Working in the multifamily marketing business can bring tremendous satisfaction. What could be better than promoting your community benefits that in turn, help someone find the perfect new home?
Yet as simple as that may sound, the daily challenges and interruptions, paired with constant pressure to increase resident leads can take away that satisfaction, and prevent you from doing what you do best to ensure the perfect home is found – the development of tools that effectively market your properties, which result in qualified leads, resident retention and increases your communities’ Net Operating Income (NOI.)
Enter the Centralized Marketing Platform (CMP), the solution for multifamily operators and their marketing and front-line staff. A CMP is a simple, yet extremely efficient way for you to focus on priorities like occupancy and resident retention, instead of being overwhelmed by the details of developing ways to increase foot traffic to and awareness of your properties.
A CMP is the solution, the “one stop” resource that allows you to execute marketing strategy. It doesn’t replace strategic planning or the creative process, but simplifies the logistics and in turn saves valuable time in executing your marketing tactics.
A CMP typically includes:
A CMP saves time and money.
It may seem that utilizing your local print shop, for example, would be less time-consuming and significantly cheaper than utilizing the services of a CMP. But the time it takes to design, communicate, edit and approve every marketing piece that goes in and out of your office can be astounding, and stressful. Working with multiple vendors on one simple project can be costly.
Consider the following benefits of using a CMP.
Volume Buying Power – a CMP vendor working with a number of multifamily operators, will naturally have more buying power than one multifamily operator. Prices are pre-negotiated and eliminate “spend surprises,” giving you improved budget control.
Increased Efficiency – the “one-stop shop” nature of a CMP offers a number of opportunities for efficiency improvement.
Improved Reporting and Budget Control – when you are responsible for multiple communities and their respective marketing/regional manager, the ability to collect spending reports related to marketing, and determine if they are in line with the budget, can be akin to “herding cats,” nearly impossible and very frustrating.
A CMP offers a single platform reporting and tracking function for marketing spend over a wide variety of categories. Reporting is easily accessed and can be filtered and sorted as desired. This means:
The above solutions allow for a more streamlined report-gathering process and considerable less time collecting and collating data for budgeting.
In addition, the ability to more closely track and analyze current and future marketing spend can help to eliminate the hidden costs of not utilizing a CMP. Recurring set-up fees, loss of buying power and rush fees are just a few of the missed expenses that pose a constant drain on NOI.
Supporting Acquisitions – one of the most challenging situations for any marketer in the multifamily business is transforming an acquisition (both property and client) to reflect the new brand. A CMP can be set-up in such a way that acquisition kits are created and sent to arrive in advance of or on the switchover day, thereby reducing the complexity and number of people needed to execute the process.
This timesaver allows for a very simple, error-free transition, providing you valuable time to focus on the unexpected tasks that inevitably come up during an acquisition.
There it is – the simple, yet effective answer to making your job as a multifamily marketer easier and more satisfying.
In short, a CMP creates margin within your day-to-day schedule by taking care of the procurement, production and logistics needed to execute an effective marketing plan, allowing you to focus on resident lead management, increase foot traffic and positively affect NOI.