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.

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

The multifamily industry spends around $170 per unit yearly on marketing costs – over $50,000 annually for a 300-unit property, or $1.7 million per year for a 10,000-unit portfolio. The bulk of this spending goes to advertising, yet the typical owner/manager still struggles to determine if this money is delivering cost-effective results.

Many advertising decisions are made without clear data on how effective different forms of advertising can be. The multifamily industry can change this by using principles of direct marketing to assess which advertising methods will generate the most leads and leases for the least amount of cash outlay.

John Helm, CEO of MyNewPlace.com stresses the importance of consistently tracking the effectiveness of each advertising source in a white paper Cost Effective Resident Acquisition.  His team worked with the heads of marketing for several owner/managers in implementing the recommended analytical approach.

In every case, the owner/manager was able to identify that 20%-30% of their advertising spend was simply not cost-effective. In many cases, they were able to cut this spend, redeploy half the “saved” dollars and replace, or even increase, the number of leads and leases generated.

There are five basic steps owner/managers can take to evaluate most cost-effective lead sources:

1) Identify Sources

2) Determine Common Metric

3) Benchmark Sources

4) Allocate Spend (and Effort)

5) Repeat

Using these basic steps can help multifamily housing managers identify ineffective cost areas of their advertising spend. That money can then be reallocated to more efficient advertising methods, resulting in better leads and leases for the same or lower costs.

Click here to read the full report.