Interesting renter data from MyNewPlace.com:

Faced with uncertain economic times, renters around the nation are saving money on their monthly housing costs by opting to split a 3-bedroom apartment rather than living alone in more expensive 1-bedroom apartments. MyNewPlace, one of the largest online apartment listing sites, recently conducted a survey of internal search data, which showed that the share of searches for 3-bedroom apartments made significant gains at the expense of 1-bedroom apartments since the beginning of 2008.Based on a sample of nearly 10 million searches for 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom apartments that took place on MyNewPlace.com between January 2008 and June 2009, the percentage of searches for 3-bedroom apartments consistently increased each quarter…(Read More)

Post by Greg Starr.

To follow up on my last blog post and illustrate just how much strangers now influence our opinions and decisions, I thought I’d post some revealing findings about the importance of worldwide input via social media.

In Universal McCann’s recent report, “When did we start trusting strangers“ in the “Proliferation of influencer channels” section, it is posited that the web is encouraging trust among strangers the world over. This trend does not correlate with the societal assumption that strangers are out to get us. Rather, we see the web as an equalizer; a readily accessible platform for expression of all peoples. Tapping into that global authority expands our knowledge boundaries and allows us to shape our opinions based on the widest range of (assumably) unbiased, unsolicited and candid information. If knowledge is power, then it seems that we’re craving the power of that collective voice so much that we now hold stranger’s opinions in nearly as high a regard as the people we personally know.

• We trust strangers online almost as much as face to face recommendation
• The top four trusted forms of recommendation are all direct conversation -significantly two of these are now on internet channels: email and Instant Messenger
• We would much rather trust a stranger than a celebrity, by a long way
• We trust a stranger over any paid-for communications or advertising
• We trust a stranger more in a regulated environment like reviews in a retail site such as Amazon or an auction site like eBay
• Blogs are becoming a trusted form of opinion, blogs from people you know rank at number 7 and those by from professionals or micropublishers, number 15.
• Blogs are almost as trusted as their written word counterparts, magazines and newspapers
• Not everything online is trusted: emails from companies are only marginally more trusted than celebrities

(Source: “When did we start trusting strangers?” page 35.)

Those in our strangers sphere might not be our BFF just yet, but from the looks of this report and others cropping up weekly, it seems that they’re quickly becoming PGF (pretty good friends).

Post by Jennifer Gosse.

Ever wonder how a virtual tour of an apartment rental could optimize a search engine results page for your property management company? With Google’s recent launch of Universal Search, potential renters can take a virtual tour without even visiting your site. What used to be text-only search results has now morphed into text results plus picture results for news items, scanned book covers, a blog section, album covers for music brands and video thumbnails that can be viewed real-time from within the search results page. Since this technology produces more than just your average text content, future residents have quicker access to your information. Now is the time to start optimizing your content to get ahead in the new universal search environment that the major engines are offering.

Post by David Gosse.

Most apartment complexes don’t utilize a concierge. If the resident needs something they go into the office and speak to the manager or leasing agent. The office staff has a set number of hours they work a day and if you need to speak with them, you must visit during their hours of business. It isn’t feasible for them to be available 24/7/365, but what value would it be for your residents if your company was?

Property management companies are finding that their residents are used to doing many things online, from paying their bills to ordering dinner. But those tasks don’t necessarily connect the resident to your brand. However, repetitive tasks like online rent pay and maintenance requests do - and some property management companies are now providing this service to make the lives of their residents as easy as possible and in the process, improve communication.

ResiteIT will help property management companies create an Internet portal that is personalized for each resident. Resident portals offer the ability for residents to pay their rent online, submit maintenance requests, view a property newsletter, search for local businesses and even offer residential rewards. Resident portals are an ideal way to connect with your residents online, whenever they have time. These portals help improve resident satisfaction and make day-to-day operations easier for your staff.

Post by David Gosse.

The least expensive and most efficient way to build your revenues and brand is to retain customers and for property management companies, to retain residents. To do this, companies need to understand what the customers want and if they are satisfied with your company. One of the ways this can be accomplished is through a customer survey.

Surveys will get your residents attention because it implies that you are interested in building your relationship with them by valuing their opinion. Give your questionnaire some serious thought and be prepared to receive a pat on the back, but also some criticism. Multiple choice questions are fine, but be sure to leave room for at least one comment section. Sample questions might be: their overall level of satisfaction with your brand, their experience with staff, maintenance workers, timeliness of responses to inquiries, their opinion on how to improve, ways to build relationships within the community, amenities they like/wish they had, etc.

While creating a questionnaire and distributing it to your residents is a great launching point for connecting with your residents, you’ll need to follow through with the feedback. One-off responses might not be possible, but collecting the overall picture and reacting to needs, illuminating the positives and letting them know what you’re working on will go a long way in your resident’s minds.

To help your residents feel that they are involved in improving the company, publish some of the results in your monthly residential newsletter. Not only will it help your residents feel they are involved but it will let them know that you value their opinions which will help to strengthen your relationship.

Post by David Gosse.

Junk mail, flyers and inserts. We have all received them but do they work as a marketing campaign? According to Internet Retailer, e-mail remains a fundamental and highly productive marketing tool for almost all web retailers. In a survey they conducted, 73% spend 5% of their marketing budget or less on e-mail marketing but over 50% report that 6% or more of their sales comes from e-mail marketing with 25% responding that their e-mail profits are more than 11% of their total profits.

Of the online retailers who took the survey, 49.1% segment their lists by repeat buyers and 42.1% by first time buyers. Anotehr 33% segment their e-mail lists by purchase frequency while 19% segment by average ticket, 14.7% by age, 12.9% by sex, and 12.3% by income.Segmenting lists is important but there are other factors to consider.

To extract more efficiency out of e-mails however, companies should utilize their data to communicate on a more one-to-one basis with their e-mail databases. For instance, investigate your target audience’s demographics, including geographic locations and prior purchase patterns to craft more relevant messages. Try analyzing traffic paths through your website and stores and catalog operations if applicable to deliver tidbits of information and discounts that might lead a prospect to make a sale more quickly.

E-mail remains a powerful tool to market a company if utilized correctly. By using existing resources and controlling costs, retailers can expect a large return on investment in e-mail marketing, according to the survey. E-mail marketing remains relatively inexpensive especially compared to the rising cost of paid search. Of the retailers taking part in the survey, over 41% spend less than 1% of their total annual marketing budget on e-mail, while over 31% spend between 1% and 5%, almost 14% spend 6% to 10%, and a little over 4% spend 25% of their marketing budget on e-mail campaigns.

Despite the restrictions placed on companies because of the CAN-SPAM Act and tougher spam filters, e-mail marketing is still a cost-effective tool when the right methods are employed, such as segmentation, testing, demographics, purchase patterns and website metrics. While companies are pouring time and resources into newer forms of marketing such as social networking and video campaigns, e-mail marketing is continuing to strive. 

Post by David Gosse.

Internet advertising revenue for 2006 is estimated at $16.8 billion, a 34% increase over last year’s $12.5 billion revenues. This is the third year in a row that the online advertising spend has increased by greater than 30%. And it’s not scheduled for a slowdown anytime soon: online advertising is expected to reach $36.5 billion in 2011.  Online video advertising is dubbed a big boon for the growth, attracting a broader base of large brand marketers.

 

As marketers realize the potential of Internet advertising and their understanding of how interactive promotions can engage consumers, the Internet will become a greater focus for brand building and everyday marketing.
Interactive advertising is the result of people being online and already engaged in the marketing process. With online advertising, the target audience is already interacting with the medium - your online ad is the quickest way to elicit action.
Targeting options such as demographic and geographic data is becoming more common online. Depending on how detailed you want to define your target customer, the more precise you will be able to pinpoint your consumer. This will help companies utilize their advertising dollars in an effective and defined method without the waste that is associated with traditional media outlets.
The future of online advertising includes these expectations and this marketer-mindset: focusing on consumer-based specific behaviors which will reduce advertising overspending while increasing return on investment.

Post by David Gosse.

We know that search is the #1 tool that consumers use when researching products and services but it’s interesting to see that other media continues to facilitate the motivation to search.

In a survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, it was found that consumers are often motivated to search after interacting withother media outlets including magazines (47.2%), reading an article (43.7%), watching television (42.8%) and reading a newspaper (42.3%). Men are more likely than women to start a search after listening to the radio (34.4% vs. 24.9%) while women are more likely to respons to receiving coupons than men (41.8% vs. 29%).

Which outlet deserves more attention for your budget? It depends on your audience’s media patterns. Market research and studies will help you drill down the particular areas you need to focus on, but the new purchase pattern of consumers and businesses involves a multiple media approach - and that means that your business must adopt the same pattern for your marketing campaigns.

While many forms of advertising are beneficial, such as product reviews in magazines, radio ads, and relevant TV commercials, it is unlikely that the prospect will act on that informaiton immediately. Over time, repeated exposure or a genuine need will drive your customers to a search engine where they’ll begin their decisionn-making process in earnest.

While we’ve been reading about this paradigm shift for a few years now, the connection is still far from seamless in the minds of so many marketers. Yet, the new reality is that advertising is a means to drive traffic to your website or to vertical sites that foster the research/purchase cycle - and that actuality can take some getting used to.

Crossing the chasm to capture the purchase cycle interest requires that you always feature online activities (search, website, communities) in the call to action in all ad campaigns. Based on the knowledge that the majority of your customers are going to look in search engines for you or visit your site directly when you’ve caught their attention, then you must gear everything you do toward that behavior.

If you’re running a magazine ad for a new high-tech add-on to an existing product, prominently feature a micro-site for that product.  Taht micro-site can do more for conversions than 1,000 full-page ads ever could. It’s about delivering the complete decision-making package to the prospect instantly: text, video demonstrations, custoemr testimonials, and if applicable, outgoing links to retailers/reviews/social networks that support your product. And don’t stop with creating micro-sites, practice best SEO techniques to get the most relevant content into the search engines ASAP.

Additionally, you should customize the online destination for each campaign for the audience and the product. Sometimes, a favorable product review might be the best landing page for a campaign. Or, if you have an active blog community that engages a loyal readership and creates a transparency with your brand, that might be the best scenario for a buyer demographic that thrives on casual but intelligent repartee.

Another important realization is that your consumers will communicate with each other after they have purchased your product.

Joe Pilotta, Vice President of BIGresearch says, “Retailers must  realzie that online communities are now producers and through their stories are able to extend the distribution of traditional media with a trust and truth not even approximated by mass media.”

Word of mouth is a powerful tool and even online consumers are most likely to communicate about a product or service face-to-face (68.9%), but bear in mind that consumers do utilize other methods for communicating their experiences: email (53.1%), telephone (50.9%), and cell phones (30.0%). Young adults are more apt to use new media sources to communicate about products and services they have purchased, including instant messaging (37.5%), and online communities (20.6%).

In summary, a diverse advertising strategy is important, but it has to: 1) communicate to your audience within the media that they’re most likely to interact with; 2) drive potential customers to the Web where they will search for your brand, make their decisions and communicate with other consumers post-purchase.

Post by David Gosse.

How did you develop the information at your website? Did you use offline material or spin off content from press releases, news items or your internal communications? Then, did you layer on some graphics, maybe a little Flash animation to jazz it up some programming and think that your audience would get the message?

In actuality, your website may be failing to communicate the message you really intend to offer to your visitors. You need to open a dialog to effectively communicate - and you can start by thinking of your visitors as an audience that gives feedback, instead of just customers with credit cards in hand. Doing so can create a more enjoyable user experience, and will keep them at your site longer, engaged with your brand. This in turn creates the end goal you desire: more sales from a more loyal customer base.

The question begs, “how do I go about creating an interesting website that will engage my precious site visitors, turn them into an audience and then into customers?  A very successful method is to create a website that blends information, entertainment and community.

While the written word is the foundation for your website – it’s necessary for search engine optimization and it engages the reader types among your audience – some Web 2.0 tools are within reach for most companies and offer so much benefit for the investment.

One tool that can help do that is web video.  Video has a lot going for it, providing a platform to showcase your products, employees, customers or affiliated events in a rich media experience that is becoming commonplace. Video presentations need to have enough value to them that people want to share them with others and both the presentations and content must create a memorable experience that entertains the individual.

Video is not the place to lay on the sales pitch - your audience is looking to be entertained, not hit over the head with a self-serving show. Instead, create short videos that work together in creating a subtle brand campaign – engaging enough to keep their interest – and fresh enough to keep them coming back to find out what happens next. The underlying theme is your product, but the consumer is being entertained in the process. Buy-ready consumers are more likely to remember brands that entertained them.

Look to the Internet for other successful campaigns, Video sharing sites (i.e. www.youtube.com) and Web advertising awards (i.e. www.webbyawards.com) are a great place to start for what’s viral and what’s got the attention of consumers and brand marketers alike.

To improve your website, start the thought process from scratch – how can you best communicate with your online audience? Web users form an opinion about your company within seconds of reaching a website. Capture them with fresh content and keep them coming back with engagement tools like video. Stop talking (about your company) – instead, start communicating.

Post by David Gosse.

How do you create ongoing buzz about your company and speak directly to your buyers? The answer is press releases. The online environment provides an ideal canvas for distributing the news that your customers and prospects need to know about you.  And you don’t necessarily need a PR agency to write or distribute them for you. Online distribution outlets such as PRWeb, allow any size business to create and maintain an active press release campaign with little cost. Online press releases can give you more exposure with little cost and can drive quality traffic to your site. As a communication strategy, it is important to distribute releases on a regular basis to help keep your company in the front view of your consumers.

Random content won’t do though: you’ll need to set down some guidelines for your campaign. These include what you are going to include in your press releases, how you are going to create brand awareness and how you are going to get and maintain quality exposure for your company. Online press releases aren’t a license to be self-serving in your message; the content needs to be news-worthy first and foremost.  Focus on the customer, write about the benefits they’ll receive because of your new product development or how your latest partnership will yield them a better/faster/cheaper experience. PRWeb’s guidelines provide an excellent mental checklist as you develop copy. David Meerman Scott’s “New Rules of PR”  ebook is a must-read for anyone delving into the online press distribution space. You’ll understand how to write to your audience, what outlets to use and how to strategize a release schedule for consistent exposure. 

Some of the items you need to include in your press releases are the same things you need to include on your website, which include links and keywords. When you are constructing your campaign your goal is to create in-bound links to your site. You manage this through creating a press release that is rich in keywords that relate to your site, but you want to be careful to not over saturate your press release. Incorporating a good balance of two to three keywords is optimal, with a primary keyword and two secondary keywords. It is essential to research your keyword selections to make sure your keywords are geared toward your target audience and subject matter.

Brand awareness is important when working on your press release. You can optimize your press releases by utilizing media portals such as PRWeb and Internet News Bureau. Both websites will help you syndicate your press release to thousands of news outlets. It is imperative to include back links to a relevant landing page as it will provide valuable traffic to your site. 

As always, when creating any type of content for your site, whether it is press releases, blogs, articles or general product information, it is important to maintain a consistent voice and strategy in order to maximize the potential for long-term exposure for your business. If you provide great content with optimization you should be able to yield good results for your press release campaign.

Post by David Gosse.