Your Marketing Team as Strategic Partner

Marketing folks have traditionally been known within the multifamily industry as the team that creates flyers and increases a property’s curb appeal. But this view has been changing over the past several years at multifamily companies across the country.

Advances in technology and communications have triggered a dynamic change in resident behavior and the way customers search for apartment homes. These changes have, understandably, forced a corresponding evolution in the role of marketing to occur. More than ever, marketers today contribute to the strategic process behind a development, supporting pricing and revenue goals and partnering with operations in a more analytical way.

“As marketers become more involved in pricing, IT, and new initiatives, we’re being viewed as less of a cost center,” says Beth Tuttle, vice president of marketing for LMC. “We’re becoming more tech-savvy and getting involved on so many different levels. It’s not just making flyers and creating Facebook pages anymore. The more data-driven and analytical we get, the easier it is to be seen as an extension of the operations team.”

From Cost Center to Revenue Driver
As big data and analytics allow marketers to better understand the customer journey and leverage that information into meaningful strategic opportunities, it becomes natural for the marketing team to become involved in the pricing process and other key operational functions. As that transformation continues, marketers are slowly starting to be viewed as ROI drivers for apartment firms.

“Consumers are typically conducting their searches online using multiple sources and crossing multiple channels, and they’re visiting apartment communities in person during the final leg of their search,” says Jennifer Anderson, director of B2B marketing for RentPath, who designed and developed the organization’s revenue marketing strategy. “Marketers are closest to the digital marketplace; they’re best positioned to understand how to drive revenue in this new world.”

That’s not to say all previous marketing functions have become obsolete.

“We’re still providing operations with traditional media, just in a different way. We’ve created access to self-serve tools to streamline the process for the on-site teams,” says Cassie Khaing, senior brand manager for Mill Creek Residential. “This allows us to spend more time partnering with the operations team to maximize online campaigns and generate cost-effective traffic.”

Attributing a conversion to the first or last source used en route to signing a lease is outdated; today, marketers can track the significance of every touch point along the way.

According to Khaing, marketing can provide increased value to the operations team by using data collected on resident behavior for internal reports on search activity. Providing specific data points—“15 referrals to your website came from an ILS and seven were new”¬—can help Operations understand the customer path. As prospects continue to utilize more touch points, it’s becoming more crucial to fully understand and document their journey.

A Seat at the Operations Table
Operations teams are beginning to sense increased value from their marketing peers, and many industry experts see things progressing even further in the future.

To get a seat at the operations table, they say, marketers should pay attention to the hot buttons the operations team focuses on and what data points Ops is looking at, and then integrate that into the review of the marketing strategy. It’s important to have more than anecdotal ideas when the marketing team goes to the table, to make sure the data are there to support the team’s recommendations.

It can be difficult to communicate esoteric data-driven concepts to development and operations teams. For example, just because a lead source isn’t reporting many leads on a lead report, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a productive source. Facebook, for instance, isn’t a big lead generator but serves as a great verification source. Or a Yelp business account might not drive leads directly but redirects traffic to your website.

The more effectively marketers can communicate such concepts—and the more data they have to support them—the more likely operations teams will begin to view marketers as partners.

It’s imperative for marketers to partner with their operations and pricing teams when creating and reviewing the marketing strategy, and to take an analytical approach. Doing so adds credibility to the marketing strategy and allows the marketing team to be looked at as more than “just” creative. Rather, the team is digging into the details and data and using that information to drive strategy.

“It’s imperative for marketers to partner with their operations and pricing teams when creating and reviewing the marketing strategy, and to take an analytical approach,” Tuttle says. “It adds credibility to the marketing strategy [and allows the marketing team to be] looked at as more than ‘just’ a creative team. [Rather], the team is digging into the details and data and using that information to drive strategy.”

Understanding Prospect and Resident Behavior
As apartment searches further gravitate to the digital realm, marketers can demonstrate their value by tracking prospective residents through their entire journey. Attributing a conversion to the first or last source used en route to signing a lease is outdated; today, marketers can track the significance of every touch point along the way.

“Once apartment communities understand what consumers want, need, and expect during their search and living experience, they can get really targeted in their approach,” Anderson says. “That’s when they can start to influence lead acquisition and conversion much more effectively.”

Many multifamily marketing teams are structured and focused on channels rather than on customers. A shift toward a focus on customers will need to occur for the evolution of marketing to accelerate. For example, some might delegate certain pre dedicated portions of the budget toward an ILS, pay-per-click, and social media. But they’re not considering how to engage with the prospect during their search process or putting the proper framework in place to leverage that journey.

“If you only spend time looking at specific channels and you measure all those channels in one way—namely, lead acquisition—you’re really missing what all those channels are designed for,” Anderson adds. “To move marketing from a cost center to a revenue center, marketers need to learn to look at renter journeys more holistically.”

According to Anderson, marketers should focus just as much on lead management as lead generation. Doing so requires understanding that a specific program designed to nurture leads is going to have a different metric and ROI than a channel designed to acquire leads. Understanding the path prospective residents take is critical in attracting them, and aligning marketing and leasing strategies to optimize that path will increase revenue generation.

Helpful Tech Tools
In the quest to curate meaningful and useful data, marketers can greatly benefit from having the proper tech tools in place.

Having customer relationship management (CRM) software that integrates with your property management system is a must. Building your marketing automation platform to integrate with your CRM helps centralize data, provides better control of your brand and messaging, and fosters much higher spend efficiency.

Large property management companies can benefit by implementing a virtual leasing center to manage all inbound calls and lead traffic into one centralized repository that’s integrated with the CRM. Such integration allows marketers to pull real-time data about prospects and residents alike, and empowers marketers to send targeted messages to individuals at a more segmented and granular level.

“We’d all love to learn everything we need to know about the entire customer journey,” Khaing says. “I think we’re getting closer by using tracking URLs and other facets of technology, and this will enable the operations team and asset management team to have more trust in the data and suggested spend.”

Marketers are on their way to being perceived as a multifamily firm revenue generator, not a cost center. It’s happening right now—in multifamily companies that have a culture in place that adapts quickly to shifting technology and change.

“Whether it’s IT, sales, or corporate strategy, no team should be working in isolation,” Anderson notes. “Marketing is the intersection in a lot of companies and helps set the strategic direction. But it has to work cross-functionally with your product teams, your IT teams, and your operational teams and align with the company strategy to really be effective.”