Surviving the new economy means not wasting time.
When marketing means not just getting the phone to ring, but pre-screening prospects or allowing them to self-select. We are all years past the days when online marketing consisted of flat web pages with a picture and some text.
We have developed new tools for several clients to help them cut down on foot traffic, phone traffic, or both. We are all working longer hours for less money, and this new baseline has shown a spotlight on any tool that makes us more efficient.
Property Management
There are several options for lightening the administrative load of anyone managing rental properties. Any upgrade path for an office interacting with the public and a tenant community will consider at least one of the following:
- Back-end administrative interface to control “available” status across the portfolio of managed units, to include key descriptive text and pricing
– We have frequently seen managers who chose to not have any information online at all rather than confront the administrative burden of keeping their information current. This obstacle is overcome by pre-setting standard information and providing tools for simple “single-click” updates and selection for display options. - Downloadable and printable unit-pages, with brand continuity and full contact info
– Your audience will attempt to save and/or print whatever is online, so control what they get and make it easy for them to do. Don’t allow content to be separated from contacts, and keep continuity for each small piece — EVERYTHING is marketing materials, after all. - Distribute branded unit pages to key sites (ListHub, etc)
– The shake-out has happened and there are now mature services online to distribute promotional content across the various active web sales environments. Effective marketing means knowing where to go to get your message out without duplicating (or multiplying) your efforts. - Subscription Option for prospects/agents to opt-in for updates via email or rss, update text to include changes in unit availability, price, etc.
– Participation in social media can be linked and automated to provide single-point control and entry of updates. Make certain your consistent and planned-out messages penetrate the every-changing media landscape without exploding your administrative load.
Sales
Sales teams and office staff sizes are reduced (or eliminated) so it is more important than ever to make sure that the people who walk in our doors are exactly the folks who will do business with us.
We must keep our eyes on the basics: Brand and product positioning, focus on client’s interests, apply best practices.
The goals for a sales environment are the same as for a rental environment: reduce admin load, preselect traffic, and improve the quality of the client experience. The tools, however, tend to be a bit different…
- Interactive upgrade-option interface, allowing save/print/email attachment of customized unit plans.
– We have seen problems arise from misunderstandings of selected options in the pre-sales meetings. Reduce staff training time, standardise selection and delivery of plans and product sheets to keep your team’s errors to a minimum and control expectations for your prospects. example - Color/feature navigator for building exterior, link to “quote request” or “agent call-back” request that conveys selected options to the sales office
– This is one more tool to prioritize being a resource to the audience. To the extent that we offer more features that add value to our audience, they will continue to think of us first. example - Owner-Partnership tools.
– This is becoming increasingly important. The market has a much larger pool of savvy buyers now, and they expect to be in-the-loop as their project progresses. Think of all the calls from the prospective home-owner during construction… as the market comes back alive in 2010 and beyond, the successful players will automate publication of status and response to information requests.
– On the back-end, this means templated email, rss and other messages with standard answers to frequent questions. This avoids retyping every comment for every prospect, allows essential planning and positioning for important communications before the fact, and reduces or eliminates potentially expensive errors or miss-statements. When all communications are threaded, and captured, there is a common reference for all parties and a tool to reduce or eliminate the need for future dispute resolution expenses.
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