When prospects call the Village at Chestnut Hills, an apartment community in Philadelphia, they have the option of being transferred to the front desk. They’ll actually be talking to the call center, but the image of the front desk is appealing because it creates a personal connection that is often lacking in this technology-driven world. It’s a grassroots marketing move that helps the brand stand out.
Grassroots marketing is also known as guerrilla marketing or outreach marketing. It uses surprise and unconventional interactions to promote a product or service. Campaigns rely on low-cost and innovative techniques to leave a lasting impression on apartment consumers and ensure brand recall. These types of efforts draw from concepts popularized 40 years ago in Jay Conrad Levinson’s 1984 book Guerrilla Marketing.
High Tech and High Touch
An avid interest in guerrilla marketing has influenced how Tené Williams, founder and fund manager, Clearview Eastern Fund, builds her client list. “We have to remember we’ve got all this tech, but it’s still about the person,” said Williams. Conversations enable connections between people, and that’s why Williams invites prospects to small, intimate luncheons.
“That is the key to my success,” explained Williams. “These little luncheons are not new to the world. We’ve been doing things like this in the finance industry for probably two generations. I call it the Legacy Tour. We invite high net worth individuals within 10 miles of the event space to a lunch or brunch or dinner and sometimes we include entertainment.”
Williams’ team does two mailings of upscale wedding-style invitations in postcard format to their list of accredited investors. These are high net worth individuals with at least $250,000 a year in income or a million dollars in assets. The second part of the campaign is to upload that contact list to Facebook and Instagram, which allows you to upload your own contact list as a lookalike audience and then it will go within that geo-targeted area.
“The hope is that the same person we sent the postcard to will now see the social invite as well,” Williams said. “They’ll see our ad online. And once we get them over to our site, if they click to have a look, we’ll be geo-targeting with our ads following them all over the place.” Her team also does geo-targeting around the event location. People who are going into a local restaurant or event location will see the ads.
According to Williams, it takes about 3,000 leads to get an average of 40 or 50 people to come to the events. “That’s how we do it,” she said. “Then, at that event, we’re letting them know about how to buy passive income in these private offerings that we do in the multifamily business.”
Hitting the Pavement
“When we talk about our marketing plans and what we’re going to do each month and how we’ll drive traffic at certain locations needing more than others, guerrilla marketing is always one of the categories we’ll brainstorm,” Johanna Adolfs, director, sales and marketing, Cardinal Group Companies, explained.
Adolfs oversees the student housing side of the company. In that realm, hitting the pavement, having a presence on campus and getting in front of people to remind them Cardinal is an option are super important. The student demographic is an ever-changing environment with incoming freshmen arriving and graduating students leaving. On top of reputation, the marketing team must keep brand awareness strong as the population continually swaps out.
“When we go on campus to talk to students, we’re building rapport to help drive traffic back to the communities,” Adolfs said. “Usually our conversations are centered around some kind of campaign we’ve rolled out.” Every year Cardinal Group Companies comes up with an umbrella campaign for all of its communities including cool graphics for digital items, signage and fliers used for outreach marketing.
According to Adolfs, when community teams have a centralized message to come back to for their outreach marketing, it enhances their creativity and elevates their community marketing.
“On the conventional community side, we are a bit more focused on business partnerships and on hosting events at those partnerships,” Adolfs said. “We are making sure we have some exclusive deals for our residents, but also figuring out where our target demographics are for each of those communities and hanging out in those areas.”
Sometimes that means having a presence at the fun fall markets that are set up during the season. Cardinal also appears at neighborhood restaurants. “Maybe we’re doing some free coffee at local coffee shops, or we’ll be visible at retail spots connected to the apartment community,” Adolfs added. “Those are the types of outreach marketing we do for the conventional side.”
Unconventional Messaging
When a community is having trouble getting people in the door for a tour, in-person marketing puts a face to a name, according to Barbara Savona, CEO, Sprout Marketing. A former multifamily property manager and regional supervisor, Savona brought her marketing background to those positions and guerrilla marketing was part of the game plan. “When I started Sprout in 2009, we were in a similar economic period where community teams were having to do a lot more heavy lifting,” she said. “I think we’re back in that place now.”
“Marketing teams that have been coasting are now feeling it, and those that have been creative all along are keeping their tools sharp,” Savona added. Grassroots marketing can help with unconventional messaging that can get prospects to visit a community and unique takeaways that AI won’t be able to do.
For example, a community was marketing their two-bedroom, two-bath apartment homes. According to Savona, the guerilla/grassroots idea was to go out marketing with a hot pink (ballerina) tutu because they had the hottest “two-twos” in town. Another concept that has worked well for Sprout clients is sending a flipflop in the mail during summer to people who have toured along with a note saying, “You’ll flip for our community.”
If marketing to medical centers, and thinking about the target demographic, coming up with a tagline that matters to them might be, “Are you tired of paying out of the nose?” Savona said, “Include tissue paper, and it brings your special or promotion to life in a visual way.”
Track the Results
From reliable email marketing to the shiny new object, multifamily marketers have more options than ever for capturing the market. Along with these methods, Mike Whaling, president and founder, 30 Lines, would like to see more people putting some effort into guerrilla marketing because it works.
According to Whaling, it leads to someone Googling you or clicking on your ad or checking out your social. You have to build awareness and get in front of them first, and then all of the performance marketing channels kick in and do their thing. “It’s harder to track, but this is the stuff that’s really fun,” he said. “It’s the stuff people remember.”
For Whaling, guerrilla marketing is about breaking patterns in a way that makes people stop and take a look—and complements other more traditional channels.
Another way to approach guerilla marketing is through art. Dana G. Pate, managing director of marketing and PR, RangeWater, creates murals and beautiful interiors that get people snapping and sharing selfies at her communities.
“Today’s prospects are yearning for authentic, hyper-local experiences in all aspects of their lives—from the items they buy and jobs they work to the places they call home,” Pate said. “At RangeWater, we believe infusing the talents of neighborhood artists into our physical spaces provides just that. We capture their attention with a wildly impactful piece but sustain their interest by inviting them to participate in the story. It gives purpose to our properties.”
Guerrilla marketing can be fun, but you still need the strategy along with the creativity even if the team is small and spread thin, stressed Whaling. Capture the content so other prospects see it on social media. If you are inviting the public to your lobby for unplugged acoustic concerts, be sure to include a call for action with QR code or request to “text us” (Did you love the concert tonight? Do you want to take a tour?).
“Making notes about community outreach campaigns and events and what happened afterwards in terms of uptick in website traffic or more phone calls is essential,” Whaling said. “The apartment industry is numbers driven. If you can’t track the results of guerrilla marketing, it doesn’t get the backing and it doesn’t get the investment.”
