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Author: Stacey Feeney

MME Conference Recap: A Look Inside the Exclusive Multifamily Marketing Event

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

MME 2024 has just wrapped up! And we couldn’t be more excited for next year’s event

Multifamily Marketing East (MME) is an invite-only, limited-access conference. It’s less about being exclusive, and more about concentrated and focused. 

If you missed out, the content was top-notch and the topics (and speakers) were on point. Read on to find out more about this East Coast multifamily conference.

MME Welcomes YouMME Conference Recap

The MME Conference

FORMAT


The conference took place at The Pendry, a waterfront boutique hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. The main thing at MME 2024: the breakout sessions.

For these breakout sessions, attendees joined their peers for small group discussions focused on topics they pre-selected at registration. Each of the 10 tables has a different topic, a sponsor expert on the topic, a moderator, and a presenter. What made this experience extra unique and special was the pre-planning that took place over virtual calls leading up to the day of the event. Sponsors and moderators got together to plan out their session topic to be prepared to lead the conversation with enticing questions and talking points. Our favorite, from Session #2 was “Scaling Branding with AI: Faster, Farther, Cohesive.”

After the breakout tables were complete, a presenter from each topic shared the group’s key insights and strategies on the main stage. In this way, attendees were able to participate in the topic they most wanted to discuss, while still reaping the benefits of gathered knowledge from the other 9 tables. Attendees gained a broader perspective, and left with actionable knowledge.

These breakout tables and reflections occurred twice, and both times, attendees came away with a wealth of knowledge. Like a book club at their own roundtable discussion—a deep dive, while the Reflections and Takeaways functioned more like nuggets out of Cliff Notes.

 

Breakout Sessions

Table #1

Topic 1: MarTech: Enhancing Customer Experience & Operations (Presenter: Jillian Fickert)
Topic 2: Emerging Trends: Proptech & AI (Moderator: Noel Carson)
Sponsor: Revyse

Revyse is a vendor discovery and review platform. They help multifamily professionals find their ideal proptech and vendor solutions.

Table #2

Topic 1: How AI can Help with Industry Pain Points (Presenter: Matthew Cummings)

Topic 2: Evolution of Marketing Metrics: Adapting to New Trends & Practices (Presenter: Michele Jose)
Sponsor: Hy.Ly

Hy.Ly is invested in the power of ‘Human + Machine’ to develop products as a multifamly marketing technology company that creates products to improve multifamily experiences.

 

Table #3

Topic 1: Unlocking Success: Mastering Conversion Ratio Optimization (Presenter: Ashleigh Dawson)

Topic 2: Maximizing Video Content: Ads and Beyond
Sponsor: Realync

Realync is a cloud-based, web and mobile platform that enables live virtual tours, live virtual open houses, and DIY pre-recorded videos of real estate—all to unlock authentic experiences to connect and convert.

Table #4

Topic 1: Maximizing Performance, Efficiency, and Timelines

Topic 2: Google Ads Unleashed: Maximizing Your PPC Potential including PMAX (Presenter: Sabrina Leckemby)
Sponsor: Digible

Digible offers seamless solutions for the multifamily industry: multifamily marketing services and technology build for apartments.

Table #5

Topic 1: Building Data- Powered Social Strategies

Topic 2: Mastering Influencer Marketing: Strategies for Success
Sponsor: Social Kapture

Social Kapture creates custom content and proven strategies for social media and digital advertising—specifically for multifamily.

Table #6

Topic 1: Apartment Branding for Marketing Success (Presenter: Jillian Letourneau)
Topic 2: Scaling Branding with AI: Faster, Farther, Cohesive (Presenter: Renee McIntyre)

Sponsor: Zipcode Creative

Zipcode Creative is a multifamily focused boutique creative agency that offers apartment branding and marketing design.

Table #7

Topic 1: Build Internal Partnerships Using Marketing Data
Topic 2: Uncovering Retention Trends in Resident Reviews

Sponsor: Widewail

Widewail is a reputation management company for local businesses, offering monitoring, review management, and review invitations.

Table #8

Topic 1: Streaming TV Advertising for Apartments
Topic 2: Mastering Geofencing: Market Rate to Affordable and Urban to Suburban

Sponsor: ApartmentGeofencing.com

Apartmentgeofencing.com offers location-based advertising technology so properties can reach prospects wherever they are.

Table #9

Topic 1: Understanding Prospect Preferences with Mobile Location History (Presenter: Elaine Delude)
Topic 2: Post Covid Rental Landscape – From Migration to Back to Work (Presenter: Eddie Vasquez, Jr.)

Sponsor: Placer.AI

Placer.AI helps properties make better business decisions through geolocation data: location intelligence and foot traffic data. Find your customers, find your opportunities.

Table #10

Topic 1: Staying Motivated and Efficient with Reduced Staff
Topic 2: Your Guide to Creating a World-Class Company Culture in 2024 (Presenter: Nicole Drayton)

Sponsor: ApartmenGeofencing.com

Apartmentgeofencing.com offers location-based advertising technology so properties can reach prospects wherever they are.

Stacey-Stage

KEYNOTES

The speakers at MME are all recognized in the industry—they’re experienced and invested in learning and engagement, which made them perfect for the MME conference.

“The Making of a Love Brand”
with Kelley Shannon, Senior VP, Marketing and Customer Experience, Bozzuto

“Gaining Traction for Your Brand”
With Matthew Kilmury, Founder & CEO, ApartmentGeofencing.com

Along with these sessions, the panel discussions also offered up plenty of opportunity to see things from a different angle, or take a deeper dive.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

“More With Less: Leveraging AI to Overcome Constraints”

Moderator: 

Elaine De Lude, Vice President, LIVEbe Communities
With Panelists:

Daniel Paulino, Vice President, Marketing, Bozzuto

Moshe Crane, Vice President, Branding & Strategic Initiatives, Sage Ventures                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Description:
In an era where “doing more with less” has transformed from a challenging necessity into an industry mantra, we delve into the pivotal role of AI as an empowering tool. Budgets and teams may not be growing, but expectations for performance are. The question remains: how can one amplify output and efficiency with the resources available?

This panel explores cutting-edge solutions within AI that address this perennial marketing quandary. With recent technological breakthroughs, AI has emerged not just as a means to compensate for resource limitations, but as a strategy to surpass even the highest of expectations. Join us as we unpack the transformative potential of AI, providing practical insights into maximizing performance.

Key takeaways:

  • Cutting-edge AI solutions
  • Practical insights into maximizing performance

“Marketing Metrics Are Changing—Are You Ready?”

Moderator:
Wendy Simpson, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Edgewood Management
With panelists: Kevin Wilson, Director of Marketing, Strategy and Planning, Southern Land Company                                                                                                                          

Michelle José, Vice President, Property Marketing, Mill Creek Residential

Xiyao Yang, Director of Marketing Analytics, Bozzuto       

Description:

Digital marketing metrics are changing, and they’re changing fast. Are you ready? In this session, we’ll explore how your marketing teams can adapt to recent regulations and innovations, and set themselves up for success in today’s rapidly-evolving digital landscape. With an eye on digital trends that transcend industry, but told through a multfamily marketing lens, we’ll dive into different marketing areas like branding/awareness, findability, and social engagement.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Key Takeaways:

  • How to adapt to recent regulations and innovations
  • How to get set up for success while digital trends evolve

Our Insights

Since this was the first year of MME, we wanted to give you the full insider scoop. So we asked Zipcode Creative founder and creative director, Stacey Feeney, to give us the lowdown.

What was the best part of MME?

All the time we got to spend together networking and really getting to know each other was so different from other conferences where there feels like such a barrier between sponsors and attendees. Breakout tables were a nice way to bring the conversations into smaller groups and really connect to and relate with one another!.

What are some key nuggets that will stick with you as you get back to work, answering emails and working on apartment brands?

Strategy and discovery is a crucial step that should always precede brand creation and it’s too important to be skipped.

Invest in what makes a brand and tells its story.

A brand needs a narrative, and that comes from strategy. That narrative may need to pivot over time, like during a phase two lease-up, especially if the goals for the property or the resident persona have shifted –a brand should be a “responsive brand”

Brand strategy should continue throughout the resident journey, even after they are living in the community. The goal with brand should be to create an emotional connection with prospects and maintain that connection while they are residents. 

Educate your teams on the importance of a cohesive brand (and how to understand it), create a playbook for guidance and then empower them to create through the help of user friendly and AI tools like Canvas, chatGPT and MidJourney, for example.

Anything else?

Huge shoutout to Matthew Kilmurry, CEO at Apartment Geofencing. He and his team organized the whole MME conference. Along with the involvement of the sponsors and content committee, everyone had a part to play in this super-cool collaborative conference. Also, the Bozzuto marketing team really prioritized this event as a full-on retreat for their team. That made me feel warm and fuzzy inside!

Please stay tuned for more updates from the multifamily marketing east conference—can’t wait to see everyone next year!

Lessons-for-hospitality-multifamily

Lessons in Hospitality Branding—For Multifamily

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

Guest Post by Stephanie Shore, Director of Marketing and Brand Development, Bozzuto (formerly with Marriott International and Hilton)

Lessons in Hospitality—For Multifamily (1)-03

Multifamily branding and marketing could take some notes from other industries—like hospitality. In hospitality branding, the critical focus is the guest experience; customer loyalty and maintaining brand reputation are the keys to success.

Each of these principles can be easily, almost seamlessly, applied to multifamily.

At an apartment community, the resident experience is the key to retention—and that’s why you work hard on your branding, your marketing, and your resident services—to bring it all together so they renew their lease (AND tell their friends).

Before we get much further, let’s break down the hospitality experience, and what it really means to create exceptional guest experiences.

Understanding the Hospitality Experience

THE KEYS TO HOSPITALITY

The key components of hospitality branding are as follows:

  • Personalized Service
  • Attention to detail
  • Creating memorable moments

These each mean something a little different. 

Personalized service means you receive emails with a personal greeting; welcome cards in your room; and plentiful spa treatments, dining options, and room service items that are available to your guests.

Attention to detail means every single component of your guests’ experience matters. Cleaning the remote. Making sure that order gets to them on time. The TV isn’t too small. The bedding is noticeably soft.

Creating memorable moments is getting an inside track to what your guests want most. Understanding their desires leads you to bringing them the solution—while they’ve barely uttered “Do you have….” Short of reading minds, it means you’re anticipating their every need and making sure that experience wows them.

 

REAL-LIFE HOSPITALITY EXAMPLE:

For Exceptional Guest Experiences: The Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz-Carlton is synonymous with service. Arguably the best known in the industry for their standards of exceptional service, The Ritz-Carlton has founded its brand on the principle, “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.” Its Three Steps of Service are instilled in all team members, from front desk to housekeeping to management, and guide all guest interactions to create a noteworthy guest experience:

  1. A warm and sincere greeting. Use the guest’s name.
  2. Anticipation and fulfillment of each guest’s needs.
  3. Fond farewell. Give a warm good-bye and use the guest’s name.

Applying Hospitality Branding Principles to Multifamily


But how can multifamily properties adopt these principles to get improved resident satisfaction and thereby boost resident loyalty?

Use hospitality as the inspiration for your branding and marketing:

  • Equip your teams with training so they can serve your residents better.
  • Execute a brand strategy (think: brand messaging, brand differentiators) to deliver an excellent experience.
  • Make sure that brand is carried through every element of the customer journey, from the website to the tour to the resident experience.

But, it might be easier to show you with a few examples of stellar branding, amenity, and service.

REAL-LIFE COMMUNITY EXAMPLES:

1331

1331 in Washington D.C. is conceived to exceed expectations, and enables a lifestyle that is unattainable at any other residence in D.C. The level of service at 1331 is similar to a world-class hotel. Every need has been anticipated, beginning before a resident moves in with the Move-In Concierge to Away-From-Home Services assisting with pet or plant care while they are out of town to on-site event planning. The menu of options even extends beyond the building itself, through exclusive partnerships. Residents of 1331 enjoy access to Salamander’s spa, fitness center and restaurants, as well as catering and events. Those on the Penthouse Level receive elevated access to Salamander and an additional selection of personalized services to create an all-encompassing services experience.

The Barrett & The Claude at Chevy Chase Lake

At both The Barrett and The Claude at Chevy Chase Lake, your experience is everything.

That’s why, in addition to the world-class design and amenities, both apartments offer exceptional services for residents. Available services at The Barrett and The Claude include concierge services, Away-from-Home services, in-home customization services, grocery delivery, room service, a garage care center, exclusive retail partnerships, monthly fitness programming and events, and the Bozzuto Welcome Home commitment.

Heron at Water Street Tampa

Heron offers you every modern comfort to streamline your life and enhance your experience. From a state-of-the-art fitness studio to a green-roof viewing garden to direct access to the Tampa Riverwalk. A bike storage room even has a repair station equipped with tools so you can get back out onto the Riverwalk in no time. Life at Heron is enhanced by the bespoke services offered to residents; the24-hour concierge helps to coordinate a variety of personalized home care services for residents’ comfort and convenience, including pet care and housekeeping recommendations.

Branding Strategies Inspired by Hospitality

Hospitality is hyper-focused on branding. With good reason. A strong brand identity creates differentiation, highlights unique characteristics, and emphasizes the values of the hotel brand.

The same goes for a community. A brand that communicates why it exists through its storytelling (throughout its marketing) creates a more compelling emotional connection than any run-of-the-mill “Lease Today for 1 Month Free!” offers could ever manage.

VISUAL BRANDING

Branding’s more than a logo. But that’s certainly part of it. Brand visual identity can (and should) be used to convey the uniqueness of the community itself: its interior design, its level of service, its features and amenities.  Typefaces can help carve out your identity—for example, serif fonts can feel more elevated and refined, while sans serif fonts can lean into a more approachable brand feel. Color palette can be used strategically as well: High-contrast neutral colors  can feel more elegant than, say, bright, deeply saturated hues. Unique visual identifiers like design elements and imagery can aid these basics to solidify brand recognition.

Marketing Strategies Taken from Hospitality

When you know your ideal customer—guest or resident—you can attract them based on what you know about their motivations, pain points, preferences, and overall lifestyle. For someone with a dog, you can offer on-site grooming and a grass-filled, shaded dog park. For someone who works from home, you can ensure your messaging talks about flexible desk spaces and high-speed internet.

EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGNS

Targeted marketing campaigns ensure that your messaging reaches the right audience at the right time—email drip campaigns are a great tactic to ensure your messaging is sent throughout relevant stages of the customer journey. Automation makes this kind of campaign even more frictionless. For example, if a prospect signs up for a tour of your community, you can automate an email that follows up confirming key details, and perhaps pairs brand messaging with any applicable concessions. Hospitality brands are great at this—always staying on top of their guest messaging with incentives to book another stay.

SOCIAL RAPPORT

Additionally, hospitality brands are highly active online: social channels are another lever to tell the brand story, while websites feature inspirational photography and clear booking capabilities. Communities can easily do this with desirable photography, a thoughtfully designed site, and clear calls-to-action. 

Pro tip: Dedicate sections of your website specifically to service. For example, creating special callouts for your Penthouse(s) shows your dedication to deliver on those top-notch services, and differentiates your community brand from competitors.

All in all, every community and hotel we’ve shown conveys the high level of service at the property—starting from the earliest point in the customer journey. 

When everything’s done in the service of the resident and in the service of the guest—the goals for multifamily and hospitality aren’t all that different. To create a successful community, keep your residents happy, and keep residents at the heart of everything you do – it’s what hospitality brands do, and it’s what we try to do in every Bozzuto community. 

Branding for East Coast

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

Multifamily Marketing East is the premier East Coast multifamily marketing event. Held in Baltimore, Maryland, it’s exclusive—invitation-only. This year it’s free for invited attendees, and includes access to all the sessions, plus breakfast, lunch, and refreshments during the conference. (Does branding for the East Coast get you as excited as we are?)


Why are we so excited about it? Two reasons:

  1. Zipcode Creative is sponsoring Multifamily Marketing East.
  2. Zipcode Creative helped brand this BRAND NEW conference for multifamily.

 

So you might say we’re a little invested and a LOT EXCITED!

Why’d we get involved? We know that there are a lot of multifamily conferences. They end up being in California, Las Vegas, and Texas—and plenty of others bounce around all over the country.

But what if there was a conference for multifamily that was on the East Coast, where the BULK of multifamily housing actually IS?

A few quick stats for you, reader:

→New York State has the highest number of existing homes classified as multifamily: 52.5%. Close on its heels are two other East Coast states: Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

We agree: It was time for an East Coast multifamily marketing event.

The Vision Behind MME’s Branding

Our expertise in branding, specifically for multifamily, led us to an opportunity to brand MME. We took our process, and we channeled it through the vision and purpose of MME to get the attendees we most wanted to attract.

VISION


The creators of the Multifamily Marketing East conference wanted to see a conference that was made to give everyone a voice and was more about passion over profit. Together, we envisioned an upscale retreat, not a huge, wild party with more entertainment than education and heard-it-before, recycled content.

PURPOSE

Multifamily Marketing East was made to bring people together, around good food, good drinks, and fun, intimate events. The content offered will be thoughtfully designed, and the tables will be set up to foster new relationships and solid networking.

USING MME BRANDING TO ATTRACT MARKETERS

We needed to convey the message that MME 2024 was built differently. We wanted to bring in multifamily digital marketers, and invited mid-level management up to senior level executives.

Branding is obviously our jam at Zipcode Creative, and so we were tapped to attract marketers with branding—this would help solidify trust in MME, even as a new venture, and would help portray the vision and purpose of the conference through its logo, colors, and messaging. And while it’s a little different than apartment brand design, we followed a similar process.

Branding for East Coast: Branding Development Process

RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY
The best way to get to know a brand? Ask a lot of questions. So, when we worked through the brand questionnaire, we asked fun questions like, if MME were a ______ (drink, car, celebrity, song—take your pick) what would it be? Taking those answers plus the rationale behind the choice informed where we would take the branding and why.

For example, the celebrity MME’s founders chose: Tom Hanks or Jennifer Lawrence. They’re down-to-earth and manage to take complex roles and make them easy to understand. In the same way, they want MME to be friendly, approachable, and distill complicated ideas into helpful resources.

UNDERSTANDING THE REGION


After we sifted through the brand questionnaire, we immersed ourselves in the look and feel of the east coast region, to deepen our understanding. The preferences of east coasters and the regional style not just of the east coast area, but the region of Baltimore began to take shape.

When we create branding for East Coast apartments or communities, we take a look at the local flavor. For example, Virginia is relatively colonial. Upstate New York, New Hampshire, and Maine—cape cods and coastal vibes (and probably lobster, if we’re talking local flavor.) A more industrial, yet historical feel is perfect for Boston. And then we get tropical (and sun-faded but still bright colors) if we’re in Miami. And Atlanta is the heart of and soul of good ol’ Southern hospitality.

The East Coast is about as diverse in associations and assumptions as the North, Central and South bits of California—in views, vibes, and architecture. It’s absolutely not one conglomerate that has one identity—and that’s why looking deeper into the specific area can offer up some entirely unique branding opportunities.

Creative Approach

THE PROCESS


As we moved toward Baltimore and homed in on the location of the conference, we began to get more granular with the location—just as we would with developing apartment branding.

CONTEXT IS KEY


The Pendry – The MME conference will be held at The Pendry, a luxe waterfront hotel in Baltimore. So we looked carefully at the architecture, colors, and style of the hotel, to keep every piece visually connected. To amplify what the space looks like, we leaned into the venue, with imagery of the Sagamore Pendry. We used filters to stylize for the brand vibe and the map of Baltimore became a prominent style piece in which we truly celebrated location. Additionally, the color palette was a more fun, vibrant play on the brick buildings of Baltimore, and the yellow found in Maryland’s state flower, the black-eyed susan.  All of this was dovetailed into the brand for MME. Plus, with the hotel being on the water, we added in both classy and fun elements.


Baltimore – The greater Baltimore area, the downtown skyline and a birds’-eye-view of Baltimore’s street grids both functioned as an additional visual motif.

MME-Branding (1)

Time of Year – Given that the conference is in May, positioned at the very start of summer, we wanted something cheerful, so we chose the aqua color for the MME’s classic logo. For each year, we may choose a different set of colors, and for 2024, we went with corals and burgundy, with a mustard to create contrast.

Additionally, the four corners of the MME logo function like a compass, with the directional arrow pointing East. The sharp corners give a feel of modernity while the angled letters inject a bit of playfulness.

The branding development process to create the Multifamily Marketing East conference was a labor of love—not unfamiliar, but still exciting to execute. Recognizing that regional branding is vital in the multifamily industry, we took the surroundings and allowed them to infiltrate the brand for MME on the surface and beneath it. The East Coast is where the United States began—it’s full of history and knowledge from those that came before us, and is the perfect place for the next gamechanging conference for multifamily to take place.

Learn more about Zipcode Creative’s branding projects and process.

 

The Power of Your Apartment’s Brand in PPC Advertising

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

Pay-per-click digital advertising is essential for multifamily marketers to promote their apartments on social media, websites, and, most notably, Google as the primary search engine, with targeted advertisements incorporating text, images, and videos highlighting a property’s appearance, units, and amenity features.

Digital ads aim to increase a community’s online visibility and brand awareness across multiple platforms toward renters genuinely interested in those apartments, as that helps improve the quality of the traffic to the community’s website and, ultimately, increase lease conversions.

Hey, I’m Michael from RentVision, an apartment marketing company that helps thousands of communities like yours get better-qualified leads with an automated pay-per-click solution called Predictive Advertising (shameless plug!).

While we’re not branding experts like Stacey and her team at Zipcode Creative, we believe that multifamily marketers who care about owning a strong, cohesive apartment brand can create a powerful online search presence that wows renters and benefits leasing by prioritizing PPC ads in their marketing strategy.

Your brand empowers your digital ad campaigns and overall online presentation, allowing you to leverage your property’s appearance, logos, color scheme, and more to resonate with prospective renters and keep your apartments in mind throughout their search. Let’s look at what combining brand and PPC advertising can do for you:

Strong Apartment Brand + Apartment PPC = Trust

Let’s start with the big picture. It’s sometimes easy to forget that choosing which apartment to live in is a life-changing, financially impactful decision for your renters. 

To feel confident about their selection, they must trust that your apartments meet their preferences and deliver the resident experience you promise.

Of course, your brand tells your community’s story by describing to renters how your apartment features and lifestyle benefit them and how they differ from your peers. Your brand, if done correctly, is a means by which you instill trust in renters. 

However, for your community’s brand to help renters develop more trust and impact leasing performance, it is best to pair it with a strong digital advertising strategy.  

Knowing initial impressions are huge, imagine someone’s reaction when, at the beginning stage of their apartment search, they go to Google looking for a community like yours. They see an ad for your community that ‘pops’ off the top of the search results page (and top rankings in the organic and local listings). 

You can gain that opportunity by pairing a strong apartment brand with pay-per-click advertisements targeting specific or relevant keywords your typical renters search for online.

That authoritative presence in Google establishes a strong level of trustworthiness that will make renters feel more confident about pursuing a lease in your community.

It also helps renters to feel better about selecting your apartments when you actively show you care about your community’s overall online presentation and make it easily discoverable with advertisements across Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok and other large PPC platforms.

From their perspective, they equate the care you put into your marketing presence to you also caring about their needs and living experience.

Plus, the more exposure you provide renters to your community’s name, colors, property images, and other assets of your brand online in photo or video display ads during their decision-making process, the more familiarity they gain in your community. And the more familiar they are to your apartments, the more they begin to trust that yours is best for them.

Establishing trust is the power you have when you put effort into your community’s brand and pay-per-click ads.

Apartment branding drives specialization

Communities intentionally curating their brand’s presence typically have a better definition of their ideal resident and thus develop messaging and a visual identity that resonates with those renters. 

This is what we mean by specialization—your brand makes you, well, you. You’re telling renters, “You can trust us to provide the lifestyle and resident experience you’re looking for.” 

A great apartment brand that achieves this specialization also elevates your PPC campaigns because, truthfully, many apartments are the same. 

Believe it or not, your community isn’t the only one with a pool or Pelotons in the clubhouse. While those are features you’d undoubtedly want prospective residents to know about, they don’t move the needle for everyone.

Prospective renters will choose to rent an apartment from a community that appears to know and understands their needs above amenities like a stationary bike. That is, in essence, the foundation and purpose of your brand, and utilizing such a brand throughout your marketing strategy—especially in your PPC campaigns—will drive home to renters the story about how your apartments meet their specific needs.

That is how your apartments, though they may be similar to other properties, stand out apart and above the competition in PPC advertisements.

Apartment PPC drives leasing performance

Since you’re also a multifamily marketer, and your ultimate objective is to generate leads and leases, you must also leverage your community’s brand to get it in front of renters at critical stages throughout their apartment search. 

That’s why PPC advertising is essential. You gain little from your apartment’s brand if it’s difficult for renters to discover it.

Every renter goes through three stages during their apartment search:

  1. The ‘Awareness’ stage, or “Hey, I need to move out and find an apartment.”

  2. The Consideration stage is when you say, “Okay, here are a couple of apartment communities available that meet what I’m looking for.”

  3. There’s the ‘Decision’ stage, where one final community has emerged as the favorite. At that point, the renter will contact the community and begin the touring, applying, and leasing process.

PPC advertisements drive visibility for your apartments throughout each distinct stage. 

Sometimes, you can expedite someone’s selection process with a powerful combination of targeted ads and strong apartment branding that meets the right renters at the right time. 

But since everyone’s leasing journey varies in time, you must also consider that you’ll need PPC campaigns running on multiple platforms simultaneously to maintain visibility and push more qualified traffic to your community website. 

Ad-Examples

Getting started with Apartment PPC campaigns

Now, we’ve gone long enough describing the positive impact of combining your apartment’s brand with pay-per-click advertising that you’re probably wondering, “Okay, so how do we actually do this?!”

Beginning (or just optimizing) a PPC strategy for your apartments is pretty hard, so I want to share a couple of other helpful resources that go into further detail and make the process seem less daunting:

Start there to get more depth into starting with PPC advertising. But while we’re here, let’s go over a couple of easy tips to remember as you combine brand and PPC into your apartment’s strategy:

  1. Know what search terms people use to discover your community’s website.

You can use Google Search Console for free to see what visitors to your website searched for in Google to find your apartment community’s website. This will help you establish a list of keywords to possibly target in your PPC campaigns. One tip is to avoid using branded descriptors in keywords you would target; truthfully, you won’t get many renters searching terms like ‘upscale apartments with chic amenities in downtown Denver’. However, those descriptors, like ‘upscale’, would be more effective in ad copy. 

  1. Use your display campaigns to highlight your community’s best offerings.

Your photo and video display ads are the time and place where you want to highlight the very best of your community. Your clubhouse, exteriors, Pelotons, and pool are great features that look great in your PPC display ads; don’t overcomplicate. That said, highlighting those features in your ad campaigns is fine as long as you’re using those things to drive traffic to a website that lets interested renters see the inside of your units. That content moves the needle for renters more than anything as the space they’re ultimately going to live in is essential information they need. 

  1. Have your apartment’s logo, name, and brand visuals in every display ad campaign.

Then, in your display ads, be sure they’re designed to feature your apartment’s name, logo, and brand visuals (even if the primary item displayed is the inside of a unit). This builds recognition for your brand—which sticks in renters’ minds throughout their search in a meaningful way.

  1. Utilize Google Performance Max Campaigns.

Lastly, one easy way to get started with PPC is by utilizing Google’s Performance Max Campaigns feature. Performance max campaigns do a lot of the hard work for you because they use whatever creative assets you give Google (photos/videos of your units, amenities, property, logo) and find the suitable variation of text/visuals that produces the most clicks and traffic to your website on both Google’s Search and Display networks (a.k.a. basically the whole Internet)! Google’s Performance Max Campaigns are excellent options for communities with great visuals and branding.

Conclusion

Ultimately, investing in your apartment’s brand and PPC advertising enhances its online presence, cultivates trust, and drives leasing performance, making it an indispensable component of your marketing strategy. 

AIM 2024 Guide: Get the Most from Attending, Multifamily Marketers

Written by Stacey Feeney on . Posted in All Articles, Marketing.

Multifamily marketers, the 2024 AIM (Apartment Innovation & Marketing) Conference is almost here! In Huntington Beach, CA, it’s one of our favorites to attend—and to sponsor. Heading to a conference is definitely a big chunk of your marketing budget, so it’s best to plan ahead, make your schedule work for you, and prioritize the things you need to see and the people you need to speak with.

And, as much as the CA coast is basically heaven, the pull of magical multifamily collaboration is only slightly stronger than the scent of the salty air. (Or is that In-N-Out we smell?)*

With that in mind, we pulled together our top topics, speakers, and sponsors we think you should add to your own list. It’s just our opinion, but we figured it’s at least a starting point for you!

With multiple sessions happening at the same time, you’ll want to stay focused on what you need to hear most. We went with marketing topics, because…that’s our jam! Without further ado:

AIM 2024 Top Topics

The AIM Conference (besides being fun!) is focused on helping attendees do their work better, helping make apartment living more valuable to residents.

This year, AIM 2024 falls on May 5-8, and has a big focus on customer experience, AI, innovation, and ethics. We also noted a few sessions on pulling inspiration from other industries—sounds like a win!

Here are our top topics at AIM 2024, broken down by day:

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2024


Breakfast Roundtable: What Multifamily Can (and Should!) Steal from Single Family — and Vice Versa

7:45 AM – 8:45 AM
Speaker(s):
Benjamin Burns, Vice President of Digital Marketing Amherst
Brianna Massas, Director, Digital MediaIrvine Company Apartments

Brian Miller, Director, Partner Experience and Engagement, Zillow Rentals

Discussion on:

  • How multifamily can think outside the box
  • What Multifamily is getting right
  • How Multifamily could do better with single-family industry strategies

Why It’s Our Pick:
We’re always harping on about pulling inspo from somewhere else. Keeping an open mind is key for growth.

Opening Keynote: The Investment Case for Branding and Customer Experience: Hotelier Lessons from Hampton by Hilton

1:10 PM – 1:50 PM
Speakers:
Shruti Buckley, Senior VP & Brand Leader, Hampton by Hilton
Michelle Moriello, GID/Windsor Communities, VP, Digital Marketing

Expected Takeaways:

  • Investing in branding in a real estate context: How Hampton Inn uses brand as a marketing differentiator, and how Hilton uses quantifiable metrics to induce owners to invest in their brand standards;
  • Making customer experience tangible: defining, limiting and proving out a desired customer experience – hard and soft items, training, value, feedback mechanisms;
  • Creating multi-stakeholder support for ongoing investment in brand and customer experience (and knowing when a company is off-track)
  • Market segmentation as a path to understanding how to create real value that is perceived and appreciated

Why It’s Our Pick:
Again, parallel industries have a wealth of knowledge that multifamily hasn’t quite tapped into. Investing in solid branding could be a huge way to create a differentiator for your communities.

Building a Differentiated Brand to Captivate Owners: Strategies for B2B Marketing

3:15 PM – 4:00 PM
Speakers:
Sydney Webber
Sharon George, MIG Real Estate, Director of Multifamily Asset Management

Tina Miserendino, Avenue5, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications

Expected Takeaway:

  • Explore marketing and business development strategies from a NMHC Top 50 management company
  • Understand what owners are seeking in a management company partner
  • Learn how to attract, convert, and retain ownership groups as long-term partner

Why It’s Our Pick:
When you brand a property management company, the goal might be to attract ownership groups. Plus, when you know what they’re looking for, that can streamline your process. Get busy growing!

Branding…….It’s NOT a Game(show)

4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

Speaker:
Elizabeth Carton, Rangewater Real Estate, Vice President, Marketing
Jerry Norman, Pedcor Companies, Director of Multifamily Marketing
Barrie Buckner, GTMA, CEO
Sarah Johnson, Willow Bridge Property Company, National Director of Marketing & Brand Strategy

Expected Takeaways:

  • What goes into branding
  • Successful brands/rebrands
  • Timeline Guides

Why It’s Our Pick:

First: It’s a game show! Plus, they delve into branding for any and all scenarios, including property management companies. Sounds like a win-win-win to us. 

TUESDAY, MAY 7

Breakfast Roundtable: The Evolution and Anatomy of a Brand: Building a Compelling Brand in 45 Minutes

7:45 AM – 8:45 AM
Speaker: Stacey Feeney, Founder & Creative Director, Zipcode Creative

Discussion Around:

  • Branding is more than a logo
  • A new BFF in the Multifambam

Why It’s Our Pick:
We’re biased. Stacey, our founder, is pretty great at what she does. And she’s super fun. Plus, building a brand is our bread and butter—perfect for breakfast!

#2
Tuesday, May 7th

Jack, Barbie and Cinderella: Fluent Devices in Strategic Brand Marketing

9:00 AM – 9:45 AM

Speaker: Suzanne Schlundt, Cox Communications, Vice President of Marketing

Expected Takeaways:

  • The benefits of relatable brand personas
  • Attract customers, talent and investors with emotional brand strategy
  • How fluent devices (and their retirement) impact your insights
  • Learn how to elevate your brand’s impact

Why It’s Our Pick:
Learn from a Barbie marketer? Yes! Brands should get emotional. Otherwise, you won’t make an impact. We’re excited to hear about the ways charm and familiarity with your brand can be used to reach and retain.

 

Keynote: Using Humor to Sell

10:15 AM – 11:15 AM
Speaker: Jon Krevolin, Cronin Advertising Agency, President, Chief Creative Officer
Moderator: Tina Mortera, Bozzuto Management Company, Vice President, Business Development

Expected Takeaways:

  • Amplify your reach without spending MORE
  • Create a memory link between brand and audience
  • How to build a repeatable emotion-first story

Why It’s Our Pick:
Humor is one of our love languages at Zipcode Creative. So we’re curious to find out more about how our bad puns and knock-knock jokes can be turned into a lasting connection between brand and prospect.

Perception is Reality: Study Results on Leasing and Living

2:00 PM – 2:45 PM
Speakers:
Margette Hepfner, Willow Bridge Property Company, Chief Operating Officer, Residential Management
Merideth Bunting, The Dinerstein Companies, Vice President of Marketing and Management Services

Expected Takeaways:

  • Prioritize data-driven decisions over gut feelings
  • Understand Gen Y’s vs. Gen Z’s preferences (and stop generalizing them)
  • Align strategies to current trends

Why It’s Our Pick:
The ideal resident for every brand is different. Having the facts (and changing your strategy) about renter preferences through data will get your brand further—to the audience it needs to reach most.

Roundtable: How to Stay Ahead of Generational Shifts in Apartment Marketing

3:15 PM – 4:00 PM

Speakers:

Elizabeth Carton, Vice President, Marketing, Rangewater

Kasey Munsch, Vice President of Marketing, The Preiss Company

Sarah Gencarella, VP of Marketing, Olympus Property

CJ Edmonds, Chief Revenue Officer, Conversion Logix

Discussion Around:

  • Catering to unique generational preferences in marketing
  • Embracing technology to enhance apartment hunting/leasing
  • Building stronger connections with prospects and residents
  • Collaborating with all teams (marketing, leasing, management) to stay cohesive

Why It’s Our Pick:

The IRP (ideal resident profile) should dominate your marketing research. Find out who they are, and that will likely tell you what they like, don’t like and how they want to be approached. Can you say “marketing gold?”

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8

 

Differentiating Your Communities in a Rapidly Evolving Market

10:15 AM – 11:15 AM
Speakers:
Kaley Rafferty, Olympus Property, Senior Marketing Manager

Kyra Lambo, EQR, AVP, National Marketing

Lauren Carpenter, UDR, Inc., Sales Initiatives Manager

Jesse Stein, Airbnb, Head of Real Estate

Carol Enoch, Enoch & Co., CEO

Expected Takeaways:

  • Explore vendor-driven strategies to stand out
  • Enhance resident satisfaction through rewards programs
  • Optimize space and amenity rentals
  • Boost loyalty through tech engagement

Why It’s Our Pick:

If you want to survive, you have to stand out. Differentiation isn’t just a fun word. It’s vital to stay in the game!

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Bees and Biodiversity: The Future of Multifamily ESG

11:15 AM – 12:00 PM

Speaker:
Noah Wilson-Rich, The Best Bees Company, Co-Founder and CEO

Expected Takeaways:

  • How to attract residents that care about sustainability and the environment—through bees
  • Bring ESG to life in commercial real estate
  • Honey from a hive maintained in commercial real estate (!)

Why It’s Our Pick:
The next generation of residents cares deeply about the earth. Bees are key in keeping it going, producing food, by pollinating our fruits/vegetables. Plus: HONEY!

AIM 2024 Speaker Picks

Michelle Moriello

Michelle Moriello – VP, Digital Marketing, GID/Windsor Communities

Speaking on:
May 6, 2024
1:10-1:50pm
Opening Keynote: “The Investment Case for Branding and Customer Experience: Hotelier Lessons from Hampton by Hilton”

Why we picked this speaker:

25 years in multifamily? Incredible. Michelle’s our pick not only because she’s one of the keynote speakers, but also because she’s making a case for branding. We’re stoked to see what she says!

Elizabeth-Carton

Elizabeth Carton – VP, Marketing, Rangewater Real Estate

Speaking on:
“Branding…….It’s NOT a Game(show)”
May 6, 2024
4:15-5:00pm

Why we picked this speaker:

As VP of Marketing for Rangewater, Elizabeth Carton is The Boss for creative and strategic marketing. Additionally, she’s worked in healthcare and property management, which gives her breadth of knowledge—from parallel and outside industries—a little more complexity.

2024 Must-Visit Sponsors

zipcode-icon

Zipcode Creative – Besides coming to see us at the Zipcode Creative lounge, there are few other folks we think you’d enjoy talking with—not only are they friendly, but they also have awesome solutions for apartment marketers. (P.S. Our services partner really well with theirs.)

*Will You Sign My Yearbook?!*

Our lounge at AIM is going to be totally boring. NOT!
​​???????????? Get ready to get 90s up in here! ????????????

Stop by our booth (25) at the Ocean Lounge to take an instant photo, paste it in the book, and sign your name with gel pens. Check your email or LinkedIn to nominate people for “most likely to” and other superlatives awards! We’ll be taking votes for awards through April 30!

OTHERS TO VISIT

Engrain – Their interactive sitemaps are awesome—many of our clients supply our beautiful 2D map files to them as a starting point. (It’s all coming together.) 

HyLy – Email and templates to reach your ideal resident? Hyly’s got it—and the branding we design for you is easy to fold in with their CRM system.

Connect
and
Apartment Geofencing – After we’re done making your branding beautiful, you can get on the advertising train with super-smart digital ads, getting in front of exactly who you want.

LCP Media – Visual branding—beyond your shiny new logo from us—needs beautiful photography to round out your marketing collateral. Enter: Show My Property.

Social Kapture – Steadily creating your community brand is easier with Social Kapture, with custom content and smart social media strategies. Establish your brand here and it will work hand-in-hand with your digital and physical collateral.

FOR WEBSITES

Branded sites (with brand style that we help you establish) can make way for gorgeous websites with any of these partners. Plus, they’ll play nice with PMS!

30 Lines

Digible

Resi – our go-to partner for *custom* sites (with our branding expertise)

Repli

Organizing Your 2024 AIM Schedule

Feel a little overwhelmed? Just grab a pen, and start circling what you need to see and who you need to talk to. It’ll be okay. 

  • If you’re a first-timer, go to the First Timer Meet Up (Sunday, 4-5pm and Monday, 7:45-8:45am) with Tamela Coval.

  • If you’re hungry, head to a breakfast roundtable each morning (7:45-8:45am) and grab lunch from 11:45am-1pm.

  • If you’re a night owl, definitely don’t miss the hosted vendor partner entertainment Monday evening (plus networking from 9-11pm)! 
  • If you’re itching for a connection, check out the networking breaks each day from 9:45-10:15am.

There are a few breaks built in, so you can gather your thoughts and check those emails in between sessions. Just pace yourself and make a plan!

Special Evening Events

ola

Sunday
Ola Mexican
Cinco de Mayo Celebration / Annual Open Networking Dinner
7pm
Seating Limited, Email or DM Kristi Fickert to RSVP

Within walking distance of the hotel, join in for a non-sponsored Cinco de Mayo networking dinner!

This is open to ANYONE attending AIM – supplier, marketer, trainer, operator, c-suite exec, owner…we have zero requirements to attend because we know the best conversations happen when we all have a seat at the table!

Bear

Monday

Bear Flag Fish Co
6-10pm
Come and go as you please, drop in for a drink and apps before your other events OR hang for the night with us at this low-key patio with a view of the beach!

Contact Stacey if interested in attending.

AIM-2024-Nautical-Nights_Logo-Primary

Tuesday

Nautical Nights – Yacht Party

By Invite Only!
6-9pm
Contact Stacey if interested in attending.


Hop on and sail in style on the Motor Yacht Mojo, departing from Newport Beach. Enjoy passed appetizers and dinner, and don’t forget to pose for the perfect influencer photo while aboard the Mojo.

 

*There will be an In-N-Out Food Truck Tuesday for lunch at AIM from 12-1pm. Don’t miss it!!