Grassroots Marketing/Outreach

I have never done any type of outreach in the community and would like to. Could you please give me some ideas. Right now we are about 92% leased and have been that way give or take during the 8 months I have been employed here. Just to give some helpful information; we are sitting between two shopping centers. One has Home Depot as an anchor and the other is opening a Super Walmart in October. We are right off a major street in a Suburban neighborhood. Less than a mile from us is a community that is always 100% leased.

Thank you very much!

Do you have a military base nearby?
If so, get on their housing list for off base housing.
If no, I bet you have hometown recruiting commands; find out who they talk to by talking with their senior officer or NCO and get in that person's back pocket.
What about colleges?
What about hospitals or medical office complexes?
There are staffing agencies that place nursing and other healthcare professionals and occasionally they have need to procure housing for a placement.
Work with your comps and ask for referrals when appropriate and be willing to offer the same in return; especially if you have floorplans that the others do not, for example; if you have 3 bedrooms and your comps have a prospect looking for that.
If you are pet friendly and your comps are not; market to that and partner with a local animal hospital or pet store for cross-marketing.

Johnny's ideas were great; here’re couples more:

Visit as many surrounding businesses as possible at least once a month. Bring cookies, donuts, candy, pens, mugs, etc. along with a few community fliers.
What is your target demographic? Is it affordable housing, mid-income, or high-end? This is where you want your focus to be, where your customers are.
If you can get away with it pass out fliers to customers as they leave Home Depot. You will probably be asked to leave eventually, be polite and do so. One of my sister sights leave fliers on cars whenever they start slipping in occupancy and it works wonders for them. Not my cup of tea, but each property is different.
Find out when the Wal-Mart is having a job fair or recruiting event and try to get in on it.
Adding to Johnny’s comment about your comps; make friends if you can. I offer $100 referrals to my comps which is more than they pay in commissions so it's a pretty darn good incentive for them to refer to me. Also if you are a Tax Credit community befriends a conventional community or vice versa. If you are conventional and have prospects that don't meet your requirements you can refer to them and if they have people that are over qualified they can send to you.
If you have space like a large clubhouse or meeting room make it available to local civic organizations. They love free space, and that gets people who may not otherwise visit on your property. Mine is a senior’s community but I have the local League of Basketball Coaches meeting here once a month. They aren't seniors but their parents are and I've gotten one lease and several prospects from their referrals; same with a local business leaders group.

There are a bazillion ways to do outreach marketing. They key is to remember everyone you meet is either a potential resident or know someone who may be.

Where does you complex rank on Google for the city you live in? For example: "Apartments in Houston" people forget that 9 out of 10 renters start on Google. Now that so many have Droid and iPhones that number will skyrocket! If your goal is 100% occupancy, I would solve for getting in front of renter before I did outreach. I consider outreach ancillary marketing, its great for you image but I would make sure you are on the top of Google results first. That would bring you your missing 8% fast!

Matt

Some more thoughts about marketing, my suggestions are centered around low or no cost venues for many reasons:

1) There is some logic to Matt's suggestion; a long time friend of ours has a motorcycle accessory business and his primary website comes up at the top of the search results when you type 'gold wing accessories'; but he pays extra for that, for him this is a wise use of his money as his business has grown significantly since he founded it. The problem lies in the fact that many properties may not have the funds in the budget to spend extra for marketing in this way; particularly if you are an affordable property, a property that is in financial distress; or worse in receivership.

2) The OP did not mention if the property was a conventional or an affordable property; if it is affordable, there may be specific requirements within the affordable program that specify how you must market.

3) If the property is affordable with a target demographic; reach out to your community to find social service agencies that serve that demographic. You can reach out to interfaith groups for referrals as well; these are often operated by members of houses of worship representing all faiths who may have members looking for housing.

4) Your RESIDENTS are often your best representatives; offer a generous referral bonus, but make sure you stipulate that in order to receive a referral bonus, the new household must be residents for 90 days, and BOTH residents must be in good standing (no delinquent monies) at the 90 day mark before a referral bonus is submitted for payment.

5) If you offer a resident referral and you get a referral from a house of worship through outreach marketing; you could make a donation to their discretionary fund on the resident's behalf. If the referral comes from a service organization; that donation can go to their operating funds as well.

6) If you get a military resident; make a donation to a local VFW (or other local veteran's organization), to the Wounded Warrior project (or the DAV) on the new resident's behalf.

7) If you get a referral from another property and offer a referral bonus to them, find out if that violates their company policy before making that offer. Some companies take that very seriously. If you have a network of properties within your company that are nearby, I would limit the referrals to those properties.

One of the things I did for a property I was at that was pet friendly in an area where there were no others that were; was make contact with a local animal hospital to develop a cross marketing agreement with them: I created a flyer written from the perspective of the pet that let their human live with them, this flyer was posted in their waiting rooms, inserted in their billing, and posted on their website/facebook page. In exchange, the animal hospital was allowed exclusive permission to market to residents in many of the same manners. Since this property also had service animals and service animals in training, special discounts and free services were included for them as well.

Many of the methods I mentioned were used at a property that was as low as 75% occupied while I was there (I had the need to welcome a number of residents to leave for various reasons, resulting in a spike in vacancy), resulting in a 98% occupancy the week I left with 2 working applicants at an affordable property (one of these applicants I needed to decline). I was there almost 18 months.

One of the first things to consider when implementing your Outreach Marketing Program is to decide why you want to do it, how you want to approach it and how you will follow up on its effectiveness. So, are you wanting to increase your occupancy? Or, are you trying to inexpensively enhance your current marketing program? Finally, is the success of your program verifiable?

Start with the occupancy issue. I agree with Matt in that you probably need to tackle that last 8% occupancy first. Deal with how to be more and better competition and as, Stephanie and Johnny suggest, there are ways to market your property to increase this. Sometimes, it takes a long time to see some results though from your Outreach Marketing. You need the support of your Supervisor, too, because obviously the more you are away from your property, this will impact your ability to lease apartments to those walking in the door. Just saying ...

Mindy; you had a great blog that the OP may have missed:

www.multifamilyinsiders.com/multifamily-...-necessary-evil.html

It has a number of ideas that I have used successfully at a number of different properties.

All put in excellent ideas and Mindy, should have been a military leader as she tackles those situations with a break down like a military leader would. The only thing that I have to add is that you said the competition down the road is at 100%. What features do you have that they do not? So, you for sure want to speak to the things you have over them, without calling out their names. Like as an example, your maintenance issues are fixed on average within 30 minutes, when you know the other property takes say 24 hours. You do not bring that out about them, but simply how good you are. Amenities you have that they do not. So, in that our reach your positives as to why it would compel someone to pick your place over the other!