One of the biggest takeaways I learned last week from the Multifamily Social Media Summit in Napa, CA is that a prospect is more than just a lead. A prospect is a future member of a community. It made me remember that leads are more than a measurable statistics. Your friends, your neighbors, and you are probably leads to somebody’s company.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in metrics when you work in marketing. Your job revolves around how many leads you bring in, how many accounts closed, what percentage of inbound leads came in through your website, and the list goes on. This is not true to the Multifamily industry, which impressed me. The marketers at the conference cared more about building a quality community and finding people the right place to live. I rarely heard the phrase, “I need to increase the amount of leads I bring in, not improve the quality of my prospects.”
People Are More than Metrics
The Multifamily Social Media Summit also made me think about the way we use demographic data. Campaigns are based on location, job titles, industry or what’s in your abandoned e-shopping cart. It’s rare to see a digital or direct marketing campaign that feels truly personal. When I spoke with some of the other attendees at the Summit, they mentioned how they care about what someone’s income level is, personal interests, their marital status or if they have children in order to find the best possible community for that prospect. The multifamily professionals at the Summit truly cared about who each prospect was and how their management company could help them find a home.
This made me think of the time I asked my 78-year-old grandmother why she still works in real estate. She said, “because finding someone a home is like matchmaking. It’s extremely rewarding finding someone the perfect place to live.” This reminded me of how the multifamily industry uses data for marketing campaigns (and that my grandmother is still a great saleswoman).
Dylan Lake is a Demand Generation Manager for Connectivity.
