Another big round of thanks to RealPage for their support of the post-conference video distribution from the 2010 AIM Conference. 

Next up is a video and presentation from Donald Davidoff from Archstone and Jane Griffith from Pinnacle.  Their task was to wrap up the AIM Conference 2010 and provide a simple framework for organizing all of the different exciting possibilities and create a workable, sustainable plan for any size of multifamily organization.  Please click on the photo or the link below for the video and presentation.

Cutting Through the Clutter: Creating a Simple Marketing Plan

Our editing is done and we're going to be rolling out the AIM 2010 videos fast and furious over the next few weeks so buckle up.  We appreciate the support of our video sponsor RealPage.  They are making it possible to help spread the expert knowledge delivered at AIM 2010.

We have two session videos relating to planning marketing.  The first up is a complete recap of the panel presentation featuring Julie Smith, President of Bozzuto Management; Doug Tulumaris, Vice President of Champion Window; and Deanna Kawasaki, Vice President of CallSource.  This panel discussed scenarios in which they used data to measure and respond to situations that weren't intuitive or necessarily solveable without marketing data.  They discuss how to use unexpected data findings in a series of scenarios:

Creating a Data-Driven Marketing Plan for a Hyper-Competitive Environment

Just a quick note to notify folks that the first three AIM 2010 session videos have been posted for your viewing and reviewing pleasure at http://www.apartmentinternetmarketing.com/2010-conference/.

We will add videos periodically as our editor polishes them up.  The first three are:

- Marketing for Third-Party Managers (Panel Discussion)

- Where Do Leads Come From?  Multi-Source Lead Attribution (Gary Angel, Semphonic)

- Mobile, Local and Real-Time Search ( Greg Sterling, Sterling Market Intelligence)

Each video is about an hour, so set aside some time to listen and enjoy.  Videos may only be available for a limited time, so schedule your viewing time with yourself soon!

Presentations

AIM 2010 presentations are available for viewing and downloading at Slideshare.net at the AIM Conference page: http://www.slideshare.net/AIM_Conference.  There you can find presentations from the last three AIM conferences from 2008 – 2010.  Presentations will also be added to pages on this site for permanent storage.

AIM 2010 Videos

We are working now to embed selected AIM videos into this site, and should have the first few videos available this week on this site.  Videos will be available for a limited time.  Stay tuned.

We’re busy uploading the AIM 2010 Powerpoint presentations for your further review.  We expect them to be available by Thursday morning May 6 and will notify attendees and post a link here.

In the mean time, we do have access to some other AIM 2010 media – the photos from the My New Place-sponsored photo booth.  Photos are available to download, order prints or just cause mayhem on Facebook.  Capitol Photo booth provided us with two galleries – one of individual images, and one of the strips themselves.  Prints are available to buy at cost – which is dirt cheap.  I have already ordered prints of several attendees – just in case they ever get promoted to positions of real power and prominence.  Call it insurance…

AIM 2010 Photo Booth Individual Images

AIM 2010 Photo Booth Image Strips

Tandi manages the Marketing for 54 properties and over 14,000 units in the Eastern Division at BPA. Her responsibilities at Berkshire include Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Management, Retention, Development and Motivational Training. Tandi oversees Media/Advertising/Image/Brand positioning and development, Marketing Collateral, Internet Advertising, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Customer Service Promotions and so much more!

We’ve heard several different versions of this question in the last 12 months – an interesting question on our LinkedIn group’s discussion page from  Tandi Tucker Toni, Director of Marketing–Eastern Division at Berkshire Property Advisors:

“Our communities have been using a posting tool–www.gogopin.com to create ads to post on Craigslist. Recently these ads have been flagged/removed as soon as we post. Any ideas why this is happening?”

Tandi is the Marketing, Sales, Training and Motivational Guru at Berkshire with over 17 years of Property Management Experience.

Tandi manages the Marketing for 54 properties and over 14,000 units in the Eastern Division at BPA. Her responsibilities at Berkshire include Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Management, Retention, Development and Motivational Training. Tandi oversees Media/Advertising/Image/Brand positioning and development, Marketing Collateral, Internet Advertising, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Customer Service Promotions and so much more!

Please respond here, or on our LinkedIn discussion group page.

Jane Griffith, Director of Marketing at Pinnacle called recently to talk about the importance of monitoring and responding to Better Business Bureau (BBB) listings.

BBB and the Chamber of Commerce business listings and reviews are old school. But they’re online, user-generated content. They’re SEO-optimized, locally searchable and validated by a staff of experts. In other words, they still matter and can make or break a potential customer’s impressions. Renters, investors, lenders – they can all find your properties’ reputation at www.bbb.org.

Do you know how your property ratings are affecting public perceptions of your brand?

Bad ratings at the BBB or Chamber of Commerce can happen to anyone. I checked four San Francisco properties owned by one of the most prestigious apartment owners. One had an ‘F’ failing rating due to non-response to complaints. The good news is that complaints and disputes with the BBB can be constructively resolved.

Jane kindly offered to share with the industry a step-by-step process for checking and responding to BBB reviews and ratings (use link below to download).  If you don’t want to monitor reviews yourself, ask your ad agency or ILS if reputation management is service they can look at providing for you in the future.

By the way, Jane and Donald Davidoff, Group Vice President, Strategic Systems at Archstone will be co-presenting at the Apartment Internet Marketing Conference (AIM) 2010.  We hope to see you there!

Very best regards,

Steve Lefkovits
Executive Producer, AIM Conference

Jane’s BBB Process (click to download)

Register for AIM 2010

PS – BBB and Chamber of Commerce listings can provide great search engine optimization.  At last year’s AIM Conference Chris Sherman, one of the country’s leading experts on search laid out a step by step approach to improving a business’s visibility to the search engines.  First on his list was leveraging Chamber of Commerce and local community guides.

Even if you’re not going to do it yourself, be sure to ask your agencies and listings vendors if they’ve seen Chris’s presentation.  He is executive editor of Search Engine Land and producer of the internationally acclaimed SMX Events.  His presentation contains new product ideas, competitive research and insights into changing local business search behavior that might interest them – and you.  Check it out:

Chris Sherman’s AIM 2009 Presentation

The AIM 2010 Conference theme – Many Marketing Channels: One Goal – reflects the needs of owner/managers and their service providers to master many channels to drive and validate their impact on net operating income. AIM 2010 will feature cutting-edge business education designed to help simplify using multiple marketing channels to achieve a targeted ROI occupancy. With more than 200 companies that own and operate apartments in attendance, it’s an event you can’t afford to miss!

We’ll be meeting at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa in Huntington Beach, California. The location is fantastic and has to be seen to be believed. It’s right on the beach with lots to see and do in the immediate area. Best yet, it’s a family-friendly resort so bring the family and stay the weekend! There’s more information about the Hyatt and how to reserve your guest room at the special AIM Conference rate at www.aimconf.com. Be sure to make your reservations soon before our room block sells out.

There’s an exceptional line-up of presenters this year. Keynote conference speakers include Google’s Sam Sebastian, Director of Local and B2B Markets; Greg Sterling, Founding Principal of Sterling Market Intelligence; Danny Sullivan, Editor in Chief of Search Engine Land; Gary Angel, President of Semphonic; and Vivek Sodera, Co-Founder of RapLeaf. AIM 2010 also features intermediate and advanced sessions specifically developed with topics and speakers that address the challenges of using multiple marketing channels.

And we’re grateful to our sponsors who make it all happen. They include Apartment All-Stars, Apartment Finder, Apartment Guide, Benson Media, Capture the Market, First Advantage SafeRent, G5 Search Marketing, Grace Hill, Level One, Move, Multi-Housing New, Numeric Analytics, On-Site.com, Property Solutions International, RealPage, Realty DataTrust (Founding Sponsor), rentbits, Spherexx.com, The Rainmaker Group, and Yardi.

True to its reputation, the AIM Conference is going to be packed with educational value, growth opportunities and plenty of networking. We’ll see you there!

Register here for AIM 2010.

Click here to view AIM 2010 press release.

A digression.  I recently bought my wife a car.  I searched five web sites, and then looked up the dealer’s site to check his hours and location.  As I sat there signing the purchase documents, I wondered, who gets credit for bringing us in?  I asked the salesman.  He laughed.  He said he gets the credit.  He offered that the dealer just looks at his total marketing spend per sale. In their view car buyers use lots of sources to gather information.  He explained that multiple sources provide validation, trust and different perspectives.  Their research showed that different people absorbed different take-aways based on the source and the user experience.

As budgets get tighter, the struggle gets fiercer between apartment operator, their lead tracking and their ad vendors.  But is the struggle warranted?  Is each lead a zero-sum exercise?  Or are there more sophisticated ways that big advertisers look at the value of their advertising placements?

At AIM 2010 we will try to answer “Where do leads come from?” for companies that advertise in more than one place.  The answers are likely to lead to collaboration, data sharing and new ways of looking at effectively reaching prospective residents.

AIM 2009’s highest rated speaker is returning - Gary Angel, President of Semphonic, an international web analytics consultancy.  Gary will be just one of our speakers to address the topic. (Gary’s 2009 advanced presentation on different types of web analytics and how they’re used is found here.)

I hope you’ll come to AIM 2010.  Apartment companies and sponsor companies alike will benefit from the presentations that touch on more sophisticated understandings of lead attribution.

And of course, there will be so much more!

AIM 2010 (click here for more info)

Who: Marketing, Pricing and Operations Executives in the multifamily industry (owners and managers and sponsors only)

What: Apartment Internet Marketing Conference 2010.  Intermediate and advanced educational sessions on marketing, revenue management, transactional technology and more.

Where: Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa, Huntington
Beach, CA (Orange County)

When: April 28 – 30, 2010

Registration: $595  register now

Apartment Finder, a comprehensive resource for people seeking residential rental space, and Yelp, an online urban city guide that features reviews from its members, have joined forces to collaborate on an upcoming webinar “Yelp: Managing Your Online Reputation.” Experts will discuss how apartment operators can manage their community’s online reputation and learn the most up-to-date information on apartment ratings.

This is an exciting announcement. ApartmentFinder’s presentation of this webinar is a huge breakthrough as the apartment industry has historically avoided reviews and review sites. ApartmentFinder is a `legacy’ internet listing service that started with a print platform, but is evolving by utilizing social media and teaching folks to use the latest communication techniques to reach new audiences.

Yelp is a rapidly growing website that has presences in major markets throughout the US, Canada, UK and Ireland. “Yelpers” have written more than 8 million local reviews, making Yelp the leading US local guide for real word of mouth on everything from boutiques and mechanics to restaurants and dentists. Yelp extends its reach through social networks and mobile applications.

This webinar is very interesting, showing a change in posture from the apartment industry.

Click here to register now!

The 2010 AIM Conference is right around the corner. Join us April 28-30. Click here to register today!