Marketers Get a Seat at the Decision-Making Table
Evolving technologies and renter preferences are elevating their roles.
The perception of multifamily marketing has changed over the past few years. What was once an oft-cut expense on the part of developers, owners and property managers, marketing morphed into a technology-based, data-driven, necessary asset. Once tasked with writing brochures and designing exterior signage, marketers have evolved into stewards of investment, online outreach and engagement, frequently getting involved earlier and earlier in the development process, in addition to answering directly to the C-suite.
But with these new responsibilities comes a need to optimize marketing strategies as much as possible.
Sitting with the C-suite
The biggest driver of these changes is the ability to actively monitor—in near-real time—performance, from early-stage metrics such as return on ad spend and web page clicks to end-stage fundamentals such as lead conversions and rental income generation. Add to this the ability to automate many of the more rudimentary outreach, lead generation and web interaction tasks, and marketing quickly becomes a reliable revenue source for even the most cash-starved of operations.
3D Renderings of the Corwyn Conyers, a luxury community located outside of Atlanta. The marketing team at ECI group was able to create the renderings of both the community and several units, complete with view counters, as they were being built. This campaign led to a far smoother pre-leasing phase. Images courtesy of ECI Group 
For Esther Bonardi, vice president at REACH by RentCafe, these changes have shifted the view of multifamily marketing as a business expense to a crucial revenue generator. “More than ever, the marketing department can say, ‘let’s make some adjustments to this marketing strategy that will lead to fewer days vacant, will lead to rental income but at a lower cost per lease,’” she explained to Multi-Housing News.
The marketing team at the Washington, D.C., based WC Smith, for instance, is now involved at the earliest cycles of technology integration and customer experience campaigns, and they even play a role in building design.
Holli Beckman, the firm’s chief marketing officer, sees marketers as uniquely positioned, often serving as an intermediaries between the executive teams and the renters they are trying to appeal to. “Our primary focus in these contexts is to bridge the gap between market realities, consumer expectations and business objectives,” she said.
A benefit of these new responsibilities is often having the most direct exposure to new technologies, with the ability to see what works, and what doesn’t. “We are at the table speaking about what the tech stack should consist of, (in terms of) what those preferred vendors are, as well as how we talk internally and externally about the benefits of those partners and platforms,” explained Sarah Randolph, director of marketing technology at RKW Residential, a third-party property management firm.
Here, standouts such as generative AI-powered chatbots, virtual tours and 360-degree, 3D property models can be integrated earlier into the development cycle of a property, though the integrations of some of the technologies themselves can be on the pricy side. “It’s up to us to demonstrate why we need a 360-degree immersive rendering of a space that is still a year out from being delivered,” Gray Lane, ECI Group’s director of marketing operations, said.
But the sooner that the technologies get approved, the better. “Starting the lifecycle of the project earlier ultimately comes with income coming in earlier, and it really is just a better way to do business,” Lane added.
Be creative, but cautious
Beyond revenue generation, how can marketers demonstrate if a given strategy or campaign is working? The answer lies in marketers wearing their more engagement-centric hats alongside their more traditional, creative ones. As Bonardi put it, “the art of marketing has always been there. The science of marketing is now critical, and that role has to be filled.”
“Something that may have been seen as a cool bell and whistle but maybe, ‘we don’t really need it is a virtual tour,” Bonardi continued. “We now have case studies that show that a unit level virtual tour has a lead to lease conversion rate 38 percent higher than with the virtual tour on the available unit.”
On the flipside, not only do brochures and more traditional methods make less sense from a cost-to-income standpoint, but they are of little appeal to today’s renters. “I think that the biggest change is the way humans are interacting in general to everything, given that attention spans are, on average, about 8.25 seconds,” Ashley Sinclair, executive vice president at Village Green Property Management, said.
This reflects how the company first approaches a new marketing strategy, no matter the intended audience. As a baseline, Village Green aims to get 75 percent of inquiries from its website to convert to a virtual or in-person appointment at the leasing office. This is the product of a precise, curated web design. Here, the creative elements are essential, as are the hard data around web analytics. “Say we need to rent 20 apartments, Sinclair said. “Are we chipping away at that goal with the campaign we put in place, or did something in the market change to allow for that adaptation?”
“If they don’t rent the apartment, it simply dies as just a beautiful campaign that did nothing.” she added.
To avoid this outcome, marketers should look at publicly available data, especially if they have roles akin to those of WC Smith or ECI Group. In the pre-leasing phase, “it starts with analyzing the viability (of a project) with the data and conditions that we have access to, things like search volumes and behavioral triggers,” according to Lane, who said that these can even inform what type of property to build in a certain area, and even which amenities to include. In turn, marketers can get a foot in the door with prospective renters before construction even starts.
One such project is ECI’s The Corwyn, located Conyers, Ga. For this project, the company’s marketing team communicated with likely interested renters in the area as the project was being built. “We started before we had product readily available early on, where we were able to build the buzz and interest, and in the time where there was inventory available, it was fish in a barrel,” Lane detailed.
Not only does such research impact the product, it also directly influences marketers’ own domains. Tim Hermeling, executive vice president of revenue operations at Cortland, highlighted the value of the clicks that web page links get due to minutiae such as their placements and colors, which in turn can produce more promising leads. Here, the firm will change and vary both, in order to select the most appealing option for web visitors. “Testing provides a low-cost way to explore new marketing strategies and tactics to determine whether they work,” Hermeling said. “And if they do work, you scale them.”
With great power comes great responsibility
Of course, with all this influential decision making comes newfound responsibilities that marketing professionals have towards their C-suite stakeholders, their prospective residents and even themselves. For instance, they need to constantly monitor what works and what doesn’t.
The post promising strategies garner more funding for marketing teams, which in turn fuel more creative campaigns. If a particular strategy leads to an increase in key metrics such as occupancy or net operating income, “it allows you to demonstrate how you are being good financial stewards for the company, which in turn gives you the opportunity to try new things,” Hermeling said.
But it’s important to not lose sight on ROI when it comes to campaigns. Hermeling likes to zone in on quality over quantity when lead to lease conversions are concerned. “I would rather focus on direct generating fewer leads in the door,” he said, “but that are much higher quality and are more likely to convert people that are truly interested in in moving in.” On the flipside, the same recognition that creativity alone won’t cut it is crucial to ensuring that marketers retain their seats at the decision-making table. As Sinclair put it, it’s fun to be creative, but the ROI must be there in the end. “If there was a cemetery of marketing ideas, I’m sure those tombstones would be really interesting,” Sinclair said.
