acknowledge a prospect’s interest and give them the information they requested. If you plan to call them, let them know when you’ll call. If you’ve offered something free to entice them to respond, deliver it instantly.
2. Use Curiosity to Motivate
The most powerful motivator in marketing is human curiosity. Tempt your prospects with something they want and pique their interest to prompt them to visit your community or to call you to get the details. I feel it is important to have a contact from that asks questions that give you the clues you need to understand their hot buttons. When you use these hot buttons in your response, you will capture their attention.
3. Create A Sense of Urgency
People are prone to procrastinate, just ask me, I started writing this blog in June! We put off doing things even when we want and need something. Give them a reason to act immediately, such as a limited time offer.
4. Educate Your Prospects
Customers may not have an immediate perception of their need for what you provide. What makes you unique compared to the competition? This product differential must be front and center in your marketing. Use each contact to help them define a problem or concern and demonstrate that your product or service is the solution.
5. Build a Relationship
The stronger your relationship with your prospects, the more likely they’ll be to turn to you when they are ready to make a purchase. Do most men or women propose on their first dates? Of course not! And if they do it is my personal experience you should RUN! It takes time and repeated contact to establish the basis for a long lasting, mutually beneficial relationship.
6. Give Special Attention to Prospects that Demonstrate An Interest
Let’s say you sent out a special $100 discount email offer to your prospect list. Typically, 10-16% of your prospects will open the email, and a much smaller percentage will act on it immediately. Go back with an even stronger call to action to the people that opened your initial email. You’ll find that approximately 50% will open it and you’ll sell a lot more of your product and services.
7. Use Automated Systems to Follow-up
Set up your email auto responders to do your follow-up for you. Use each email contact to educate and motivate your prospects and tell them about your limited time offer. Remember that prospects are more likely to buy after six contacts, so use a series of six emails spread out over two weeks. However, this does not excuse the need for human contact. Reach out!
Want to earn gold with your business? Like Olympic athletes you need more than goals. You need a follow up strategy and system. Put these in place and you can capture the 80% of potential sales you’re missing.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Tactics in New Construction Lease-Ups
by Chris Wood on May 25, 2012
MINI and multifamily at AIM 2012's New Tactics in Construction Lease-up panel with Apartment All-stars speaker and occupancy specialist Kate Good.
A lot has happened in apartment Internet marketing and technology since the last big development boom. With the consideration that new community lease-up budgets are often eight to 10 times larger than typical community marketing budgets, the Bozzuto Group’s director of interactive marketing Michael Kilmurry and Apartment All-stars speaker and occupancy specialist Kate Good ran AIM attendees through an exhilarating gauntlet of creative lease-up strategies in their Tactics in New Construction Lease-ups session at AIM 2012.
“Whatever you do, you’ll want to track analytics through all channels,” said Kilmurry. “In fact I want a t-shirt that says I love tracking URLs. But creating a new community ultimately comes down to starting a conversation, and you’ll have to do that, too.”Bozzuto has found recent success starting conversations by networking deep into their PR and marketing associations, pairing up with luminaries and brands like Candace Bushnell, Neiman Marcus and Georgetown Cupcakes for event based marketing that has turbocharged preleasing at the firm’s new communities.
“The market is focused on what’s new, what’s hot, what grabs our attention and holds it,” said Good. “With lease-ups we’re looking for a great launch, because 10 percent of the market typically influences the purchasing decisions of the other 90 percent. That’s the new, critical importance of brand advocate marketing.”
Good shared insights from marketing campaigns including Dollar Shave Club and MINI, and suggested a deeper social media and technology empowerment at the site level to throttle lease-up success, including personalized leasing agent web sites and URLs and training leasing teams better on delivering messaged communications. “Add value to the leasing conversation,” Good said, “and I do believe that 50 percent prelease openings can happen with regularity.”
MINI and multifamily at AIM 2012's New Tactics in Construction Lease-up panel with Apartment All-stars speaker and occupancy specialist Kate Good.
A lot has happened in apartment Internet marketing and technology since the last big development boom. With the consideration that new community lease-up budgets are often eight to 10 times larger than typical community marketing budgets, the Bozzuto Group’s director of interactive marketing Michael Kilmurry and Apartment All-stars speaker and occupancy specialist Kate Good ran AIM attendees through an exhilarating gauntlet of creative lease-up strategies in their Tactics in New Construction Lease-ups session at AIM 2012.
“Whatever you do, you’ll want to track analytics through all channels,” said Kilmurry. “In fact I want a t-shirt that says I love tracking URLs. But creating a new community ultimately comes down to starting a conversation, and you’ll have to do that, too.”Bozzuto has found recent success starting conversations by networking deep into their PR and marketing associations, pairing up with luminaries and brands like Candace Bushnell, Neiman Marcus and Georgetown Cupcakes for event based marketing that has turbocharged preleasing at the firm’s new communities.
“The market is focused on what’s new, what’s hot, what grabs our attention and holds it,” said Good. “With lease-ups we’re looking for a great launch, because 10 percent of the market typically influences the purchasing decisions of the other 90 percent. That’s the new, critical importance of brand advocate marketing.”
Good shared insights from marketing campaigns including Dollar Shave Club and MINI, and suggested a deeper social media and technology empowerment at the site level to throttle lease-up success, including personalized leasing agent web sites and URLs and training leasing teams better on delivering messaged communications. “Add value to the leasing conversation,” Good said, “and I do believe that 50 percent prelease openings can happen with regularity.”
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