Continuing the Story

Multifamily Marketing Part II

By Erica Rascón on Apr 8, 2016 in Marketing

In our previous post, 5 Steps to Discovering Your Story,  we introduced the importance of consumers’ emotions in the sales process. You also identified features that can help your property stand out from the competition. Today, we will show you how to weave those points into a marketing story. This story creates an important emotional connection between prospects and your property—and that connection leads to sales!

1. Weave the story web. Take a moment to review the information that you’ve gathered on your town, neighborhood, property, and its residents. What common themes or patterns stand out to you?

Perhaps your property is a new construction in a recently developed part of town. It doesn’t offer much in terms of history, yet your property is positioned for a different type of story. Your story may revolve around fresh starts, new beginnings, and unlocking potential.

Maybe your property is located in a working class suburb filled with families. These busy families yearn for a retreat that allows them to focus on quality time together and meaningful relationships. Your marketing story may focus on building a strong network of friendships in a welcoming and accepting environment.

The options are endless. Use the results of your sleuthing to create a story about your community. Your story must fill a void in your prospects’ lives.

2. Select your tone. Identify a narrative voice that will resonate with your target audience. Become comfortable with this voice so that it feels natural. Get feedback from a member of your target audience when needed. This voice will compose the text needed for your first campaign that will cross your website, blog, and social media. Remember, you will be able to tweak this voice over time based on campaign success.

3. Curate captivating visuals. Photos and videos are a necessary portion of your story, especially when it comes to digital marketing. Visuals serve as your narrative hook, the thing that makes prospects stop scrolling through a newsfeed and hone in on your story. The best images will reflect your brand, your voice, your target audience, and a key component of your story.

Use professional photography services to create property-specific images and video for your website and social media profiles (which are longer-lasting images than daily posts).

Since you will need endless photos for daily blog and social media posts, the most photography-savvy member of your team may suffice as an onsite photographer. Have your onsite photographer load up on quality images and videos of the community and its members. This reserve will come in handy when posting to social media each day. Remember to keep your marketing story in mind: quality visuals are more important than quantity.

To capture these quality visuals each day, the photographers should keep their eyes open for the marketing narrative in action. Staff volunteering at a local school shows an opportunity to foster and unlock potential in youth. Families chatting and playing at the pool convey your community’s network of friendships. A quick snap of your smartphone camera will help shine a new light on your marketing story each day.

4. Create a content calendar and marketing campaigns. Create a marketing strategy rather than taking the plunge haphazardly. To begin, consider:

• How often will you post to your blog?
• What portion of your marketing story will you focus on in each post, and when?
• What times are best to post to social media in your area, and how often?

If you had multiple themes and patterns in point one, Weave the Story Web, perhaps you cycle through those themes and patterns throughout the month, or focus on a new theme each season.

5. Share your story! Tailor your story so that it can be shared across each of your digital platforms. Such native marketing is an important step in the journey towards success. By delivering a consistent message across platforms, your brand will develop a stronger identity. Prospects will recognize you and readily identify with you.

Yet what’s most important is that your marketing story will trigger prospects’ emotions multiple times a day. They will know that your property offers fresh starts and new beginnings just as they’re posting engagement photos to Instagram. They will know that your property offers a tight knit community of families as they post another batch of newborn baby pictures to Facebook. Your marketing story will touch their hearts right when they need you—and the sale is yours.