To best describe the impressions made on your community and how they impact your brand, it’s easiest to explain it as a circle. Certain key factors such as appearance; residents’ perception of the property; how residents talk about it and the way former residents talk about it are all impressions that impact your brand.
Let’s start with the first part of the circle, overall appearance. Appearance and landscape of your community impacts the prospective residents’ first impression. You can greatly influence how the outside is perceived using little finances, such as hanging plants by the leasing office, community center and laundry facility. Making sure the grass is green and the trees/bushes are trimmed. Continuous upkeep on your property’s exterior will help make prospective renters’ minds after your leasing office is closed.
The next part of the circle would be how residents perceive your community. After a prospective renter becomes a resident of the community, why should they continue to fancy the community they reside in? Offering programs such as health and wellness events, programs on the environment, family safety and financial planning are all ways you can make the property feel like home. These initiatives will also help the way current residents perceive the community which will help for the remaining portions of the circle. 
Keeping current renters happy by providing great programs they would be interested in and providing stellar customer service will generate a sense of pride within residents for their community, which in turn will influence the way they talk about your property to their friends and family. As many marketers know, word of mouth if a very powerful tool. It can be used for good or evil, your choice! So long after the first impressions, make sure residents continue to view your community as the destination they hoped for. This piece of the circle is really crucial as it not only helps develop relationships with your current residents, but also helps your image to prospective renters too.
And finally, the last piece of the circle that loops the cycle around is the outcome of impressions. When it comes to renewal hopefully renters will decide to stay with your community. Or in the case when they must move on, former renters’ opinions of the community can either encourage or impede others to visit. If it encourages, which we hope based on efforts we’ve previously mentioned, then the impressions cycle can start all over again.
As you know, you only have one chance at first impressions. Once you make it appear that your community is where the prospective renter wants to live, or that your company is one they want to do business with, really drive that notion home with a positive renting experience. Doing so will bring it in full circle for your business with current and present customers.
Tags: apartment, apartments, communities, community, environment, forrent.com, marketing, move, moving, property, rent, renters, renting
This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 10:27 am and is filed under Property Managers & Owners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
