Whoa catchy title. But let me explain. The concept of vitamins vs painkillers in the Multifamily marketing funnel can be broken down like so: treating root causes vs treating symptoms. While metaphorical painkillers serve a purpose they should never be used as a long term solutions. Let’s apply this analogy to the multifamily marketing funnel.
Multifamily Marketing Funnel
The multifamily marketing funnel can be broken down a lot of ways, for this article let’s agree that the 3 main categories of “Lead Generation”, “Sales Process”, and “Leasing” work well.
Each of these categories can have their own pitfalls and speed bumps we have to overcome. The “Lead Generation” category has us analyzing lead quality, lead quantity, and lead cost. The “Leasing” category has us analyzing our application process, lease terms, and rent values.
What about this “Sales Process”? At Nurture Boss that’s where we spend our time optimizing and automating workflows. Let’s dive a little deeper into this part of the multifamily marketing funnel.
Sales Process in Your Multifamily Marketing Funnel
When we reach this phase of the lead to lease life cycle, our leads have already been generated and settled into their permanent resting place inside our CRM. It’s here that we determine a leads interest, spend time following up, drive prospects toward scheduling tours, submitting applications, and ultimately transitioning into the “Lease” category.
How do painkillers manifest here? Well if painkillers are tools to treat symptoms, let’s go over some of those symptoms:
- Too many leads to follow up with
- Canceling leads too soon
- No clear indicator of who the serious renters are vs the window shoppers
- Low lead-to-tour conversion rates
- Low tour-to-application conversion rates
So if these are the problems we seek to alleviate, what metaphorical painkillers are we using?
- Spending more on lead generation
- Spending more on social media
- Spending more on PPC and other advertising campaigns
- Offering more enticing concessions and move-in specials to prospects
Why Painkillers Aren’t A Solution
The problem with painkillers is that, for a time, they work but it’s not maintainable. It’s expensive, it causes burnout for the onsite teams, it creates a bad experience for renters, and it doesn’t get to the root cause.
The reason the quick fix solution is attractive is in the name. It’s quick. But at what cost? A bad leasing experience? High resident turnover? High onsite team turnover? These solutions don’t solve the underlying cause, and the sooner we move away from them the better.
So What Should We Do Instead?
Well… level up your vitamin game! Preventative solutions that address the root cause of symptoms will always yield better results. Better results for your bottom line, better results for your renters, and better results for your onsite teams.
So what are the root causes? Here are a few things we’ve found that clog up the funnel between Lead Generation and Sales Process as well as between Sales Process and Lease.
- Wasted time on leads that will never convert
- Not enough time to follow-up as much as needed to convert the promising leads
- No clear way to differentiate serious renters from window shoppers
- The technology needed to create efficiency is unavailable or unaccessible
- No way to reach prospects and renters where they are, on their phones
- Prospects don’t have access to the information they need, when they need it
Knowing these are problems we all deal with, how do we fix them without pouring more gas on the lead generation fire? Enter Lease Conversion Automation. Lease Conversion Automation is how we directly address these problems head on without sacrificing the prospect or onsite team experience.
Lease Conversion Automation ensures all prospects receive follow up in the channel of their choice (text, email, chatbot, etc), at the time they are most likely to engage. Lease Conversion Automation additionally ensures prospects have access to the things they care about at their fingertips (floor plans, amenities, availability, pet policy, etc), and critically, share back this engagement with the onsite team. This ensures your onsite teams’ limited time can be invested wisely.
In short, leveraging technology like Lease Conversion Automation enables the following outcomes:
- Identifying where in the Sales Process a lead is
- Sending them appropriate messaging to drive them to the next stage in the journey
- Matching their profile to other leads that convert
- Delivering all of this to the onsite team in the form of a short list of hot leads that are most likely to convert.
The problems outlined at the beginning of this post are clearly here to stay, so the question is, what can be done about it? Lease Conversion Automation aims to addresses these problems directly in a cost efficient and sustainable manner that improves the experience of your renters, while supporting your onsite teams, helping them deliver repeatable results that directly increase NOI.
