Luxury Apartment Renters: Best way to reach them?

I'm an admitted newbie to this site (just registered this morning) and have only followed it in the last couple weeks when someone referred me. (btw, good stuff here, I plan to keep coming back) So tell me if I'm off-base with my questions or if I am asking too much for a blog!
I'm doing research for a Manhattan luxury apartment management company and am looking for information regarding luxury renters (30's to 40's, well-educated, single or couples, income $250k++, usually no kids).

Specifically:
1. What are the top proven online sources for leases? Do ILS's provide the highest lead-to-lease rates? Or is it paid search, display ads, broker sites, social media? Some magical combination of each? They are looking to optimize their online marketing strategy and how best to assign their mktg budget. Data to support wherever possible is a plus.

2. Which are the best ILS's to use to reach this audience and what is the industry standard/best practice for payment - $$ per lead, $$ per lease, monthly fee? Several come to mind (rent.com, forrent.com, rentmarketer.com, and even nyt.com)

3. Based on the demographics above, where do these affluent renters hang out online. If paid search or display advertising is a component of the mktg strategy then where are some of the best sites to go for placing ads for luxury apts?

4. We all know social media is growing exponentially, but can anyone point me to data showing what percent of SM users - facebook, twitter, linkedin, flickr - are (luxury) RENTERS?

OK, I know it's a lot of questions (and maybe too much for blog etiquette??) but if you happen to have a thought on any of them I would greatly appreciate it!
Thank you:)

Great questions, Maureen, but you might be right in that there is a lot in here! So let me handle a couple of the questions and see if someone else can help with the others:

3) Here are some demographic analysis of Facebook and Twitter . I do find it interesting that Twitter supposedly has a less affluent user base but a high percentage of college graduates. Makes me wonder if the data is a bit messed up there. I'm sure MySpace numbers are out there, too, but from the last thing I saw, they are generally younger and less affluent.

4) In the above stats, notice the number of young site users, and on Twitter, see the numbers without children. That might help you a bit.

Also, I don't know if they are up yet, but there was a presentation at AIM last week that broke down a specific company's use of different ILS's. I'm sure results will vary company by company, but I would check out those presentations once they put them up.

Good luck!

Maureen,

Hello and great questions. I've sold advertising to a variety of high end communities around the country and watched their performance from behind the scenes. I'm not the best person to answer all your questions but I can shed some light on this demographic as well as touch on a few specific answers to your online marketing dilemma.

Online behavior observations:
Here's some random observations I've encountered over the years. The affluent consumer is typically not a digger of online information. Meaning, they don't necessarily search deep into a website for listing after listing searching for that rock bottom price. If you contract with the common top choices-Rent.com, Apts.com, etc., pay attention to the internet upgrades that will put you on 1st page placement. Any upgrades where the community is featured at the top of page can be well worth the money. Some are not so great so ask a lot of questions. Ask your Reps to share market comp info keeping the anonymity of the community of course. Make them prove the value of upgrades to you.

The affluent is big into word of mouth and they justify their purchases by talking to peers. Knowing this you have huge opportunity with Facebook and Twitter. I'd soak up all you can on social media. I would make this a priority. And pay very close attention to Yelp.com and other review sites. Big opportunity here.

If you have the budget, my advice is to contract with a good SEM and SEO company that can take care of your #3 question. Thousands of dollars can be misspent in the wrong places. Don't try to tackle this by yourself. If you have budget restraints, soak up all you can about SEM and try Google Adwords on your own. Its not hard, just take the time to study and learn.

Regarding your question #2. I sold many of the products that are pay by lease and pay by lead. Here's how I see it. At the end of the day its all about leads. Every ILS or other lead provider has a revenue strategy for their company. Some charge you by the lease, some charge you by the lead, some are subscription. But when you think about it, each vendor generates leads for your community in relatively the same way using their own internal SEO/SEM cost benchmark. The method they choose to charge the cost back to you is what varies. This variance causes community decision makers to be confused as to what they should really be paying for; leads or leases? But its really all about leads in the end. I can't tell you how many times I've heard companies say "We don't like to pay by the lead" but yet they may pay $300 a month for blanketyblank.com from which they might only get 4 leads. I'd rather pay $10 a lead for a site like Rentwiki and owe $40 for 4 leads. Choose providers that can offer you a good number of quality leads. Try not to get too wrapped up in their monetization strategy. Others will disagree but that's how I see it after selling these products for so many years.

Wow, my answer was pretty long! Sorry. Hope this is helpful. Good luck and keep the conversation going. Let us know how you are doing, okay?

Melissa

Brent - thanks very much for the response. The stats from the Quantcast site are interesting - I've bookmarked their site. I also looked up stats on some other sites I was interested in as well. I've started to look through the presentations from AIM. If you happen to know the name of the presenter for that ILS presentation then let me know. Otherwise I'll keep checking back.
Thanks,
Maureen

I'm pretty sure it was Peggy Hale's presentation that included their actual results by source, but I could be wrong.

Hey Brent and Maureen:

I moderated that session at AIM, and yes, it was Peggy's that showed the actual results.

Maureen, what you need to know is that Manhattan renters are a very different breed than a lot of the other MSA's, based upon the way the New York rental market works. What is successful here in my home market of Chicago may fail miserably in Manhattan.

If you are testing the waters with the ILS's, believe me, they want to make sure you succeed and they have the data to show you where they are successful. Contact them directly, discuss your needs and concerns and they will be honest and helpful. I would also do some Google and Yahoo searches under your obvious keywords for your market and see who comes up. Try www.KeywordSpy.com as well to see what your competitors are up to with their sites.

Whatever you do, please remember, Manhattan really is a very different market and isn't simply 'another affluent urban market'. Check your comps, check your local search sites and contact all of the ILS's before you make any significant investments into any one area.

Best of luck.

Lisa Trosien