AIM: Apartment Internet Marketing

Led by Brent Williams, MultifamilyInsiders.com Lisa Trosien, ApartmentExpert.com, Moderator

Led by Becca Wilson, President and CEO of Spherexx.com.

Led by Laurel Howell, Vice President of Internet Marketing and Business Development, Kettler and Greg Benson, Account Supervisor, Merrick Towle

Panelists from a variety of perspectives will discuss and evaluate the topic “Could Advertising on the Internet Fail?”, based on the recent provocative article on TechCrunch by Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  All attendees are encouraged to read this conceptual piece and think about its implications prior to the sessions.
“Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet” link to TechCrunch article.

Panelists:

Craig Donato, CEO, Oodle, Inc.
Jed Katz, Managing Director, DFJ Gotham Ventures
Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix.net
Steve Lefkovits, Executive Producer, AIM Conference, Moderator

Sponsored by ApartmentGuide.com

Internet advertising experts will provide a thorough breakdown of the elements of a company’s internet presence from corporate site to landing pages to emails and provide insights into how consumers view the entire customer experience. The purpose of this session is to help attendees understand how consumers see their property presence and respond to what is offered at each step of the way. The presenters will be providing tens of thousands of dollars of free consulting insights to the lucky firm that agrees to be analyzed, and to all attendees in general.

Presenters:

Scott Esmond, Director of Business Development, Red Door Interactive
Tony Felice, Senior Strategist, Red Door Interactive
Anna Shea, National Director Marketing, Simpson Housing, Moderator

Dr. Sharon Melnick is a Harvard-trained psychologist and educator who teaches executives mental techniques for peak performance while under stress. The human brain processes 60,000 self-generated thoughts per day. Her dynamic presentation will teach AIM attendees how to take charge of their internal mental messaging and bypass fear and negativity to get results within themselves and their organizations. Dr. Melnick has taught executives at Fortune 100 companies how to first take charge of their own internal voice, and then how to influence others to adopt and implement the business solutions that benefit the entire enterprise. www.sharonmelnick.com

Jay Harris, Vice President, First Advantage SafeRent, Moderator

This year, we’ll hear from multifamily marketing leaders who are on the cutting edge in using social media in various ways, including a regional owner who only uses social media for prospect awareness and buys no other advertising to keep his properties full. Presenters will provide actual case studies of what they do, why they do it, the time involved and what they think about the future of social. Of particular note, Eric Brown, President of Urbane Properties in Michigan will present his advertising strategy that uses only social media and no paid media to keep his seven luxury properties full.

Presenters:

Israel Carunungan, Director of Marketing, The Bozzuto Group
Alison Crabtree, Director of Strategic and Internet Marketing, Bell Partners
Mike Whaling, President, 30 Lines
Jim Kjolhede, President, Satteron Enterprises, Moderator

Digital marketing provides accountability and the chance to look at advertising as an investment in getting a certain yield. Yet most apartment firms are drowning in lead reports from vendors, sales reports from their property management system and maybe even more reports from their lead tracking vendor. Learn from experts how to organize your available analyses and extract the highest-value data and to have the confidence to use it to increase your NOI due to marketing.

Presenters:

Rick Blair, Assistant Vice President, Equity Residential
Todd Katler, Vice President, LevelOne
Darcey Forbes, Director of Marketing, Essex Property Trust, Moderator

Worried that your pay-per-click campaign is cannibalizing your efforts to glean organic traffic? Aware that your different online ads interact with each other but don’t really know how? Want more insight into how changes on your internet presence will enhance the user experience? This session will present a survey of advanced web analytics that will provide deeper insights into whether a strategy is working, and how to create the infrastructure to glean those insights.

Gary Angel is President and CTO of one of the leading web analytics firms in the United States. Their practice focuses on Fortune 500 companies and global enterprises.

Presenter:

Gary Angel, President and CTO, Semphonic Web Analytics
Donald Davidoff, Group Vice President, Archstone, Moderator

“Am I falling behind?” These peer case studies will highlight the marketing efforts made by different-sized companies with differing resources and profiles. Presenters will share the story of how they got where they are, what they do, and where they hope to take their efforts to attract and transact with renters online.

Presenters:

Christi Samuelian, Webmaster/Internet Marketing, Windsor Communities
Peggy Hale, Director of Marketing, Morgan Properties
Lisa Trosien, ApartmentExpert.com, Moderator

Is the right strategy to discount rent pricing or to spend more to stimulate awareness and drive traffic? Should we spend more in advertising to get more renters at today’s rent? Is discounting as effective as changing the presentation of rent and fees? How do you make any of these choices without information from both marketing and yield management data at your fingertips?

Kevin Geraghty is an expert on integrating real-time customer demand information within a disciplined revenue management environment and will provide case studies from other industries that support the idea that marketing and revenue management are really one function.

Presenter:

Kevin Geraghty, Principal, 360i
Chris Long, Director of Pricing and Revenue Management, UDR, Inc., Moderator

Spanish speakers account for 20-50% or more of the rental market in many areas. Effective apartment marketers have already learned to create marketing campaigns and materials that reflect the cultural and linguistic distinctness of Hispanic cultures. This session is a survey of online strategy, cross-cultural media tactics and guerilla marketing techniques.

Presenter:

Toti Cadavid, Principal, Xcelente Marketing
Dennis Smillie, President, Multifamily Solutions, Inc., Moderator

We’ve asked a leading industry executive to provide a case study that address how they integrate real-time demand information into a revenue management platform to help connect the dots from the preceding presentation. Last year’s AIM Conference featured a lodging industry presenter who detailed how they “pull the lever” to maximize revenue and marketing yield. This year, we try to bring it closer to home.

Presenter:

Steve Small, Executive Vice President, AMLI
Jennifer Cyphers, Principal, Multifamily Edge, Moderator

Putting one property ad online is a breeze. Placing and updating ads weekly for 40 properties can be a logistical nightmare. This session will highlight the nuts and bolts of placing ads in multiple web sites simultaneously. Presenters will discuss content management (text, photos and video), how to distribute to many places from one interface, maintaining consistent pricing across online ads and maybe even some of the free tools out there that assist in the distribution of photos and video to social media sites.

Presenters:

Jared Miller, Director of Marketing, Bainbridge Communities
Adriana Perez, Project Manager, Interactive Marketing | Carmel Partners
Donna Olson, President, Olson Training, Moderator

Your company brand means something and is worth a lot online. Did you know that other websites may be using your website content and corporate identity which can dilute your brand and the online equity. Steve Taraborelli, Vice President of Marketing at UDR will present why and how the brand erosion is happening, and outline how it can impact lease volume. Steve also presents tips and tricks on what you can do to minimize the brand erosion damage. Some of the topics covered will be: online brand protection monitoring, paid ad placement monitoring, search engine optimization monitoring, cease and desist management and learn how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can become an ally to your company.

Presenter:

Steve Taraborelli, Vice President of Marketing, UDR, Inc.

Revenue management systems automate the discipline of rental unit pricing and take the emotion out of pricing and presenting offers. Yet multifamily adoption of revenue management happened as markets recovered and rents were moving upward for everybody. Does revenue management work in a downward-trending market? Panelists will present case studies examining whether revenue management adds the same value in a declining market like the one we’re currently experiencing.

Presenters:

Ray Thornton, Vice President of IT Applications and Support, Colonial Property Trust
Mark B. Juleen, Vice President, Director of Marketing & Training, J. C. Hart Company, Inc.
Gregory J. Lozinak, Chief Operating Officer, Waterton Residential, Moderator

Apartment community disasters are big, public news events in which residents, media, government and relief organizations are all looking to the communications leadership of the apartment owner. Julie Smith, President of Bozzuto Management will talk through real disaster case studies and present insights into how to plan to use the internet to communicate a timely, consistent message. Learn the importance of pre-planning and having updated email and cell phone information and how to use them to maintain control even after the news has hit the airwaves.

Presenters:

Lauren McDonald, Director of Corporate Communications, Bozzuto Management
Jim Rettew, Chief Communications Officer, American Red Cross Mile High Chapter
Alex Burris, Vice President, Operations, Babcock and Brown Residential, Moderator

We’ve asked one of the for-sale home industry’s leading experts on pay-per click to give a high-energy, in depth presentation on buying pay-per-click traffic and offer tactics on keyword selection, pricing, responding, creating relevant landing pages and more. Everyone is buying clicks in your market – your competitor, your Internet Listing Service and even vendors trying to sell products to you. It’s a crowded space. Presenting will be Howard Tager, CEO of TigerLead Solutions. Howard is a trained speaker and educator and brings a teacher’s approach into sharing actionable strategies that work in buying click traffic. It will be worth waiting until the end of the conference to hear this if you’re still searching for a clear understanding of why you might want to buy clicks more effectively.

Presenter:

Howard Tager, CEO, TigerLead Solutions
Randall Ell,  Principal, RM Ell Investments, LLC, Moderator

At lease 70% of moving searches are within the same metro. Renters look for homes that are near work, school, parks and the freeway. How do we as an industry capture this traffic that is highly relevant and pre-qualified? What are the SEO benefits to targeting local searches? PropertyCentric, RentWiki, ReachLocal, Apartment Home Living and Google Local are just some of the national players creating local content to capture local search. Clearly some investors have put money behind locally targeted consumer searching. This session will delve into the value of local, as well strategies that are being used to target renters that can pinpoint their need geographically.

Presenters:

Jed Nachman, Vice President of Sales, Yelp, Inc.
Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, SearchEngineLand.com
Jeff Adler, President and CEO, The Sanctuary Group, Moderator