The marketing and technology landscape is moving faster than ever as we approach 2024. While modern marketers are no strangers to change, the rapid and transformative power of AI (Artificial Intelligence) has skyrocketed the pace, setting the stage for a fast-paced year ahead. 

Amidst major technological evolutions, the apartment market is facing a medley of challenges and opportunities, from burgeoning supply trends (over 600,000 market-rate units are likely to enter the market by year-end) to steady demand driven by wage growth and modest inflationary expectations. With downward pressure on rental rates due to the growth in supply across the top 50 metros, the focus of the year is anticipated to be on maintaining occupancy vs. rent growth as renters are presented with more options in top markets.

In 2024, multifamily marketers will need to be forward-thinking and laser-focused on developing competitive marketing strategies that leverage cutting-edge technology without losing focus on the fundamentals. With this in mind, we’ve compiled five apartment marketing strategy recommendations to guide your planning in the new year.

BUT FIRST…A QUICK WORD ON THE FUNDAMENTALS OF MARKETING STRATEGY VS. TACTICS

The word strategy is thrown around a lot as a way to describe plans for achieving goals or testing out new technology. These are often tactics rather than strategies, and in many cases, these lists of ideas exist in isolation from the overall landscape impacting marketing teams. 

When planning for 2024, think about the challenges your company and the industry is facing. Consider your unique strengths and weaknesses. Then, think about an approach you can take to overcome these challenges using the opportunities available that can set your company apart and provide you with a competitive advantage in the marketplace. 

These strategies should be high-level enough that multiple tactics can be devised beneath them that can be executed to achieve your goal but specific enough to make the approach unique, actionable, and relevant to today’s marketing landscape.

As we walk through the five strategy recommendations below, consider the challenges we outlined at the beginning of this blog post and how these strategy recommendations can help you address these challenges while capitalizing on new opportunities and resources.

1. A Hybrid Intelligence Approach to AI 

It should come as no surprise that one of the biggest trends for 2024 is anticipated to be the adoption of AI, specifically the adoption of AI-based chat technology. Prospective residents have come to expect immediacy from all industries, and the rental sector is no exception.

AI and automation, in general, excel in their ability to deliver scale and immediacy. In a chat environment, this technology enables property managers to overcome a long-standing struggle: providing faster response times to leads. 

Solely relying on AI doesn’t come without its drawbacks. There is a subset of prospects who want a human response to their questions and concerns, and nuanced and unique questions can’t be easily answered by AI.

This is why we recommend you take a Hybrid Intelligence approach to adopting AI in your organization. This means pairing the skills and experience of humans with AI to deliver superior customer experiences and more intelligent business decision-making.

Within the scope of customer experience, this could be implementing an AI chat solution that gives prospects the ability to switch to a live human agent in real-time to prevent leads from falling out of the funnel while maintaining superior customer service (a unique solution we offer you can learn more about here).

2. Building Better Business Intelligence

In a recent LinkedIn Live, “2024 Multifamily Marketing Predictions,” we hosted with the VP of Marketing at Brookfield Properties, Jannah Hobday, and Chief Insider at Multifamily Insiders Brent Williams, one trend that kept coming up in the conversation was the need for centralization between vendors and platforms in the industry. 

As marketing becomes more complex and technology becomes more sophisticated, property management teams are reliant on specialized labor and tools to remain competitive in an evolving field. While this makes it possible for property management companies to implement innovative marketing tactics and offer cutting-edge customer experiences with less investment, it also means data and information about marketing campaigns, leads, and residents’ lives in many places, making it difficult for marketing managers to make informed decisions and implement strategy changes quickly.

One way to go about this is to develop a source of truth for resident information and work with vendors that offer integrated marketing solutions. 

At Conversion Logix, we partner with the top CRM vendors in the industry to sync the lead and tour data we capture from our lead management system with our clients’ CRMs. We also pull data from platforms like Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, RentCafe, and Apartments.com to provide an Ad Automation service that makes lightning-fast ad updates when pricing, offers, and availability changes in a client’s CRM.

This integrated approach gives marketing managers a line of sight into the information they need to be better-informed decision-makers while providing vendors with the information they need to be more effective partners.

3. Advertising on Channels Competitors Aren’t 

eMarketer released a study claiming 25-54-year-olds spend more time on TikTok than any other social platform. In 2022, TikTok surpassed Instagram in total daily minutes spent and is expected to surpass Facebook by 2025. Despite this, many property management companies are reticent to get started on the platform. 

Property management teams get stuck on this idea that in order to be on TikTok, they have to build up a library of organic video posts and invest in follower-building and virality tactics. This prevents a lot of management companies from taking advantage of this platform. 

While it takes a higher monthly minimum in ad spend to get started on TikTok, we’ve seen clients experience success leveraging repurposed video content for Instagram Reels as TikTok ads. Unlike organic posts, TikTok advertising enables you to reach a larger audience consistently with the same piece of content and gives you the ability to target and track your ideal audience.

Another breakout in the media industry is streaming networks. Streaming outperformed both cable and broadcast TV for the first time in history in July 2022, according to a Nielsen report. Connected TV advertising is one of the most overlooked advertising opportunities in the multifamily industry. Connected TV ads can be displayed on a range of devices, from Smart TVs to computers and mobile phones. They have some of the highest ad recall rates in the industry and offer a unique opportunity to build brand awareness where others in the industry aren’t competing. 

By opening up your marketing strategy to include popular channels your prospects are on that your competitors aren’t, you’ll be in a better position to establish your brand among prospects and prevent new developments from stealing your market share.

4. Leveraging First-Party Data to Develop More Targeted Campaigns 

Struggling to find qualified leads is a common challenge that has driven many marketing managers to our door. Targeting in the multifamily industry has always been challenging as marketers seek to reach the most qualified renters while maintaining fair housing-friendly campaigns. This challenge is also likely to become exacerbated as privacy restrictions rise and cookies become deprecated.

New advancements in audience cohort tracking in Google Analytics 4, AI bidding strategies, and conversion tracking are making it possible for marketers to develop targeted campaigns despite these challenges. 

The key to unlocking these strategies in 2024 will be collecting first-party data and working with partners on the cutting edge of these targeting techniques to ensure you can find and convert qualified leads at scale.

5. Focusing on the Follow-Up

In a market where new developments have the potential to overstep demand, follow-through becomes even more important. Prospective residents who come in to tour or engage on the website may be considering several properties at one time. By giving attention to prospective renters throughout the entirety of their apartment search, you stand a greater chance of converting leads into leases.

If you aren’t already using automation to develop lead nurturing sequences via text and email, 2024 is a great time to start. Keep in mind that the better your company is at collecting and storing lead information, the more powerful and personalized your automation sequences can be. Consider creating specific sequences for floorplan-specific campaigns, pet owners, or renters with longer move-in timelines to remain top-of-mind and increase lead-to-lease conversions.

TAKE YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Need help creating a personalized strategy for your community? Contact us today for a personalized consultation with a multifamily marketing expert. We’ll assess your strengths and areas of improvement while exploring opportunities to incorporate cutting-edge ad campaigns, automation, and AI into your 2024 marketing strategy.

The post Top 5 Apartment Marketing Strategies for 2024 appeared first on Conversion Logix.

As digital marketers, the number one question clients and stakeholders ask us is, “How many leads can we expect?” A question asked less often, but usually by the most important stakeholders, is, “How much will it cost to acquire said leads?” Understanding acquisition costs and what drives them up or down is the most important knowledge you can uncover as a digital marketer. 

We analyzed a year of client data from over 400 multichannel campaigns to assess how different marketing strategies impacted acquisition costs. The result? We discovered that these two strategies had a significant impact on acquisition costs: Google Business Profile optimization and lead applications.

These two levers enabled media clients running Paid Social, Paid Search, and Display Advertising to maximize the traffic and conversions they received from each ad dollar spent, resulting in lower acquisition costs and higher lead volumes.

Google Business Profile Optimization is the Key to Increasing Organic Search Traffic

At Conversion Logix, one of the services we recommend to clients interested in optimizing their organic search traffic is our Google Business Profile posting service, Google Business Profile Accelerator (GBPA). When GBPA posts were introduced to a client’s campaign, the strategy resulted in the following traffic increases:

Why It Works

When it comes to selecting an apartment, location plays a leading role in the decision-making process. Prospective residents often turn to Google and are presented with opinions to browse Google Business profiles and Google Maps. These listings tend to be more visual and informative, driving the most engagement. By posting regularly to your Google Business Profile, you can increase your visibility in local search results, boosting website traffic for your community.

Lead Generation Applications Can Significantly Reduce Lead Acquisition Costs

In 2018, we launched The Conversion Cloud® to help marketing teams generate website leads and identify top-performing campaigns. Years later, we’ve helped over 800 properties generate over 1M leads through our suite of lead generation and communication applications.

When analyzing the impact these website applications had on acquisition costs we found that clients who added Conversion Cloud applications to their website saw a remarkable lift in lead conversions, resulting in more leads for every ad dollar spent.

Why It Works

Once prospects land on your site, they stay anonymous until you give them a reason to provide you with their contact information or encourage them to take the next step in the prospect journey. Lead applications like Schedule a Tour, Claim an Offer, RSVP for an Event, or Pre-Qualify Your Income increase lead conversion rates on your site, ensuring you capture the qualified traffic you drove to your site as leads.

Key Takeaway

When increasing monthly ad spend isn’t a viable solution for growing your pipeline, strategies that improve ad campaign effectiveness are a great way to increase conversion rates while lowering your acquisition costs. 

Addressing rising acquisition costs will continue to be a core challenge for digital marketers as attention becomes increasingly more difficult to acquire and advertising platforms become more crowded. 

By adopting strategies that increase visibility in organic local search results and engage website visitors, you can maximize the impact of your ad dollars, enabling you to grow digital lead volume while reducing your cost per lead.

About Conversion Logix Insights

Level up your marketing knowledge each month with research and strategies from multifamily and senior living advertising experts. In this blog series, we’ll reveal our team’s latest findings to give you a competitive advantage in the residential marketing industry.

The post Unlocking the Key to Lower Acquisition Costs appeared first on Conversion Logix.

For years, we’ve used Data-Driven Display (DDD) as a strategy to deliver multiple brand impressions in the customer journey, often pairing it with Display Retargeting to re-engage prospects.

To prove this tried-and-true strategy, we studied hundreds of client’s DDD and Display Retargeting campaigns to uncover the impact of keeping these ads in the market for longer periods of time.

The Research

Our product team studied the effect of combining both Data-Driven Display and Retargeting for different lengths of time by analyzing direct and post-view website traffic and conversions for ads that ran in the following timeframes:

Each cohort contained between 69-171 clients.

The Result

Traffic Levels Rise the Longer Display Ads Are in the Market

We compared traffic and conversions in 2022 between the cohort that ran a combined Display approach for 1-3 months vs. 10-12 months. 

The result, the cohort that ran these campaigns between 10-12 months saw a significant increase in site traffic and conversions over the clients who ran a combined Display campaign for 1-3 months.

Data-Driven Display and Retargeting Work Better Together

When comparing clients with only Display Retargeting vs. both Data-Driven Display and Retargeting, we found that clients who added two strategies experienced the following traffic lift:

The Takeaways

Display advertising can have lasting effects on your website traffic and conversions. Conversion Logix clients that ran Data-Driven Display and Display Retargeting for 10-12 months saw significantly higher traffic and conversion rates a year later. Clients who ran both Data-Driven Display and Retargeting campaigns saw much better results than clients who ran Display retargeting alone.

Display advertising can have lasting effects on your website traffic and conversions. 

Conversion Logix clients that ran Data-Driven Display and Display Retargeting for 10-12 months saw significantly higher traffic and conversion rates a year later. 

Clients who ran both Data-Driven Display and Retargeting campaigns saw much better results than clients who ran Display retargeting alone.

How to Apply These Insights

1. Pair Data-Driven Display and Retargeting as a joint strategy for a minimum of a year for best traffic growth.
2. Talk to a Conversion Logix digital marketing strategist to increase your website traffic and conversions.

The post A Dynamic Duo: The Long-Term Impact of a Combined Display Strategy appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Conversion Logix announced today that real estate technology leader CJ Edmonds will be joining the company as its next chief revenue officer. With 25+ years of experience in SaaS company management and 13+ years of experience in real estate marketing and technology services, CJ is poised to bring deep expertise to Conversion Logix and their elite portfolio of property management clientele.

“We are thrilled to welcome CJ to our organization as our new Chief Revenue Officer. With decades of management experience in SaaS-based emerging technology companies, CJ brings a wealth of knowledge and a proven track record of success in leading innovative and customer-centric teams. At Conversion Logix, our clients rely on us to keep them on the cutting edge of the industry. CJ’s deep industry expertise combined with his commitment to delivering a high-touch consultative experience for clients makes him a perfect fit.,” states Conversion Logix President and COO Andrew Cederlind. 

One of the biggest waves hitting both the marketing and real estate industry is the emergence of AI. Conversion Logix has uniquely positioned itself to focus on Hybrid Intelligence, an approach to AI that combines the unique expertise of humans with the scalable and instantaneous nature of AI to keep their clients at the forefront of the industry. 

“I was very impressed with Conversion Logix’s incorporation of Hybrid Intelligence into their service offering,” says Edmonds. “Conversion Logix harnesses the value of AI and pairs it with their real estate marketing expertise to deliver qualified leads that become quality residents.”

The company has been developing an AI recommendation engine to provide their clients with campaign insights that leverage their expansive database of multifamily and senior living advertising campaigns and the over 1+ million customer journeys generated from their lead generation platform, The Conversion Cloud®. 

When we asked CJ what excites him most about joining the company, he said, “Conversion Logix is a success because of its team of experts and their relationships with their clients. They are not racing to optimize technology and margins at the expense of servicing their clients.” 

“Unlike many technology companies in the industry, they aren’t over-leveraged with debt, they don’t have to answer to venture capital and private equity demands and put profit and sales over people. They’ve remained one of the fastest-growing marketing companies in the nation for nearly a decade and poured those resources back into the company to deliver the highest caliber of service to their client base. I think this approach is a recipe for success, and am excited to take this already successful company to the next level.”

About Conversion Logix

Conversion Logix®, LLC provides digital marketing services and licenses lead generation software to industry leaders in the multifamily housing, senior living, automotive, and small business markets. Our hybrid intelligence platform and customer-first approach enable our clients to meet the demands of their business with speed and agility. Conversion Logix has been ranked on the Inc. 5000 seven years in a row and listed in Austin Business Journal’s Fast 50 Growing Companies. Conversion Logix is a Premier Google Partner, a Facebook Business Partner, and developed The Conversion Cloud®, a lead generation software suite that’s delivered over one million leads to businesses. Learn how Conversion Logix is transforming local business marketing at conversionlogix.com.

The post Multifamily & Senior Living Digital Marketing Leader, Conversion Logix®, Announces CJ Edmonds as New CRO appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Marketers can’t stop talking about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shaking up the industry. With the widespread adoption of ChatGPT and the race for organizations to showcase their use of AI in daily operations, it’s quickly become a topic of both excitement and concern. As we enter this new phase of marketing, you’re probably wondering what AI means for the future of marketing and what role human intelligence plays in the age of machine-led marketing. 

At Conversion Logix, we firmly believe the true potential for marketing excellence lies in Hybrid Intelligence, which combines the power of AI to streamline processes and scale marketing tasks with the invaluable knowledge and guidance of human expertise.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this blog: 

• So what exactly is Hybrid Intelligence?
• How We Use Hybrid Intelligence for Ad Optimization
• Leveraging AI in Analytics To Make Better Decisions 
• Why We’re Bullish on Hybrid Intelligence

Let’s dive into why Hybrid Intelligence is key to the future of marketing and how it can be applied in the housing industry.

So what exactly is Hybrid Intelligence?

It’s the intersection between the skills of AI and the skills of humans. Two forms of intelligence come together to form Hybrid Intelligence: 

Human-Augmented AI: When AI improves its capabilities based on human interaction, data observing humans, and human-guided decision-making. 

Augmented Human Intelligence: The enhancement of a human’s ability to reach conclusions or execute tasks due to the added processing ability and insights of AI.

Hybrid intelligence is based on the idea that humans have a unique and difficult-to-program form of intelligence known as tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge represents the social, emotional, and contextual intelligence we possess that is difficult to define and teach others. While machines lack this form of knowledge, they excel over humans in activities like calculations, predictions, scaling, and rapid execution. 

Let’s take a look at a couple of real-world examples:

1. Content Recommendation Engines (Human-Augmented AI)

Human marketers play a critical role in curating and optimizing the initial content that trains the AI model, ensuring the AI accurately understands the brand’s voice, products, and target audience. Over time, the AI system continuously learns from user interactions and improves its recommendations based on human-curated data, resulting in more precise and relevant suggestions.

2. Predictive Analytics (Augmented Human Intelligence)

Marketers are leveraging AI algorithms to analyze large datasets and predict customer behavior, campaign performance, and market trends. With this augmented intelligence, marketers can make data-informed choices, allocate resources more effectively, and optimize their marketing strategies.

Understanding the differences between human and AI intelligence is critical to identifying the tasks best suited for humans and those best suited for machines. By acknowledging our unique skills and how they can work together, we can position ourselves to create the best possible collaboration between humans and machines in our organizations.

How We Use Hybrid Intelligence for Ad Optimization

Conversion Logix has always been at the forefront of ad technology in the multifamily and senior living industries. For years, we’ve utilized AI and machine learning to optimize campaigns for lead quality and implement ad updates with speed and precision.

As a Google Premier Partner, we’re one of the first agencies in the industry to receive Beta access to new tools and work closely with Google advisors to leverage new AI services in the Google Ads platform. We’ve implemented a range of strategies over the years, from Responsive Ads, Automated Bidding, and Automated Keyword Optimization. While these tools have been incredibly useful, all of these features have required some form of human ideation and optimization to be successful. 

Part of the magic of human-driven advertising lies in our ability to make decisions based on contextual information. Today, many AI solutions are effective at narrow focuses of intelligence; take, for example, automated bidding. 

• Google effectively increases the volume of conversions that come from campaigns by finding searchers who are likely to convert. 
• Google is less successful at determining the best types of conversions to optimize for based on a community’s website, business situation, and customer journey. 

Our team of experts intuitively understand human behavior, are in tune with our clients’ business objectives, and possess the creativity to think of new ways to collect and use data. By leaning into Hybrid Intelligence, Conversion Logix harnesses the value of AI and the expertise of our team to deliver qualified leads that convert to residents. 

Leveraging AI in Analytics To Make Better Decisions 

Another area where AI can help us develop augmented human intelligence is marketing analysis. Making data-driven decisions in marketing is becoming increasingly easier with AI insights and predictive analytics. 

With the introduction of Google Analytics 4, AI-driven features are helping marketers gain a deeper understanding of user behavior and website interactions. We can better track user journeys in a cookieless future through machine learning algorithms, providing valuable data on user demographics, interests, and preferences. 

We’ve gone beyond the widely-available industry tools to build an AI-based recommendation engine that gives our clients a competitive edge in a fast-paced industry. Our proprietary platform leverages data from thousands of our property marketing campaigns and lead journeys from over one million leads to deliver automated campaign insights and recommendations. This empowers our marketing experts to make decisions with speed and precision from deep AI insights.

AI-powered analytics gives our team the ability to forecast trends and identify opportunities to optimize marketing strategies for better outcomes.

Why We’re Bullish on Hybrid Intelligence

At Conversion Logix, we’re excited to explore how AI can help us provide cutting-edge campaigns for our clients. Rather than imagining a world where machines replace humans, we believe it’s more likely that we will see humans and AI work together to enhance each other’s unique capabilities. As impressive as AI is, human marketers who possess the ability to ideate and understand emotion-based decision-making will still be needed at the forefront to make decisions and guide technology to produce the right outcomes. 

Take Your Marketing to the Next Level

Interested in learning more about our advertising services that leverage Hybrid Intelligence? Contact us today for a personalized consultation, and we’ll explore how we can incorporate automation and AI into your marketing strategy.

The post Embracing Hybrid Intelligence: The Role of Human Expertise in an AI World appeared first on Conversion Logix.