The best marketing organizations in the world know one simple truth – revenue sustainability and growth begins with the customer. In fact, Gartner predicts that a majority of companies will redirect their resources into customer experience innovations by 2018.

The need for a customer-centric experience is no different in the multifamily industry, where only 52 percent of renters said they enjoyed the apartment search process, according to a RentPath study. In addition, the majority of prospective renters are reviewing three or more websites before even visiting the community and making a purchase decision. In fact, 88 percent of prospective renters said they needed to see a property before they made a purchase decision.

It’s a multi-channel search experience, yet multifamily marketing departments remain structured around individual marketing channels rather than customer needs or segments. When structured in this manner, messaging is often fragmented and focused on optimizing their channel rather than enabling customers. Marketing success is measured by channel-specific metrics, such as likes, followers and click rates, instead of customer-centric metrics, like leases and renewals.

This approach leads to ineffective marketing and a disjointed customer experience. But with a little creativity and research, marketing departments can become highly effective teams that put the renter experience first.

Flaws in the typical hierarchy

The typical structure of a marketing department in the apartment industry might look something like this:

The vice president of operations oversees the entire system, ensuring that each separate group is meeting its goals. But the VP is also responsible for the other side of the business—onsite operations, including district managers, community managers and leasing associates. Thus, the VP has limited focus on whether the marketing function is working effectively.

Even owner/operators with a vice president of marketing or chief marketing officer can struggle to maintain a cohesive marketing program in this channel-specific structure. Each group has its own set of key performance indicators and may also have a different perspective on renter behavior.

But customer needs and buying behavior are the keys to the entire operation. For this reason, marketing organizations are restructuring to focus on customer segments and functional roles rather than on specific communications channels.

Consider the orchestrator model

One option for restructuring the marketing department is to use the orchestrator model that a recent Harvard Business Review article showcased. The orchestrator model puts the chief marketing officer in a position to tap talent from both inside and outside the company to staff short-term task forces. Groups of people from throughout the company, not just marketing, are brought into three types of focus: thinkers, feelers, and doers.

The thinkers, for example, may be responsible for data analyses, the feelers for consumer engagement and the doers for content and production. In models like the orchestrator, the structure is flexible, incorporates all departments and focuses on the customer, not the organization. Every team member is responsible for identifying, engaging with or writing content for a customer, rather than a channel.

The orchestrator model eliminates the silos that are common in a channel structure. Because the model is nimble enough to pull talent and resources from throughout an organization, it can easily fit with any size owner/operator.

Rather than creating a separate social media department, design department and brand management department, the orchestrator model empowers marketers to create systems designed to reach segments of customers and pool talent from every department.

A customer-centric marketing department would handle a lease-up differently than it’s handled today. In the traditional model, you’d ask your internet team to build a website and Facebook page, your creative team to design signs and banners and your brand team to manage the projects.

In a customer-centric model, you’d create several different teams to engage with prospective renter segments. For example, you could build a market research team that includes members from the local developers office as well as a regional marketing manager, revenue manager and possibly a financial analyst to identify the customer segments.

Then, you’d create an engagement team, including the community manager, a leasing associate, a social media expert, a content writer and an SEO expert. This team could determine the best way to reach each of the identified segments across all channels. This model would empower the team to create a cohesive, omnichannel message strategy.

Finally, you’d establish a marketing operations team tasked with executing the marketing to connect best with the audience. This team coordinates with market research, engagement, and the properties/communities to ensure that the right message is received by the right audience at the right time. Through the use of marketing automation and measurement tools, this team consistently optimizes marketing's efforts to maximize customer engagement and ROI.

Every marketing effort can be customized this way, utilizing a flat structure of marketing experts with various skillsets working with an experienced orchestrator. No matter how you restructure your department, however, the key is to eliminate silos and put all of your focus on the customer.