Author: Stacey Feeney

Young Professionals – Branding for the Resident Persona

Written by Stacey Feeney on August 30, 2024. Posted in All Articles, Branding.

A multifamily operator will tell us 9 times out of 10 that their target residents are “young professionals.” What does that terminology mean? How can you brand your community to reach these young professionals?

Start by understanding “young professionals”—their wants, needs, desires, and habits. Typically young professionals are beginning their careers in corporate or technical fields. Knowing who falls into this group can help tailor the community’s brand to speak directly to them, where they are (physically, mentally, psychologically). If a brand doesn’t identify who it’s trying to reach, it doesn’t know what kind of branding one needs to develop to make it be successful.

Targeting specific personas will make your budget and efforts go farther—it’s more efficient to narrow the target and more cost-effective, as well. Let’s look at what “young professional” means and how to determine whether you should build your brand around this specific customer persona.

“Young Professionals”

Who are “young professionals”? What do they do? How do they live? What do they value?

OVERVIEW

Generally speaking, young professionals are defined by their work and by their age. They’re generally college-educated and trained professionals working in either white collar or blue collar industries. Their age can range from about 25-34. The following are other demographics and stats assumed about young professionals, taken from a national average:

Young professional demographics:

$50,000-75,000 annual income
Make up 6% of all households
34% are homeowners
50% have a college degree

Knowing that 34% of young professionals are homeowners can lead you to understand that the remaining approximate two-thirds of this group make up the potential renter pool.

GENERATIONAL CONTEXT

Beyond their work and age, their defined birth year span also plants them pretty squarely within the millennial generation—that’s even more information to draw from.

Millennial statistics:

Born 1981-1996 (28-43 years old in 2024)
Concerned with financial future, even with higher education
Budget priorities:

Rent/Mortgage
Food
Transportation
Basic Expenses
Student Loans

Delay long-term commitments (i.e. marriage; purchasing home)
Use internet 3 hours, 45 minutes/day
Values:

Competitive
Civic-minded
Open-minded
Achievement-oriented

Influences/Shaped by:

Columbine shooting
9/11
Rise of the internet

Communication preferences:

Instant messaging
Texts
Email

Worldview / Seek out:

Challenge
Growth
Development
Fun work-life balance
Change

Are Young Professionals Really Your Target Audience?

Of those 9 times out of 10 our client tells us that their audience is young professionals—how many times is that fully accurate? Neither we nor our client knows until the market is assessed and the target audience is verified. If you don’t do either, you’re wasting time, money, and energy on one group when you should be examining who you really want to reach. Plus, you may need to narrow down your search even further, as “young professionals” is still a large target.

ASSESS YOUR MARKET

Create multifamily customer personas to fully align your brand. By defining the ideal resident profile (IRP) you can create your brand strategy around who is most likely to be the target audience. As an IRP is created, demographics are considered: age, gender, income. Additionally, analyzing your location (who lives and works in the area) will indicate even further information about who may want to live in your community. By understanding local growth patterns, that success can be folded into the community’s success.

VERIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Compare young professional stats against the research stats. Do they line up? If not, young professionals are indeed not the main persona group renting in your market. Match your branding efforts with accurate resident profiles based on actual data and actual research.

ALIGN BRAND WITH IRP

Align the brand with the IRP and see multiple benefits:

Informing brand development – Knowing the values and preferences of the target group isn’t for nothing—they exist to establish a pattern. Slip into the predictable pattern and reach them where they are and where they will be.
Efficiency in targeting – Get your brand in front of those ready to listen (and resonate with brand messaging) and ready to make a rental decision
Cost effectiveness – Stretch your (already stressed) marketing budget further by targeting the right audience instead of wasting ad spend and messaging on those who will never convert to lease-signing residents.

Branding to Reach Young Professionals

If our client was correct, and we find through research and discovery that their target audience is indeed young professionals, then we can work to help create branding to reach young professionals.

BRANDING STRATEGIES

Use the values found in the millennial realm (which overlaps nicely with young professionals) to tailor your brand. Millennials are concerned with money, use the internet a ton, and like challenges, growth, and change. To reach and attract millennials, build a brand strategy that solves their challenges and speaks their language. They’re concerned with housing—make it easier. They’re aware of social issues—create a fundraiser. They’re constantly trying to balance between work and play—emphasize your WFH-friendly community aspects.

Meet them where they are with your marketing efforts: online on websites and social media.

Note: Location will function heavily into this. For a group of communities—do separate research for each location. Where one community may be tailored for young professionals, another may appeal to middle-aged families. That branding and messaging and targeting should look different.

Demographic research and creating an IRP should always come before developing a brand identity and strategy. You’ll spend more time up front determining your best audience, but the efforts will get more dialed in as you go. Target young professionals if that’s your multifamily customer persona. If it’s not, keep up the research to align your brand strategies accordingly.

The Psychology of Perceived Value through Brand Development

Written by Stacey Feeney on August 25, 2024. Posted in All Articles, Branding, Marketing.

Brand development in the multifamily market is the first step for the attention, engagement, and loyalty of your current residents and prospects. Brand reputation can create demand for units, while brand experience can keep your residents renewing. But can you leverage brand development to raise the rent? How can you help boost your community’s perceived value—through the eyes (and psyche) of your residents? Follow along to see how what residents and prospects believe to be valuable may allow you to boost your rental rates.

And if you think we forgot about our post on what renters really want—and how to provide them affordability, transparency, and excellent service, we didn’t. This is more about creating a brand that highlights the things that renters want, and allows residents to feel they’re spending their money wisely, in the right place.

What’s Customer Perceived Value?

DEFINITION AND FORMULA

Customer Perceived Value (CPV) is a combination of a few things. “Customer” is obvious here. Perception is understanding or impression—in this case, it’s more of an “impression.” Value is the amount something may be worth. That value is often up to opinion. That’s where the customer comes in.

Basically: CPV is how valuable the customer believes a service or product is, based on how closely it meets their own needs or expectations. How much they’re willing to pay is based on how high they place the product or service’s value. This CPV can influence both the pricing and demand for a product or service.

This means—a higher CPV could contribute to higher rent pricing or unit demand or both.

The quick and basic Customer Perceived Value formula:

Perceived Benefit – Perceived Cost = Customer Perceived Value (CPV)

You should always be aiming to provide a positive CPV. This means the benefits should outweigh the costs, always—in the eye of your residents and prospects. (See, math can be kind of fun!) The higher the perceived value, the higher their willingness to pay.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERCEIVED VALUE

There is a broad spectrum of items that use this perceived value system. It can range from a store-brand, generic can of beans (ooh, $.30 cheaper!) to a full-price Rolex (ah, a symbol of the upper crust life). Both are purchased—likely by different audiences—for different reasons. But the common thread is psychology. What consumers believe. There are generally five factors that influence perceived value, though at varying levels:

Ease of Purchase – How easy is it to buy? Is it one click? That’s appealing. A “Did you forget these items? Add to cart!” prompt will get a lot of consumers, too.
Quick Delivery – Similar to ease of purchase, consumers love to have the items in their hands quickly. Free shipping is great, but same-day delivery? Even better. We value our time more than most other things, so we’re happier if the process is quicker and easier.
Prestige – Limited access and elite status. The feel of exclusivity can make some consumers shell out more money. They want to be seen as successful, and in some cases, must be seen that way in order for their own lives and businesses to continue on the path of success. Optics can mean a lot.
Lower Cost of Ownership – Look how much money you’ll save when you buy in bulk! This can also be true of paying ahead for a subscription. The annual (i.e. “pay for 12 months”) version is almost always higher in value (per month) than the 3- or 6-month subscription.

Friendly Customer Service – Great products with lackluster service are likely to hit a financial wall. If you can’t get a human on the phone to help you troubleshoot your new product, it’s not worth much. Boost the experience and support, boost the value.

Creating a High-Value Perception

If you want to raise the perceived value, you’ll need to:

Lower the perceived cost

Improve / multiply the perceived benefit(s)

Go for the benefit boost.

Based on your audience, those benefits may vary widely, but the more benefits you find to highlight, the clearer that high value will be perceived.

In terms of branding, there are few ways to create a high-value perception of your community:

STORYTELLING

The verbal aspect of your brand is made to highlight what’s different about your property. If you highlight what is rare and exclusive, this equates to the “prestige” principle. If instead you execute competitor research, work with management, and find you can charge lower rents for longer leases, you can utilize the “lower cost of ownership” principle (even though it’s still renting). Put simply: More lease for less per month.

VISUALS

The way your community is presented and its vibe, ambiance, feel (take your pick) can be improved through brand visuals—including your interior design choices. If you can extend your branding visuals from your guidelines through to the textures, patterns, colors, furniture style, and art that graces your community, you can better create an experience. It gives your prospects and residents something more to resonate with and relate too—the ultimate goal in brand development: connection. Think about the glow up of cauliflower (it’s a pizza crust! It’s buffalo wings! It’s rice!) grew because a few companies found a different way to both use it and present it: healthy veggies as the main, unmissable event.

MARKETING TOUCHPOINTS

Your brand’s presence matters. Use social media and build up your online presence to grow your connections and build up a community on social media. Your building is a physical property. Your brand is the values your residents and prospects (and anyone that comes in contact with your community) assign to it through their engagement and experience with it, and your brand is the culture they align with (“they feel how I feel!”)

More Multifamily Property Strategies to Enhance CPV

That’s not all you can do. Multifamily is a different kind of business. It’s where your residents make memories, raise their family, make friends, crush goals, rest, relax, and come home to. It’s worth finding ways to give residents what they really need so they feel they’re getting out (value-wise) what they’re putting in.

SAVE RESIDENTS TIME

Find ways to help your residents save time. Conveniences such as:

A single application for multiple communities (within a brand management family)
Easy online appointment booking for non-emergent maintenance requests
24-hour (or less) email responses

Each of these are surefire ways to keep them feeling like their time is valuable, and your community is helping keep that brand promise.

BALANCE PRICING

Premium prices say, “Exclusive.” Value prices say, “great deal alert!” Understand what your brand is offering and make sure it fits with your brand guidelines.

ESTABLISH REPUTATION

Reviews, testimonials, surveys. Establishing your credibility as a reliable community is a one-way road to brand loyalty. Partnerships and cross-promotions with other businesses that have an excellent reputation will help too (a rising tide lifts all boats). Every positive review and testimonial is one less time your brand has to say “pick us, we’re great!” Let your reputation do the talking for you, through your all-star, five-star-giving residents.

Raise your community’s customer perceived value, and you’ll be able to justify a possible raise in rents. But don’t do it without ensuring your brand is in it for the long haul and if you will commit to delivering on your brand promises. When you know your value, you can tell the story, tailor your marketing, and keep your residents coming back for more.

Multifamily Customer Persona or the Ideal Resident Profile (IRP)

Written by Stacey Feeney on August 20, 2024. Posted in All Articles, Branding, Marketing. 1 Comment on Multifamily Customer Persona or the Ideal Resident Profile (IRP)

One of the best rules for business: know the customer before marketing the product. Likewise for multifamily communities, you must know your multifamily customer persona. (But we like to call it the Ideal Resident Profile (IRP) in multifamily.)

When you have enough information about who you most want to reach—you can capture their attention, resonate with the audience you need, build a relationship, and retain your current residents through trust and loyalty. Plus: providing what they most want and need is the key to building up your business through brand development and targeted marketing.

What is a Customer Persona or IRP?

DEFINITION

A multifamily customer persona or IRP is a persona or profile of an individual that’s likely to use a specific business. For the multifamily industry, this is an individual who is likely to live in that specific community.

IRP FOR MULTIFAMILY

By taking real data from research, companies create a somewhat fictional profile of a likely customer for their apartment community. In multifamily, this is the IRP—the ideal resident profile. It’s the kind of resident that is most likely to live in your community. Using information based on survey data to inform demographics, as well as psychographic and behavioral tendencies, the full picture of the IRP is formed with details drawn from various sources.

The Research Part of IRPs

All this talk about learning and discovery, and no details—until now. What kind of research is required to create an IRP for apartment communities? Plenty: demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral.

DEMOGRAPHIC

This is generally the most basic info for an area. It includes:

Age
Gender
Income
Occupation
Education level
Family status

There’s more, of course, but each of these items helps you get a clearer picture of your ideal resident. You can understand what they might be willing to spend on rent. You can figure out how many bedrooms they may need. Demographics are the first step in creating a multifamily customer persona series.

GEOGRAPHIC

Next up: geographics. Geographic research tells you things like:

Location preferences
Proximity to workplaces, schools, and neighborhood amenities
Homeownership Rate

Knowing housing information related to geography can help you create another aspect of your IRP. For example, if you see homeownership rates falling in the area, there may be a shift to a bigger market share, with more people seeking communities over single-family homes.

PSYCHOGRAPHIC

Think about where your residents may work. What their hobbies are. Their favorite brands and biggest interests. Generally, look at:

Lifestyle
Values
Interests
Attitudes
Personality

Each of these bits and pieces get you one step closer to understanding their motivations and habits. Are they laid back? Do they like cardio? Do they love plants more than animals? Be the brand that they identify with.

BEHAVIORAL

Buyer behavior is the final missing piece. Knowing their:

Online behavior (meet them where they are)
Renting habits (how long do they stay in one place?)
Decision-making processes (snap decisions or pro/con list?)

Looking at their behavior patterns can help you predict what they’ll do next. Plus, it can help you identify their likely needs and preferences so you can be on the list of solutions they’ll seek out.

ADD LOCATION AND COMPETITOR RESEARCH

All the nuances come to light when you start looking carefully at the location and the competition.

Location Research and Analysis: What is the neighborhood like? Analyze the local market and figure out if public transit is nearby, if local amenities are sufficient, and if the dynamics of the neighborhood are desirable.

Competitor Research and Analysis: Is the competition fierce? Are they all A-class and you’re a B-class? How is your community different? This can help you create your differentiation early on. Look at gaps in service and possible opportunities for you to step in and nab a market share they can’t capture.

Know Your IRP for Brand Development and Marketing

After you know your audience, you can craft your brand strategy and marketing messaging to reach them. Your whole marketing plan can be built around these preferences and behaviors.

BRAND ALIGNMENT

A well-defined IRP makes for clear guidance in brand messaging (and full alignment throughout your brand identity). Because determining the IRP is part of the research and discovery phase of brand strategy and creation of brand guidelines, it’s the ideal building block. Knowing what your future audience loves, wants, needs, along with their personalities, hobbies, and habits can help you hone your messaging and make your brand into something that will resonate with them.

For example, knowing where prospective residents are hanging out and what their hobbies are can help focus marketing and advertising budgets—meet them where they are. It can also help create messaging that will resonate with them.

MARKETING EFFICIENCY

Brand guidelines are built on best practices and market research—of the IRP. Making marketing more efficient is a case of targeting the right audience. Forget “spray and pray”. Plan and aim. Plus, this also means that your advertising and marketing budget can go a little further because campaigns are focused and aligned with your IRP.

IRP Must-Haves

The key components of an IRP for a community should include conclusive details based on the research:

Demographics: Age, gender, income (and more, as detailed as you’d like)

Geographic information: Preferred locations, commuting patterns

Psychographic profile: Lifestyle, values, interests

Behavioral insights: Renting habits, online behavior, buying behavior

Multifamily communities rely on reaching residents. You can’t reach them if you don’t resonate with them. And you can’t create a brand message and marketing strategy for a specific demographic that works if you don’t put in the work ahead of time.

Do the research, create a detailed IRP, and search for experts if you need guidance on your research, analysis, and the branding that comes after it.

Connect Renter Desires to Your Brand

Written by Stacey Feeney on August 5, 2024. Posted in All Articles, Branding, Marketing, Writing. 1 Comment on Connect Renter Desires to Your Brand

When you know what your residents want, you can focus on giving it to them. When we saw Samantha Skrobot’s Linkedin post on resident survey data, we weren’t necessarily surprised, but we were reminded of how much everyone really hates the term “luxury” and the lease rates that get nudged up just because you slap that word on your website.

Now, we know marketers can’t control rental rates. We can’t improve the quality of construction for our communities. But we can help you get real with residents and offer them brand messaging that more closely aligns with what they want the most.

From Samantha’s survey, residents identified these top items (among a few others):

1) Affordability

2) Service/Features

3) Transparency

Residents often feel like they’re getting a raw deal. They’re paying more year-over-year, with no rewards for paying on time. They’re having to pay extra for their pet. They’re not understanding the tacked-on fees for landscaping. The places they want to live are becoming unaffordable just because of the location, though the apartments are not worth the cost.

Without connecting with your residents, you risk negativity towards the cost of your rent, the lackluster service, the mediocre features, and the lack of transparency in pricing and fee schedules.

Shift up your brand messaging to reveal the heart of your offerings. Your entire brand should bring about a positive experience. This means: delivering on the brand promise, creating community culture (top down!) and investing in a full brand experience—helping put the “negative” things that are out of your control into the broader context of an overall good experience.

Show your resident you know what they want, you have it, and you’re willing to follow through.

Renter Desires Survey Results

Co-founder of Markerheads, a multifamily focused marketing and consulting firm, Samantha Skrobot looks at the intersection of multifamily, tech, and strategy. Turning data and reports into actions multifamily companies can take is her superpower. Recently, Samantha went a little meta with her surveys, turning to residents directly to ask:

“What should apartment community managers at NAA focus on this year?”

Nearly 500 folks responded in the next 48 hours.

And they want (percentages based on number of responses that mentioned these items):

1) Affordability (46%)
2) Product Features (39%)
3) Service (36%)
4) Transparency (15%)

The percentages are based on the number of responses that mentioned these items.

These don’t seem so wild, do they? Almost basic.

Residents want to live near their family or near where they work or go to school without having to pay dearly for it. They want the amenities advertised to work and be functioning. They want their apartments to be in good working order and the phones to be answered at the leasing office when they call. They want to know why the cost of rent went up 10% when inflation only increased 3%.

Reality vs. Renter Desires

COMMON MARKETING MESSAGES

Luxury – We’ve seen it everywhere. “Luxury” in multifamily has gotten tired. So tired. Residents are recognizing that if you put in stainless steel appliances but don’t invest in proper soundproofing, that apartment will never be luxury. You’re reminded that you’re sharing several walls, and possibly a ceiling and floor with multiple other residents.

Prime location – This is apparently the place to be—but is it, if the community is falling apart and poorly maintained? For many of the residents surveyed it doesn’t make sense to charge far more than is feasible in a desirable location if the apartments aren’t nice.

Modern design – “Open concept kitchen with clean lines and modern finishes.” This is down to aesthetics. But truly, the hope for many residents is that their community will have the necessary updates and will be clean and move-in ready with few issues. Having modern design is a plus, but only if it’s well taken care of.

RENTERS ACTUALLY WANT

Affordability – This term has long been avoided by apartment communities. It sounds a bit “come one, come all” but based on the survey, it seems it’s an idea that residents are looking for. They desperately need apartments to be within their budget. (See also: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with “shelter” taking a top category.) Plus multiple survey takers noted that the rent should reflect the average income of the area.

Features/Services – Residents are consistently hoping that “what they see” is “what they get”. And they’re being disappointed. No one wants carpet. If they’re paying a lot of money, they want high-end appliances. Another item: failed service—no one is picking up the phone at the leasing office, bathrooms are out of service for several days, and management is painting over light switches and electrical outlets.

Transparency – Living expenses are the biggest expense of all—rent, food, medical care. And when hit with an extra $50-200 extra, residents don’t understand and don’t wish to pay it.
Many of those surveyed had something to say about pet rent (get rid of it!), getting charged for non-optional items, not understanding the cost differences from starting a lease late one month instead of early in the next one, plus (and this is a doozy) not getting the security deposit back when they cleaned the apartment according to the lease agreement. Residents want clear answers to where their hard-earned cash is going.

Craft Transparent and Authentic Brand Messaging

WHY TRANSPARENCY AND AUTHENTICITY

It’s what the residents want. They need to know brands mean what they say and they’re doing the right things with their high (and getting higher) rent costs. Part of your brand is your reputation. And if your brand has a reputation of doing a lot of taking and not a lot of giving, you’re going to suffer the consequences of being inauthentic and non-transparent.

ADDRESS RENTER DESIRES THROUGH MESSAGING

Sure, there’s not much marketing can do with construction quality and rent costs (you can certainly make suggestions) but, you can create brand messaging that zeroes in on what your residents want most: the truth

Affordability: Talk about loyalty programs and cost-saving features. Show off your financial incentives and flexible payment plans. Highlight your lower security deposits and clearly outline how residents can get their security deposit back when they move on. If it’s not optional, there shouldn’t be a fee attached.

Features and services: Emphasize the practical aspects of living there. Show off your non-carpeted areas. If you’re charging a premium, list the brand names of your appliances. Highlight your 24-hour maintenance policy. Focus on good reviews that talk about your level of responsiveness.

Transparency: Be clear and honest about your policies and pricing. Have your management and marketing team trained on potential issues. Be straightforward and answer questions coming from prospective residents over the phone or during tours.

Every bit of this is part of your brand. Your reputation, the reviews, how your staff handles requests and questions—and highlighting the items your prospects and current residents care about most.

Practical Tips for Multifamily Marketers

What can you do right now to stay relevant for your residents? A couple things:

Surveys. On the reg. Without knowing what your prospects and residents want from you, you can’t give it to them. (Know their problems, be their solution.)
Ensure your brand voice can actually connect authentically with your residents—get on their level.
Use every channel you can (social, email, community events) to reinforce your brand culture, outlining the ways you have what they want—affordability, transparency, and excellent service.
Don’t exaggerate your offerings. Stop claiming luxury to charge more and be realistic with what you have. Consider upleveling with your branded amenities instead to prove your value. Transparency is key!

Bring your brand around to align with resident preferences. When you know your ideal resident, you’ve done the research, you’ve surveyed a group, and you settle into what they want most, position your community as the best possible solution—whether it’s because of your affordability, your features, or your honesty/transparency. Possibly because of all three.

Big thanks to Samantha Skrobot at Markerheads for inspiring this post. Your data wizardry is a testament to what we could be aiming for at all times in multifamily.

Apartment Branding: Beyond the Obvious

Written by Stacey Feeney on July 29, 2024. Posted in All Articles, Branding.

Apartment branding should go beyond the obvious. When we say “obvious” we’re talking: logo, visual identity, and verbal identity. We talk about those things a lot. They’re essential. Developing those primary three branding components are the foundation for everything else, informing visuals and messaging. However, going farther and deeper into beyond the basics, you’ll be doing two important things:
1) Doing your brand justice; and

2) Beating out your competition

Solidify your apartment community’s essential brand elements (the obvious)—and then start branding beyond.

Brand Essentials

What are those essential brand elements? Your logo. Your visual identity. Your verbal identity. They make up the primary three things that every brand should have. Let’s look through what they are exactly, and what their roles are for your community’s brand.

Logo – Apartment logo design is a quick way to represent your brand through an identifiable design, sometimes with imagery or symbolism, as well. It’s meant to show people who you are and what you do, through your name and the details around it in your logo.

Visual Identity – This is the essence of who you are, based on who you want to attract. Visual elements of your brand identity include your logo, your style/vibe, and your imagery. It’s meant to grab attention, create connection, and foster recognition.

Verbal Identity – Your apartment brand’s verbal identity is your brand, put into words. Starting with your mission, vision, and values, it contains your soul. Plus, knowing your brand identity and personality (through your brand voice) can help you tailor your messaging to represent your brand best, especially in terms of what will appeal to your Ideal Resident Profile (IRP). The role of your verbal identity: Brand consistency and relatability through all your content and messaging.

Secondary Brand Elements

All that messaging with your verbal identity is going somewhere. This brings us to the second layer of brand elements—using your voice and visuals in marketing channels.

Digital Marketing – Grab attention and craft your best selling points with your website, ads, social media, and email marketing. Expanding your brand to the internet is a must for visibility. And it should all look and sound like you.

Print Collateral – Make it pop and get to the point with print collateral. If it doesn’t look and sound like your brand, your mailers might get mistaken for another community and get tossed.

Signage – Bring your brand all the way through to the signage you place around your community—even before you open. Keep colors, fonts and imagery consistent to start your brand recognition early on.

MESSAGING ALIGNMENT

Every place you write words for your community, and every place your logo and imagery show up should look and sound like an extension of your existing brand guidelines—not like version 2.0.

Go Beyond with Apartment Branding

Now that we’ve clarified the basic elements of your brand, you need to look further afield. Go deeper, go wider, and brand everything you can. Does this mean putting your logo on everything? No. It’s creating continuity, from your walls to your hallways to your artwork to your furniture, everything just fits.

But where should you look?

PHYSICAL SPACES

As we touched on above, the community’s physical spaces are the perfect opportunity to expand the brand experience. It’s visual, tactile, and covers many of the five senses. Common area amenities, the leasing office and model units should be aligned with the brand. Have you noticed the color consistency in over-the-counter and prescription drug commercials? Prilosec OTC = Purple. Naturemade = Yellow. Mucinex = Green. They know that when their buyer goes to the store, they’ll see that color, and associate it with the commercial touting the benefits.

Community spaces can accomplish the same subscious brand recognition associations too. Your interior design details can bring in paint colors from your brand color palette. Your furniture styles can reflect your visual aesthetic. The artwork can show off the brand’s inspiration. Plus, the textures and finishes chosen for the spaces can boost or blah your brand—don’t skip out on the details.

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RESIDENT AND PROSPECT EVENTS

All across the resident journey, branding can align events and experiences from tours all the way to renewal. Each moment in this journey should SCREAM your brand, from visuals and verbals to experience. Consistency leads to trust. Which leads to loyalty.

Tour – Your brand should show up as a perfectly color coordinated info packet, with a tour guide that’s totally bought into the culture of your community (more on that in the next section). The model unit you see should use inspiration from your brand colors and your brand style to drive the point home. Maybe there’s a branded key redeemable for a caffeinated beverage in the clubhouse kitchen!

Move-in – The brand has set the foundation, and residents have signed the lease. Now, at move-in, hand them a welcome packet with information on events coming up, and applicable community involvement. You can also provide reminders of amenities (that you’ve branded to match up with your IRP’s wants and needs) and give them a nice move-in gift that falls within your color palette and has a logo on it. (Branded stationery with a handwritten note also has a good place here.)

Occupancy – Keep a good thing going. While your resident lives there, be sure to continue branding everything that the resident receives. This includes regular newsletters and updates, maintenance cards (“Maintenance was here”) and keeping signage updated. Social media channels should also stay in line with your brand so residents feel everything is in order. (Also beneficial for the on-looking prospect.)

Renewal – Well, before the resident renews, send off a campaign that coincides with their lease being up for renewal. Remind them of the reasons they came in the first place. And then: All that hard work paid off. They’re sticking around. This is a great time for a thank you note and a renewal gift. Keep them branded and ensure that you reach out for a quick testimonial to find out more about the reasons for their renewal. Determining your year-over-year success will rely on surveys and feedback to measure your mastery of your brand.

STAFF AND COMPANY CULTURE

The company culture and the way the staff interacts with each other and with prospects and residents speaks volumes about your community. Ensure it’s all on-brand by using helpful training and setting the culture from the top.

Training – It’s not always easy to get everyone in line. Training helps to answer the questions of “why this and not that” so your staff can understand the rationale behind decisions. Plus, providing them with the brand guidelines and brand personality can give them insight into the ideal customer service interaction. Give examples, and train them well (and regularly). They’re the brand in human form. Negativity and poor service can plummet your brand perception.

Brand Culture Mindset – Once your staff understands and buys into the “why” behind the brand, it will be easier for them to capture the culture with their mindset and attitudes. Their behavior and treatment of prospects, and residents should fully reflect the brand culture you’ve envisioned. If the staff’s happy, they’ll make everything a little better for the resident, too. (Think: happy wife, happy life.)

Corporate Influence – Sometimes the brand culture needs to be set from the top and trickle down. If each property has its own brand identity, that will need to be set by management. Lead by example, 100% police brand implementation, and set the tone for culture you want to see embodied.

Get beyond the obvious with your brand. Go where no other community has gone before—and create a holistic experience with your apartment branding.

Branded Amenities Will Differentiate and Drive Leases

Written by Stacey Feeney on July 21, 2024. Posted in All Articles, Branding.

Residents are interested in a community because of its location, but also because of what it offers. Does it have what they need? Does it have what they want? Amenities can be part of your brand strategy to achieve better occupancy rates and less turnover. But you need to figure out how to “uplevel” your amenities—they might be common, but the way you talk about them and tailor them to your ideal resident can make all the difference. It differentiates your community and it becomes a selling point for the folks you want to reach most.

Understanding Your Ideal Resident Profile (IRP)

IDENTIFY YOUR IRP

When you know your target, it’s easier to aim. Define your ideal resident profile. Learn what they want and need most. What are their goals and hopes and dreams? Do market research to segment who you want to target so you can create a brand that appeals to them—visually and verbally AND even in your amenity spaces.

FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANT THINGS

When you know what makes your IRP click, you can speak straight to their heart. Strategic branding can make your amenities appeal to them and what they want most from living in a community.

Example: To a dog mom, her “fur baby” is everything. That means amenities for the pet should be included and marketed to appeal to her. Think: an onsite dog park, a pet spa, and fun pet-themed events.

Upleveling Common Amenities

Many communities can look the same on the outside and in the description. Pool, dog park, clubhouse, community events. To differentiate from your competition, you have to go above and beyond—with the things that you know will resonate with your IRP (see above).

PET-FRIENDLY FEATURES

Again, you’re not going to stand out if you’re simply pet-friendly. That could be anyone up and down the block. Work on being pet-WELCOMING!

Current standard: Allows Pets.

Uplevel strategy: Celebrate Pets!

You could be the place for the people with pets. This means you have:

Dedicated pet parks, maybe with agility equipment
Pet grooming areas or stations
Pet events in the community (competitions or “Sit and Stay with Santa”)
Pet welcome kits for new residents (a little treat and a branded mini towel to clean messy paws)

As far as pet-friendliness, you might also consider upping the game in your pet park—add some fun human connection elements, like a fire pit, for owners to socialize around while their pups play.

CLUBHOUSE ENHANCEMENTS

If your IRP is all about finding and entertaining friends, work on upleveling your clubhouse. Any community could have a clubhouse. But it might not be up to the level you’re going to bring.

Current standard: Common clubhouse.

Uplevel strategy: Unique, reservable clubhouse or pool area experiences!

You can set up community events, of course, but you can also allow residents to “take over” the clubhouse for a fun event of their own. Consider the following options:

Reservable time slots for private events or parties in the clubhouse kitchen or pool area.
Branded pool towels for use or as move-in gifts
Stocked coffee bar and snacks in the clubhouse kitchen

Whatever you do, up the ante. Your typical amenities don’t have to be typical!

Brand Experiences in Amenity Spaces

Your amenities may be typical, but many communities forget about how their residents experience the brand through their amenities—more specifically, through the amenity spaces. If your community brand is known for being higher-end, give out branded pool towels as move-in gifts—residents can use them over and over and may be more likely to head to the pool to enjoy a refreshing swim.

Another item that can be overlooked: Putting random mugs in the clubhouse coffee area. If you have a single-serve coffee machine, or you offer special syrups and milks to add to residents’ free coffee, add branded mugs and cups. It’s easy to get closer to brand loyalty when you have solid brand recognition.

You should be designing your spaces to be on-brand. Your wall murals, accent pillows, furniture styles, plants, all of it should say Your Brand. Every space deserves to be (and should be) branded. It’s part of your community.

Telling the Story of Your Brand Differentiators

BRAND DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGY

Your amenities may be good—but they could be great with the right strategy. Your brand should always extend to every area of your community, including how you tell the story of your amenities.

This means: You should stay consistent in your messaging. Consider naming your amenities within a framework that makes sense in the context of your overall brand. If your brand is playful, so too should your amenity names. If your brand sounds serious and business-like, extend that brand personality in how you write about your amenities. The visual storytelling you do, too, should represent your brand in all aspects. If your photos are dark and romantic, your amenity images should be “filtered” through that same idea. Your community events, too, should also be selected and themed to fit in with your overall brand development.

MARKET YOUR AMENITIES

Own your amenities. And market them well. When your amenities are well-branded, there’s a sense of pride: “Look what we have! Isn’t it awesome?” Your excitement and celebration can be contagious. And it should be in multiple other places beyond your tour: Campaigns, email marketing, social media. With your IRP in mind, focus your time on marketing the top amenity that’s most desired by them. Not sure which one? Start surveying them to find out current residents’ top reasons for coming and staying.

If you want your community’s brand to stand out, include your amenities. Even if you think your amenities are pretty typical, you can use your brand to help them stand out. By putting in that extra effort and tailoring your amenities and offerings to your ideal residents, you can attract who you want with amenities you already have. Just get strategic and brand everything.