Photography by Tracy Boulian

As marketers it is important we know our target audience and this statement is no different for the executive producers of the AIM conference. So as a way to get to  know our target audience better, we conducted a comprehensive follow up survey of the 2011 AIM Conference attendees. Lots of interesting insights were realized and we are excited to start sharing them with you. We learned 46% of AIM 2011 conference attendees will make their decision to attend the 2012 conference in Phoenix more than 9 months in advance.

Wondering, have you made your decision yet? If you are still wavering, check out what some of this year’s attendees had to say about the conference.

· AIM is by far the most progressive and thought-provoking Multifamily conference. It never fails to challenge conventional wisdom and there are always plenty of takeaways to put in play immediately. I mark this in my calendar every year!

· AIM is not to be missed if you are looking for a hyper intensive setting to sharpen your marketing knowledge. You are immersed in 3 days of innovation and surrounded by the most influential pace setters in Multifamily.

· Another great year at the AIM conference. This is definitely the most productive learning time I spend all year. I enjoy the speakers from both inside and outside of the industry and love the “real world” considerations you take when booking the speakers. When I saw the list of speakers for 2011 I thought – wow, it feels like he has been sitting in our marketing meetings listening to our current challenges. Thanks!

· The AIM conference is the best of the best in the industry learning and sharing with the best of the best out of the industry! They offer quality presentations that bring the conversation of what we do up a notch. This conference is the only one that peaks my curiosity on topics to not only apply what I learned at the conference but research tidbits and grow my knowledge of related topics. I will not miss it!

· As a marketer, the AIM Conference is simply a can’t miss event. Thought leaders and speakers come together at AIM and the result is innovation. Whether you feel you have an intermediate or advanced level of knowledge pertaining to interactive marketing, this event is certain to inspire and educate you.

Be sure to check back often for more survey results.

In my high school, there was literally an arms race.  We boys thought we needed to be ever stronger, bigger and faster to get girls to notice us.  We competed with weight reps, protein shakes and monthly tips from fitness magazines, all in lockstep trying to break out and get noticed.

And then a new kid moved into the neighborhood.  Within a week he was holding hands with the prettiest, nicest girl in the junior class.

He wasn’t ripped and cut.  I never saw him run a race.  But in a herd of bores, he was hilarious.  Adults laughed along with him.  We all walked around retelling his stories and jokes.  He stood out by being different and emphasizing his own best quality.  In a school of 3,000 self-obsessed Californians, his strong signal cut through the noise.

In 2011 most web marketing is about how to compete in the Google arms race.  How to do more keywords.  More posting.  Better syndication.  Be easier for Google to understand.

Friends, pleasing Google isn’t amplifying your marketing signal.  It’s an arms race of noise creation.  In an industry with near-infinite competition, you can’t ever win over Google’s first page for very long.  Posting a weak message once is bad.  Publishing it 50 times just multiplies a bad message.  Just because it’s free, more isn’t better.

But if you come to the Apartment Internet Marketing Conference this year, we think we can share with you some inspiration about how to be the funny kid in school who gets all the attention.  We don’t care about consensus or getting you to agree on the next fad.  We want to help you figure out how to amplify your signal so your message gets heard above the noise.

Increasing your signal-to-noise ration is what marketing is supposed to do.

Please join us May 2-4 at the Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach for 2.5 days and 16 sessions of interesting, relevant experts who want to teach you how to think for yourself about your business marketing challenges.

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.

How changes in renter behavior are affecting apartment marketing strategies

Christina Aragon, the director of strategy and marketing at Rent.com, offers up great marketing advice for multifamily managers in the whitepaper ‘Maximizing Apartment Marketing Return on Investment: How changes in renter behavior are affecting apartment marketing strategies.’

Huge drops in employment and home ownership across the United States have dramatically altered the multifamily housing industry. Because of this, trends in renter search behavior are clearly impacting the effectiveness of apartment marketing strategies and tactics. For savvy Internet marketers, this scenario creates opportunities. But it could be a potential pitfall for those who do not adapt to changing conditions.

For apartment marketers to effectively maximize the return on apartment marketing investments, they must understand where and how their prospects are searching for apartments. They also must understand how to capture and analyze the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and their true costs. Aragon addresses these two areas and helps incorporate fluctuating renter behavior into marketing strategies.

‘Maximizing Apartment Marketing Return on Investment’ provides insights for readers to make the most of their advertising budgets and maximize marketing ROI by looking at these key points:

1. Where rental prospects are searching for apartments
2. How rental prospects are searching for apartments, both on search engines and on apartment Internet listing sites
3. How to implement strategies for developing online marketing campaigns and fine-tuning ROI calculations
4. Change implications in renter search behavior for apartment Internet marketers

Click here to read the full report.

Written by Lisa Trosien, President of ApartmentExpert.com

The Internet Listing Services (ILS’s) haven’t had it all that good lately. They’ve been getting some pretty close scrutiny on the Multifamily Insiders website, as well as some discussion at national conferences including NMHC Tech and the Multifamily Brainstorming Conference.

Just to make sure we have full disclosure here, I have worked for many of the ILS’s, either as a paid speaker or a paid consultant. Am I currently under contract with any of them? No.

In the interest of fairness, I want to add a few points to the ILS debate. These points are all based upon my opinion after having numerous discussions with the ILS community over the years.

1. Ratings: All of the ILS’s are very much aware that renters want ratings. However, they (the ILS’s) have received significant pushback from their advertisers (NOT their renter/users) on the whole idea of ratings. The majority of their advertisers have been vocal in saying that they do not want ratings on the ILS sites. Rock, meet hard place for the ILS’s. Years ago, some of the ILS’s used to advertise on Apartment Ratings. Why? The site receives a tremendous amount of renter traffic, exceeding some of the smaller ILS’s on some occasions. Their advertising on this site was dropped however, again due to pressure from advertisers.
2. It appears, to me at least, that the majority of the ILS’s are continually striving to keep changing, upgrading and improving not only their product, but the end user experience. Apartment Guide was the first ILS to come out with an iPhone application. Apartment Finder launched their Community Sherpa product, in an effort to help property management companies pursue a social media strategy. For Rent just launched the first augmented reality application for the ILS’s, yet another way to improve the renter experience.
3. Most companies who choose to work with an ILS never try to leverage their relationship. The ILS’s have a wealth of knowledge about your renters at their fingertips such as the top ten search items for your market. Have you asked what these are? If not, why not? Have you asked them how renter behavior changed due to the recession? Rent.com even released a white paper on the topic, loaded with great information on number of searches and more. ILS’s can tell you how many properties the average renter views, how many they contact, what features are most helpful to you in gaining more ‘page views’ and more. (Coupons can increase your leads by 18%; including accurate pricing can increase them by 30%).
4. One of the biggest criticisms of the ILS approach to the rental market is the fact that all property ads basically look the same. And I agree, that’s clearly an issue for companies that have been able to successfully build a brand. Unfortunately for those forward thinking companies who’ve managed to do this, they are in the minority (on an national basis) and in their case, they might not be the best properties served by an ILS. Taking an extraordinary approach with their extraordinary brand is smart marketing on their part. I will throw in one caution, however. For potential renters coming in from outside the immediate market, the personality that these companies have established might not be immediately discernible to someone who is simply searching for an apartment home with geography, size and price as their qualifiers. In that case, the ILS model would serve them and I believe, serve them well.

Lastly, I must say that I fully appreciate and support the discussion that has been started by folks on the ILS model. Pushing the ILS’s to improve the experience for both renters and property management companies and owners is only going to improve the performance of the product. In NO WAY am I
criticizing those who have been willing to ‘take up the charge’ so to speak. They have actually publicly stated what many were ‘whispering about’ for years and for that and more, I applaud them.

Let’s keep the debate going and help to increase leads and leases for all of us.

Lisa Trosien
President
ApartmentExpert.com