Let’s face it – social listening is time-consuming but SO rewarding. Social listening is when you watch, track and analyze conversations and trends around your brand, industry, and competitors. Then, it’s common to consider those insights when making business decisions such as when you go to strategize how to lease up your community.
A lease-up by definition is the period of time from pre-leasing, meaning leasing prior to building delivery, and stabilization, or when the community hits the magical stabilized percent occupied — typically 95%.
Building an effective apartment lease-up marketing plan takes careful planning and one of the steps is social listening – let’s dive into how to properly do this.
Market Research
Social listening provides incredible insights for understanding the market. But first you have to find your target market. Start by going on to social media platforms, neighborhood sites, or community forums, and pay attention to what people are saying.
You’ll find a wealth of competitor intelligence, what trends are resonating in that area, and gather neighborhood intelligence. When people are in the market for apartments, what are they looking for? What sort of creative leasing strategies are your competitors using – and what of those strategies is working?
This is also where you can collect prospect sentiment. You’ll be able to see your prospective audiences’ likes and dislikes. You can see what is really resonating with them. Knowing what sorts of amenities they are using the most can help advise what of your amenities you lead with. It’s also where you can gain insight into where they’re finding value and what they like about the community they’re living in now. You know what to build into your community and what to incorporate into your marketing plans.
Knowing these things, the market sentiment, and the competitor landscape will help make any marketing plan stronger.
Conversation Stirrer
There will also be opportunities through social listening to add value to the resident experience and to your property. By listening to social sites, you can find out about popular restaurants, shops, events – anything going on in the neighborhood where the property is located. That’s going to matter quite a bit to prospective residents who, eventually, may move into the property. And, especially in a lease-up phase without a fully finished property, knowing those local ins and outs will add value to the leasing and resident experience. You’ll be able to share all of that information and what all they would have access to by living in your property.
See How Social Listening and Video Marketing Are Working for Your Competitors
It’s also a potential way to find out where you could form partnerships. Once the property is completed, reach out to some of these popular neighborhood places and suggest hosting something together, spreading the reach of both brands. Think about a dinner at a local restaurant or a pop-up boutique in the lobby with a local shop. All of these can be important to developing a lease-up marketing plan but also any future marketing efforts.
There are also plenty of groups online for people relocating to a new city. For example, a Facebook group for people moving to Dallas and wanting to know what it’s like to live there. If you’re paying attention to these groups, you’ll know who is coming to the city and who could be a prospect. Also, you’ll see what they are looking for and if that matches your offerings.
At times, you may have a chance to be a part of and direct those conversations, offering insight and being seen as a thought leader in the market, or on housing in the market. That can be very beneficial to a lease-up community that’s being built from the ground up and trying to establish both a renter base and digital presence online.
When you’re developing your apartment lease-up marketing plan, social listening is a must. It’s a great, easy way to find out information and be able to add value to a prospective resident’s leasing experience.
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