Working in the multifamily marketing business can bring tremendous satisfaction. What could be better than promoting your community benefits that in turn, help someone find the perfect new home?
Yet as simple as that may sound, the daily challenges and interruptions, paired with constant pressure to increase resident leads can take away that satisfaction, and prevent you from doing what you do best to ensure the perfect home is found – the development of tools that effectively market your properties, which result in qualified leads, resident retention and increases your communities’ Net Operating Income (NOI.)
Enter the Centralized Marketing Platform (CMP), the solution for multifamily operators and their marketing and front-line staff. A CMP is a simple, yet extremely efficient way for you to focus on priorities like occupancy and resident retention, instead of being overwhelmed by the details of developing ways to increase foot traffic to and awareness of your properties.
What is a CMP?
A CMP is the solution, the “one stop” resource that allows you to execute marketing strategy. It doesn’t replace strategic planning or the creative process, but simplifies the logistics and in turn saves valuable time in executing your marketing tactics.
A CMP typically includes:
- Smart Store – an online place where staff from all levels can create and order marketing materials (collateral, apparel, signage, etc.) used to communicate your property benefits.
- Purchasing Guide – a comprehensive (print and/or electronic) catalog that helps associates plan their marketing activities, knowing all items are consistent with brand standards and compliant with company policy.
- Dedicated Account Team – a dedicated team of pros that can assist as needed answering immediate questions, or assist with time-consuming, tactical challenges.
- Performance Metrics – access to centralized information that makes it easy to analyze spend, increase accountability and help with budget forecasting.
- Complete Integration – accountability at every step – from manufacturing to distribution to ROI analytics, ensuring the highest quality throughout the process.
A CMP saves time and money.
It may seem that utilizing your local print shop, for example, would be less time-consuming and significantly cheaper than utilizing the services of a CMP. But the time it takes to design, communicate, edit and approve every marketing piece that goes in and out of your office can be astounding, and stressful. Working with multiple vendors on one simple project can be costly.
Consider the following benefits of using a CMP.
Volume Buying Power – a CMP vendor working with a number of multifamily operators, will naturally have more buying power than one multifamily operator. Prices are pre-negotiated and eliminate “spend surprises,” giving you improved budget control.
Increased Efficiency – the “one-stop shop” nature of a CMP offers a number of opportunities for efficiency improvement.
- Procurement and production process require a few keystrokes, freeing up time for strategy and project planning instead of administrative execution.
- A single access point ensures products are shipped together, and arrive at the same time, without the headache of waiting for items from multiple vendors.
- Stored templates and 24/7 access increases the “time to market” for local associates, yet still gives the ability to customize products for each community.
- Much less time is spent gathering logos, brand colors, etc. and delivering them to multiple vendors. It’s all right at your fingertips!
- Administrative costs are reduced when working with one versus multiple vendors.
Improved Reporting and Budget Control – when you are responsible for multiple communities and their respective marketing/regional manager, the ability to collect spending reports related to marketing, and determine if they are in line with the budget, can be akin to “herding cats,” nearly impossible and very frustrating.
A CMP offers a single platform reporting and tracking function for marketing spend over a wide variety of categories. Reporting is easily accessed and can be filtered and sorted as desired. This means:
- Increased accountability
- Real-time visibility into budget spend data
- Spend tracking
- Error and error resolution status, as well as reported turn-times
The above solutions allow for a more streamlined report-gathering process and considerable less time collecting and collating data for budgeting.
In addition, the ability to more closely track and analyze current and future marketing spend can help to eliminate the hidden costs of not utilizing a CMP. Recurring set-up fees, loss of buying power and rush fees are just a few of the missed expenses that pose a constant drain on NOI.
Supporting Acquisitions – one of the most challenging situations for any marketer in the multifamily business is transforming an acquisition (both property and client) to reflect the new brand. A CMP can be set-up in such a way that acquisition kits are created and sent to arrive in advance of or on the switchover day, thereby reducing the complexity and number of people needed to execute the process.
This timesaver allows for a very simple, error-free transition, providing you valuable time to focus on the unexpected tasks that inevitably come up during an acquisition.
CMP – The Simple Solution
There it is – the simple, yet effective answer to making your job as a multifamily marketer easier and more satisfying.
In short, a CMP creates margin within your day-to-day schedule by taking care of the procurement, production and logistics needed to execute an effective marketing plan, allowing you to focus on resident lead management, increase foot traffic and positively affect NOI.
