Are You Using Bad Words in Your Apartment Marketing Ads

There is a pretty interesting marketing article I read over at Business Week, Five Words to Never Use in an Ad by Steve McKee

I am betting that most of us in the apartment marketing business use one or maybe all of these. Here they are, let us know your thoughts,

Quality

This may be the most overused word in advertising, which is the primary reason why you should stay away from it. What exactly does "quality" mean? In a Lexus, it may mean hand-crafted finishes, supple seats, or a smooth ride. In a Hyundai, it's more about the extended warranty than anything.

The point is this: every product worth buying is a quality product. It may be high-priced quality or it may be low-priced quality, but it's quality either way. That means every company believes it can use the word "quality" in its advertising. Too many have, and as a result, now it has become just seven empty letters.

Value

Like quality, value has been ruined by overuse. Go back to the Lexus and the Hyundai examples -- which car is the better value? It depends -- on the buyer, on the purchase occasion, and on what features and benefits value is being judged. Both vehicles are good values depending on the purchase context.

Or take another industry, retail: Wal-Mart provides good value, but so does Tiffany. Value, like quality, is in the eye of the beholder, and every product or service has its own value equation. Saying "we provide the best value" is, therefore, virtually meaningless.

Service

Have you ever heard an ad promising lousy service? Of course not, which is the reason why claiming good service just falls on deaf ears. It's funny, but the companies that make the claim of good service the most tend to be those that deliver it the least.

Of course, most organizations do have sincere intentions to provide outstanding service and commonly cite Nordstrom as the example to which they aspire. But Nordstrom is Nordstrom for a reason -- the company's entire culture and identity is built around the service concept. Nordstrom is the exception, most companies can't get there from here, and simply promising great service won't make it happen.

Caring

Do you really believe your company cares more about your customers than your competition does? It may feel good to say so, but the claim flies in the face of common sense. If your competitors didn't care about their customers, they couldn't stay in business.

It's particularly easy for service companies to get caught up in the "caring" self-deceit because they don't sell a tangible product. But to say "we care more" in an ad presumes that your competitors care less, which is ascribing motivations to them that can't be proven. Consumers know this and are not only hesitant to believe your claim, they are likely to consider it bad form.

The above four words all fail for essentially the same reasons. Not only are they overused, they're based on variables that will be different for everyone. There's a quality/value/service/caring continuum in each person's mind for every purchase occasion, and it is a continually moving target.

But the fifth word is different. The fifth word doesn't work precisely because it's not variable. The fifth word is binary.

Integrity

A company either has integrity or it doesn't. It's either honest or it isn't. And most people give companies the benefit of the doubt in believing that they operate with integrity. When a company talks about integrity in its advertising it's for one of two reasons, neither one of them good: They're either trying to cover up some lack of integrity (which never works) or they're implying they live by a higher standard than their competition. That's impolite, to say the least. Every company needs to have integrity. No company needs to advertise it.

Do you want your customers and prospects to view your products and services as being high quality and of good value? Of course. Do you want them to appreciate your caring service and strong integrity? Absolutely. But every company wants those things. Those that win the hearts and minds of consumers don't talk the talk, they walk the walk.

What you think about your company doesn't matter. All that matters is what your customers and prospects think. The next time you're tempted to use one of these five words in an ad, stop and ask if there's a better way to get the message across. Using common words that have become empty cliches is a shortcut to nowhere. Just because you sell it doesn't mean people will buy it.

What Value, If Any Is Our Marketing Efforts, Beyond Today

In follow up to a comment from Mike Brewer regarding a blog post we did, Are You Asking The Prospect The Wrong Question has brought up an interesting point;


What Value, If Any Is Our Marketing Efforts, Beyond Today?
Here is Mikes Comment;

On an aside - I have read a lot as of late about Google cracking down on people who game the system with the intent to dominate the first page of Google - have you a plan if Google decides to change it up and all the work you have done up to this point is for not? Have you thought about the day Google changes things and Urbane is nowhere to be found on the first 3 pages with the search terms you mention?

I think we all need to be mindful of the fact that we are building systems and strategies on the backbone of mediums that could be overtaken, become irrelevant and or simply change the way they do business.

So, the question is this, Do Your Marketing Efforts Have Any Long Term Value


To Mikes point, the game will change with Google, so whatever strides Urbane Apartments have made to get to Page One, Number One to Number Three consistently in a Google Search ranking may well be for naught? And, there is a compelling argument that the new Search Engine of Tomorrow may well be facebook.

Things Change Everyday
The point here is this, Things Change Everyday, and as they do, We too must change and figure out what the next angle is. Its kind of like when our Urbane flickr page was taken down, how do you get upset at a free service, and last week for some reason all of our Craigs List Ads were removed each day for a few days in a row, but when something is free, its pretty hard to do much about it, other than to figure out the next angle.

I think Mikes larger point was that all the work Urbane has done may lose its value when Google changes, and they inevitably will. However, every post we do, every post someone else does about us, and every inbound link about us and every outbound link stays out on the web forever. While the way in which search engines rank things may change, your web presence does not.

A Better Question?
Are you working on your Long Tail

Filtered Apartment Search Urbane Lab Project #070609

Lifestyle is such an overused word, although I like the way our friends over at Village Green use the term Lifestyle For Rent. The point of this post is; When is the last time that you questioned yourself about what business you are we really in.

I have always thought that if we could deliver enough value from our Urbane Web Site, Urbane Blog and The Urbane Lobby, That renting an apartment became secondary, our communities would always remain full.

We get a heck of a lot of web traffic, over 10,000 visitors a month, and growing at a rate of 35% month over month, far more than your average (360) unit apartment web site. At the Urbane Underground, our office space is pretty open, and the point at which Heather starts the Leasing Experience is just outside my cube area, only hidden away by bamboo plants and rolling walls. Point is, I get to “listen in” on nearly every tour.

What I hear over and over, or at least get the sense of is that one of the Prospects biggest challenges or Pain Point is “Time” or lack thereof. It takes a lot of time to search for an apartment. We are createing a spot on our web site, and on our Availability Landing Page, Urbane Living Best Picks that will showcase the best other apartment units available. Urbane will “Filter” the comps to match up like product, pricing and web site links, so that the prospect only had to go to one place for comps.

Is there a real benefit to the prospect to have a filtered apartment search, and is that wacky to send a prospect to the competitor, which they are likely going to visit anyway. Could you build enough trust for it to work right? We think so.

We are starting to create alliances with our competitors now, with like or similar product type and we plan to start to help market their communities and units for rent on our Urbane Web Sites. We are close to finishing negotiations with the first try at this.


Our goal is to create a site that is everything for an Urbane Lifestyle, Restaurants, Movie Ratings, Theater Tickets, Hyper Local News, Hip and Cool People and Businesses and including Living Space, from both Urbane Apartments and other local like apartment and condo competitors.

We are giving it a try at the Urbane Lab and will keep you posted of the results.

Resident Referral Cards

Good Morning Friends,
A while back we posted about a Resident Referral System that you could easily track actual results,that Tami Siewruk from MultifamilyPro told us about and suggested we try them out.

Well, we have been to their web site, ordered and designed the cards right on their site and the cards have arrived! They turned out great, and we did all of the Graphic Design in house.


The Rip Card
While not a complicated idea, the Rip Card enables you to track who referred your community to a prospect. It is a perforated business card, which you can order and customize right on their web site, which easily and instantly enables your existing residents or prospects, friends and associates to personally refer new prospects to you.

You personalize an incentive as to what you want to give away to the new prospect for leasing an apartment with you. And the very cool part about this perforated business card is that each half is individually numbered - you keep one half they get the other half, this way you can track exactly who referred you the new customers… and therefore give an incentive to everyone helping you lease your apartments. It seems that having a card that clearly outlines what they need to do and what they get for that will help make the program work better.

Prospects Referral Program
We are ordering our first set of these for Urbane Apartments this week, and will begin giving one of these to each prospect. Urbane has typically promoted a $300 referral fee for each referral lease we secure, but that was mostly aimed at existing residents. With the Rip Card we will infuse this as part of the Leasing and Touring Experience at Urbane and broaden our Referral Program significantly.

We also started giving each prospect, as a gift for touring an Urbane VIP Card as a take away. The Urbane VIP Card, which is a plastic card, similar to a Credit Card, when presented at participating area businesses offers significant discounts. It is a Win Win for the prospect, the local area participating businesses and Urbane.

Resident Referral Program
As outlined above, we have always had a Resident Referral Program in place. Our typical promotion of that has been door hangers. The Apartment Expert, Lisa Trosien suggested a couple of weeks ago that we launch a Double Rewards Program for new move ins, meaning that if the new resident refers someone and they lease an apartment from Urbane within the first (75) days then that resident gets a Double Rewards. The simple beauty of the Rip Card is that it allows you to write in on the card what your special is, so we can customize the Referral Program between Prospects that get $300 per referral and residents who get $600 per referral.

As always, we shall keep you posted as to what works and what doesn’t and why at the Urbane Laboratory. Lisa and Tami, we thank you both for the suggestions and recommendations!

Make it a Great Week!

What Is The Value of Clicking Your Web Site First

We posted about the new launch of Community Sherpa here a few days ago, and also over at Multifamily Insiders. Disclosure, I have no ties to Community Sherpa and have not tested the product. I am just delighted that someone has produced a product that they can actually sell. Again, hats off to Dan McCarthy and his gang for that. We wish you the best of luck with your launch.

Google Page Rankings
As suspected, there are lots of opinions about the product, is it Social Media or not, Does it replace the Community Newsletter and so on. But one thing that most of the folks who weighed in on the conversation had in common, the Content Creation that Community Sherpa produces will enhance the communities SEO and Google Page Rankings.


Content is King
The "content" that Community Sherpa will be creating for their clients, if applied correctly, could/will significantly increase a communities web traffic, and certainly will increase a communities Page Ranking on a Google Search, particularly if they can achieve inbound/outbound links. And if the targeted audience find value in the content being created, they will naturally create inbound/outbound links, which equal Google Juice.


Experience, Not Theory
This isn't theory, it is what we did at Urbane Apartments. Once we added the Urbane Life Blog our Google Page Ranking soared to Number One to Number Three on Page One Google of a Google Search consistently when the search was Apartments (your city) And according to the recent white paper by Rent.com Apartment (Your City) is one of the most used search terms for folks looking for an apartment. Further, if you Google Urbane Apartments, we own the first half dozen pages. Have you done a Google search on your company or community lately, You Should.

In our case at Urbane it was Apartments Royal Oak. We just entered a new market and did the same thing thing with Apartments Birmingham MI. We are NOT SEO experts by any stretch, but it also didn't take us very long to get to page One, Number One either.

What Is The Value of Clicking Your Web Site First
So my long winded point is this, assuming Community Sherpa delivers a like result, meaning they push the Community to a Page One Google Ranking, have they provided more value than an ILS, meaning Will the prospect click that community before going into the maze of ILS Listings? And, what value is that to the Community?

I have put most of our marketing chips on that square, thinking that if the prospect clicked on Urbane Apartment Web Site before getting tangled up in the ILS Maze our opportunity for conversion increased dramatically.

Based on Results, that theory is working well. Our Traffic continues to climb. We had our largest traffic week last week with over (100) Guest Cards for the week, and just short of (400) Guest Cards for the month. Pretty good results for a (360) unit portfolio huh, How much traffic is your strategy producing per (100) units? I would love to hear your feedback.

What Are You Asking Your Prospects Urbane Lab Project #062909

Filtered, Filtered, Filtered
Apartment Executives are at a disadvantage, your information is filtered. Yet, you are expected to make critical decisions each day about what best works for your company. Lots of things have been written about Managing By Wandering Around, but who really does that, and when or if you do, are you listening to the front line employees. And if you are listening, which you likely aren't, what you are being told is what the front lines perception is of what they think you want to here. Filtered, Filtered, Filtered.

I understand that all too well, having spent most of my career with a mid sized multifamily developer and apartment operator. And, once we achieve the long awaited "status" of Vice President, Senior Vice President, President and all or any the other "titles" we are much smarter than the front line, or at least we think so. Before you discount that, let it sink in, there may be a silver of truth there.

Whats the Point Here
The point is this, Are We Asking The Right Questions when our prospects walk though our doors? In my current life at Urbane Apartments, because of the layout of our space at the Urbane Underground (Command Central) I personally here almost every leasing pitch our folks do, or at least a lot of them.

Like lots of other apartment management folks attempting to lease apartments, we ask the same basic questions, like How did you here about us? Even though we already know, they don't know or remember where the heard about us. For goodness sakes, there is compelling data abound that at best, the accuracy of where someone heard about us is maybe 35% correct. the truth is, they likely saw you in multiple places.


A Better Question
Starting today, Urbane Apartments are going to ask a different question, and we think there may well be a lot of benefit to the answers we get. Here it is; "What Search Terms or Words Did You Google to Find Urbane Apartments" and if they didn't use a Google Search to find us, the next question to follow would be, "What Search Term Would You Use to Find Urbane Apartments"


There are a couple of things to learn here;
1) Did the prospect use Google Search to find an apartment or did they use an ILS
2) What are the relevant search terms in the prospects mind

I am sure this isn't breaking news to the SEO Genius, and they will tell us they already know what search terms and words to utilize, and they might. But, We are pretty proud at The Urbane Way for figuring out how to land on Page One, Number One to Number Three consistently for a Google Search term Apartments Royal Oak, and now Apartments Birmingham MI, hope to learn and figure out some more gold nuggets.

We will surely share the results of our findings. And, at least we cease asking the same questions everyone else asks that we already know are 70% wrong.