WHAT TYPE OF CONTENT MARKETING DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF?
Source: HubSpot Global Consumer
Behavior Survey, 1st Quarter 2016
consumers are averse to traditional sales
speak. Content marketing or inbound
marketing takes a drastically different
approach. Content marketing meets
prospective customers by providing help-
ful information about the topics they’re
already searching for.
Let’s take a baby boomer, for example.
He’s nearing retirement and sits down
at his computer to search for “Best retire-
ment cities in the country with golf all
year round.” If I’m a residential resort
community that practices content mar-
keting, I’ve already anticipated what my
best prospects will be searching.
Throughout the past few months, I’ve
been blogging about relevant topics, in-
cluding a recent blog post that highlights
cities across the country with the best
golf courses and ideal weather. I’m not
directly selling my property, but rather
I’m educating on what’s out there. My
blog answers the questions of my target
audience, who may be searching for an-
swers online. The idea is that through
education, transparency, and thought
leadership, I have an excellent platform
through which to tell prospective cus-
tomers abo ut my business!
Let’s extend the same approach to
www.aamdhq.org
millennials, except this time I’m also
engaging them on social media—inter-
acting and delivering relevant informa-
tion when it makes sense. Perhaps they’re
interested in “active and health-conscious
cities with good job markets.” Through
relevant blog topics, conversational in-
teractions, and well-targeted social me-
dia advertising, I can be the one to open
their eyes to a new city, a new neighbor-
hood, and a new property.
WHY IS MULTIFAMILY IS A GOOD FIT
FOR INBOUND?
It’s targeted to specific personas. As
highlighted above, you are not blanket-
ing the market with collateral material
and wasted dollars that may land on the
doorsteps of folks no where near the
buying process. With inbound, you’re
engaging in a dialogue with individuals
specifically seeking solutions you provide.
You’re targeting individual personas,
identifying their pain points, interests,
motivations, and creating solutions.
It delivers measurable results. In-
bound is more than social media and
blogging. It is a strategic alignment of
tactics that surround your business goals.
The inbound technology allows you to
see real-time data on valuable metrics.
By monitoring increased traffic to your
site, you can determine the amount of
visitors that have further engaged: How
many qualified leads did we drive? How
many of those leads turned into tenants
or customers? From there, you can as-
sociate dollars spent for dollars earned—
direct ROI.
It meets your best prospects where
they are. Increasingly, all generational
cohorts are using the internet and social
media to do research for all of life’s buy-
ing decisions, big or small. With the ease
of gaining information at their fingertips,
your prospective clients are expecting
you to provide this information through
this conduit. Doesn’t it make sense to
meet ideal prospects where they are?
Shanker Chalekode is the
Chief Marketing Officer for
Criterion.B an agency fo-
cused on branding and in-
bound marketing for the
commercial real estate and multifamily
housing industry.
MAY 2017 • TRENDS | 27