Millennial market: Property management marketing the new generation
As you are likely aware, rent costs have spiked nearly 15% since 2010, while mortgage interest rates are at new lows after the recession. Yet believe it or not, millennials are still happily paying an average of $1300-$1500 (or more) for rent month after month, with no property equity to show for it. There are many reasons why millennials are opting to rent instead of buy, and to successfully market to this generation, BIGEYE would like to share the following helpful hints to assist you in gaining a greater understanding of those reasons: Know who you’re talking to: There are 92 million millennials in the United States. Collectively, they have over 1.3 trillion dollars of student loan debt, may have spent a few years living with their parents or friends when the recession hit, and are bouncing back from 4.7% national unemployment rates. On a brighter note, financial conditions are improving for the 20- and 30-something set, and many are finding themselves ready to cut loose and enjoy a breath of fresh air. Apartment living can represent that much sought-after breath of fresh air. When older generations explain what the “American Dream” means to them, they often cite owning property or putting down roots. Millennials may include having luxury amenities they wouldn’t be able to afford if they owned a home, such as valet parking, a pool, free gyms or billiard rooms, or a building concierge. Couple these attributes with easy access to food, nightlife, arts, and entertainment in the heart of most urban hubs. American Dream, indeed. To millennials, the prospect of a 30-year mortgage translates to staying in one place – in one job – for the next three decades. This is a generation that can barely commit to two-year cell phone contracts. Marketing campaigns mapping out this generation’s lifespan aren’t liberating, they’re terrifying. Marketing campaigns that highlight the freedom of renting (or owning a secondary rental property as an extra income stream) – now that’s something. Speak their language: Successful property management marketing hinges on your ability to speak this generation’s language. Communicating with millennials the same way you would to the Baby Boomer generation is sure to leave your apartment marketing a little flat. This generation wants to live in locations where homeownership may be out of reach, or they may not be ready to get married and settle down yet – making homeownership a necessity. The mistake most people make when marketing to millennials is that they assume the Y-generation is unhappy with this arrangement. Goldman Sachs conducted a study that suggests 30% of millennials believe buying a home is important … just not right now. A similar study shows more than 79% of renters between the ages of 18 – 35 want to buy a home within the next five years. That means these renters are content being, well, renters until then. But what does that mean for property managers? In highly desirable locations, such as San Francisco, Denver, or New York City, that means it’s an owner’s market. Even if millennials were ready to buy, high down payments, aggressive credit requirements, and staggering debt to income ratios make this prospect difficult. Property managers that give millennials access to apartments with high-perceived value will win their hearts, and since most renters pay up to 30% of their disposable income in rent according to Zillow, you’ll also have access to a large piece of their business. Vacancy rates are at a 20-year low according to the American Census Bureau, so property marketing that targets exclusivity and accessibility to desirable locations is crucial for success. Know your niche: For millennials, you want to highlight value not price. Chances are, they know they aren’t saving as much as they’d like or that their paycheck is going to their landlord rather than their student loan holders. Successful property management marketing ideas highlight the value they are getting – despite the cost. Since millennials are choosing to marry later in life, play up your apartment property’s sense of community and camaraderie. Talk about the convenience of having an on-site property manager to take care of (and pay for routine maintenance and upkeep). Highlight convenient month-to-month options that let millennials dream about their next job promotion to Singapore or London. Boast your building’s free wifi or cable packages that make working remotely or being an entrepreneur a breeze (working by the pool sounds pretty great to us). Once you begin to understand a millennial’s version of the American Dream, you can begin positioning your property management marketing around those elements. Chances are, they’ll be substantially different from customers in other generations, but that doesn’t mean this market segment is less valuable. In fact, millennials make up about 36% of the housing market in the United States, making them the predominant generation in the industry. The long and short game: The short game for millennials is all about renting. The long game, however, appeals to their desire to buy. The economy is improving, interest rates are low, and sooner or later, millennials will begin tying the knot, having kids, and settling in to their mid-level careers. Once you’ve proven that you understand them, they will remain loyal to you as their needs change. Some millennials will likely stay in the apartment market, opting to convert their rent to a mortgage payment on a condo or flat in the neighborhoods where they first started their careers and barely scraped by. Others will “head for the hills” – or suburbia – for a little more space and lower housing costs. As they grow, your marketing campaigns can grow with them. Millennials are also poised to become some of the biggest buyers in the second and vacation property market. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) noted a staggering drop in the average age of vacation home purchasers. The market that used to be saturated with retirees with an average purchase age of 61 has plummeted to 43. As millennials watch their siblings turn
Is Your Marketing Campaign Mom-Friendly? Learn Why It Should Be
Over the past two decades, Moms have controlled up to 80% of household spending. When you break it down, they are not only buying for themselves but for many other age groups and demographics including adults, babies, tweens, teens, males and females. By putting in some consideration and tailoring your marketing campaigns to fit this influential consumer group, you could reap quite the harvest in customer conversion and tap into a market that will keep giving. As a Florida advertising agency we make sure our clients consider the demographic they are marketing to. If the age range or product falls anywhere close to the “Mom” demographic, we like to ask the following questions as we develop or critique an existing marketing campaign: Question 1: Are my marketing campaigns easy to read and navigate on a mobile phone? From juggling careers, family schedules and keeping the home in order, Moms are always on the go and use their trusty mobile sidekicks to keep up the pace. According to BabyCenter’s September 2012 Media Mom Report, 65% of moms have smart phones (38% higher than the general US population). Quick, easy and straightforward is the name of the game when you’re dealing with Moms and mobile media. In fact, BabyCenter’s monthly poll states 91% of smartphone equipped Moms expect websites to be mobile friendly. Pay specific attention to: Clear click-through links: Consider the webpage that your ad, email campaign or image may link them to. Does it bring the audience straight to the desired destination? Or does it lead them to a home page that they would have to scroll through to find the information or product? Mobile visuals: How does it visually look on the phone? Is the image clear? Is the color scheme eye-catching and easily understandable? Clear call to action: Does the content clearly and concisely state what you would like them to do? For example: “Click Here to Order.” Question 2: What kind of woman am I marketing to? Stereotypes and assumptions of a Mom’s role can often be detrimental to a marketing campaign if skewed in the wrong direction. Mothers no longer fit within the “Leave it To Beaver” role these days and are sometimes categorized somewhere between stressed and tired or on an episode of Real Housewives. The truth is that Mom’s are women first, modern, forward thinking women who have added responsibilities like children, a spouse and other family members. Mom-hood doesn’t change the fact that they are still women and want to feel beautiful, empowered and all around badass, plus able to cook a mean grilled cheese sandwich. Question 3: Just how social is my marketing campaign? Moms are all about relationships and look to social sites like Facebook that promote that relational connection. In fact most Moms spend their socializing time on Facebook because of the information and content sharing capabilities between friends and family. Twitter has been found to be more influential with the tech savvy and higher wage-earning Mom. To reach the mainstream Mom market, use Facebook for social promotions and talk to those Moms because they are certainly talking too. To learn more about how you can market to moms in order to create brand preference and instill brand loyalty, contact our team of experts today! We’re poised to discuss strategies for segmentation, creating appeals and assessing your own brand to determine perfect target market for your business. Resources: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/babycenter-reveals-five-trends-that-impact-the-business-of-mom-172863301.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703521304576278964279316994.html#project%3DNUMBERS_GUY_1104%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive%20OR%20http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703521304576278964279316994.html
Part II – Creating a campaign around your brand identity
Once you’ve figured out your brand identity, it is essential to determine how to move forward with a campaign that strategically addresses your target consumer. While the types of campaigns you can run are as varied as the types of businesses themselves, you can use some of our tips to help you design something that works efficiently and effectively to help target your ideal consumer. Go Where Your Audience Is: Think you know your audience, and that they’re all on Facebook? You may be mistaken. These days, Pinterest is extremely popular with adult women, while male geek-types may use Reddit more than Twitter. Some children even view Facebook as something that only their parents use – certainly, no 12-year-old wants to hang out where his mom hangs out. If you don’t know where to find your target consumer, it’s imperative to find out before you develop a social media campaign. Keep Your Expectations Realistic: If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as a strategist, it’s that no one can make a video go viral. This is particularly true if it doesn’t reach a person on an emotional level, such as through humor or heart. If you think simply telling someone about your product or service in a video will garner millions of views, it’s important to review your strategy. Instead, consider what will appeal to your audience, and market toward their emotions. Remember the Brand Power of a Comprehensive Campaign: Your Twitter strategy is getting tons of interaction, and your Instagram account gets hundreds of “likes” every time. But something still seems amiss in terms of success. What’s going on? Perhaps it’s first important to address whether there is a clear call to action established within the context of the campaign. If the goal is to get new followers, then reaching out to the people on Twitter who already follow your company doesn’t do much good. In order to create the best interactive campaign you can create, our Orlando ad agency advises you to find ways to efficiently integrate several multimedia platforms if possible. You can talk about your Instagram photo contest on Twitter and sync it with Facebook, or you can create a TV ad with a clear call to action to ask people to follow you on your various social media accounts. Carefully consider the medium, the message and the desired goal. Keep It Agile: Even amazing ideas may fail sometimes (remember Friendster, the precursor to MySpace [which was the precursor to Facebook]?). But, if you’ve formulated a strategy that you can pivot as it takes shape, you’re far ahead of your competition and, in some cases, can prevent major PR disasters should your plan go awry. Learn From Mistakes: Every single company in the world makes mistakes from time to time, and often these mistakes involve failed marketing strategies. Examine what went wrong, and what you could do differently. Even in the case of a successful campaign, it is important to examine the results in order to help duplicate success in the future. Follow these brand identity tips, and our Florida advertising agency assures that you’ll hit the target consumer with the target strategy at the right time. Take a second to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We’re witty and we know it!
Why college students shouldn’t handle social media
College students and recent college graduates love social media. According to a January 2012 survey published by CampusLIVE (now DailyBreak), 73% of college students use some form of social media in their everyday lives. For many people, this is indicative of a young culture that has grown up with social media all around them. (Or maybe it just accounts for a lot of UCF students Facebooking during class.) It can be tempting to hire a student or college graduate to handle your company’s social media. Hiring a student is typically cheaper than hiring a Florida marketing agency to handle your social media, but is this really a good idea? Consider the case of Red Cross, where a social media specialist sent out a drunken Tweet from the highly respected organization’s Twitter account. The message said in part, “…when we drink we do it right #gettinslizzered.” The person who sent the Tweet, Gloria Huang, admitted in a follow-up message that her error was based on her unfamiliarity with how to properly use Hootsuite, a social media management application. Such an oversight has the substantial capacity to diminish a brand’s strength. (Although, it was HILARIOUS to see that post coming from a leading non-profit). While this particular case was an employee error, it has major implications as to the types of harm that can result from inexperienced users “#gettinslizzered” on the job. A brand’s social media is an extension of its identity, and in the same way Apple would never risk its impeccable reputation by putting its social media in the hands of someone who just passed the legal drinking age, it may not be wise to entrust your own brand to someone with little experience in brand management strategies. Even at a local level, working with an Orlando advertising agency will allow your business to more effectively leverage trending topics and popular events in order to ensure that your business’s social media truly is an embodiment of your brand. Contrary to what many people think, it takes significant time and effort to manage a company’s social media. For most businesses, social strategy should be framed as its own entity, rather than as an extension of editorialized brand content. Of course, if your social media strategy requires more of a plan than posting puppy photos and keeping your fingers crossed for the best, it might require more resources. As such, it may be in your business’s best interest to hire an Orlando marketing agency with a division dedicated to social media. Media experts, such as those with a full-fledged advertising and media agency background, fully comprehend the tactics behind successful marketing, advertising and customer service. These individuals attend conferences and seminars pertaining to social media growth and expansion, and have a much deeper understanding of the consumer cycle from an overall brand strategy perspective. For example, who might be a better person to run your FourSquare brand page account than the social media expert who just spent her dinner discussing the state of the industry with Dennis Crowley? (Here’s a hint: it’s probably not the girl who just spent her dinner eating Ramen while discussing the state of Seal and Heidi Klum’s breakup.) Just because a person can write a few funny Tweets doesn’t mean that individual can understand the significance of the Facebook API, or knows how to effectively pull and apply complex data analytics for future use. These extremely valuable facets help companies build strong and compelling multi-pronged social media strategies, and can help to elicit customer engagement by doing more than posting random comments about the VMAs and the Kardashian family that don’t effectively generate a future return. Social media has the potential to reach millions of people in seconds. A social media goof can lead to a public relations disaster that can cause a consumer perception to sink faster than the Titanic (read: the recent case of Progressive Insurance), and the risk of such faux pas is greater with someone who lacks the experience to understand what it means to manage and maintain a brand identity. As with most digital content strategies, it’s typically better to invest in resources to find a person who has demonstrated digital media marketing capabilities. At even the most fundamental levels, it can be extremely difficult to execute social media engagement, even for seasoned professionals. Therefore, it’s important to carefully consider whether it makes sense to have a student manage the online presence of the entire brand. If you do opt to go in this direction rather than working with the experts at an Orlando ad firm, you may find your brand strategy schooled by the professionals. If all this has given you something to Tweet home about, contact us as we offer a full multi-pronged advertising and social media approach to help you develop and maintain a branding plan that won’t come down with a case of senioritis.
