Digital Curb Appeal and the Era of Authenticity with Daniel Paulino

In this episode, Daniel Paulino, VP of Real Estate at Reputation.com discusses the growing importance of digital reputation, dubbed "digital curb appeal", for the multifamily housing industry, particularly how it affects property visibility in search engines and AI-driven recommendations. Daniel explains that a simple average star rating is no longer sufficient; Google’s algorithm uses nine different factors, including the volume, frequency, and uniqueness of responses to both positive and negative reviews. He advocates for using an integrated platform, like the Reputation Score offered by his company, to centralize data and provide actionable recommendations that bridge the gap between marketing and operations.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Hi everyone and welcome to the apartment department live from Zillow Rentals Unlock. This is an unbelievable experience. They have a whole podcast corner for us, which is great. With me as always, Chris Johnson, my co-host, and our special, special guest, Daniel Paulino, who is VP of real estate at reputation.com. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. This is awesome. I think we really wanted to talk to you today about this idea of, you know, reputation has always been important, but I think it's really gaining momentum in the past couple years and really kind of this idea is reputation as curb appeal, right? For the multifamily industry, for our property. So we're gonna talk about that today, but first, will you introduce yourself and tell us how did you end up at reputation.com and why?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, first of all, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's such a neat setup. So looking forward to Zillow Unlock. It's always one of my favorite events every year. So uh yes, Daniel Polino, VP of real estate at Reputation. Um I've been in the role now for just a little bit over three months. Uh previous to that, I led digital strategy at Bazudo for the last five years. So really got um my start in multifamily in 2020 right around the pandemic. So it was a really interesting time to start in the industry, but um obviously just had such a great opportunity to learn from one of the best in the industry, and that was uh a huge privilege that I will always uh look back fondly on. Um in regards to the question on reputation absolutely, it's so important these days. Like you said, I love the fact that you said digital curb appeal because that's certainly what it is. You know, at the at the end of the day, right now, we know that uh we're in competitive market, all of all of our all the operators are in competitive uh markets, and prospects these days really are looking for what differentiates a community, and it's not you know, I know we always talk so much about amenities and programming, and you know, but at the end of the day, uh prospects, residents, what they're looking for is what is their overall experience, and that's something that the age of the building or the location isn't gonna tell you, right? And so that's really what differentiates one community from the other. Um, and that's something that you know the industry has been focusing on, but um the the reputation piece of that is now coming to the forefront because of AI, and um that's one of the things that I think is so fascinating about AI and the chatbots and how it surfaces um recommendations uh on any kind of business, but obviously we're talking about multifamily, because in the past you as a marketer in this industry, you could rely on SEO tactics, right? So all kind of content um and and obviously technical SEO and on-site SEO, and that's really how you could um you know become one of the top recommended on any on any search. But now with uh AI overviews and the and the chatbots, they're really looking at true customer sentiment in every industry in order to surface recommendations, and so that's something that you really can't game anymore. And so I think that that we're entering into a new era of authenticity, and it's why it's become so important to really truly understand your customer sentiment and make sure that you're putting steps into place to improve your reputation constantly because without a strong reputation, and I know we'll get into it because it goes way beyond your average review rating, um without without that, you're actually losing prospects at the top of the funnel before they even actually hit your funnel. So really, I kind of I kind of call it above the funnel. They're never even entering because they're not actually being recommended when they when they do their um when they're they do their searches and their queries to AI.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

That's interesting, it's like the idea of filters on an ILS, right? Like you know that about 30% of people are using filters on an ILS, so like your property is not even being recommended, so AI is basically like the new filter that we have to worry about, that we might not even be showing up at all.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

It that's absolutely true, and it's really concerning, you know, and I think that this is why uh companies are sometimes uh focused on the wrong thing. A lot I've I've seen that a lot of a lot of operators right now are focused on having a great average rating. And you know, one of the things that becomes that that we know because we partner very closely with Google is that there's so many other pieces to their algorithm of how they recommend um locations in any kind of industry, right? In any industry, but obviously in multifamily it's super important because if you if you think that you're gonna be recommended just because you have high reviews, you're it you're missing out on on what that algorithm actually takes into account. So if you've noticed, if you ever traveled or you're searching for a restaurant near you or a coffee shop, you'll notice that sometimes uh it'll be on page three or four of this the results that you see like a 4.8, and you're wondering why was I seeing 4.3s and 4.4s and a 4.8 didn't show up. And that's because there's so much more to it. And that's what I think operators really need to focus on today is understanding how that works.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Well, that's interesting. Can we dive into more on the algorithm and what they actually are looking at?

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah, so there's um there's like nine different components. I think it's uh a little bit too technical to get into today, but um let's suffice it to say that it no longer is just about the average review rating, right? There's um different pieces of that that actually have to do with uh the volume of reviews, the frequency of reviews, how often you're responding to both negative reviews and positive reviews, believe it or not. So it's not just um the the rating, right? And so there's those are those are components that are really important, and increasingly the newer algorithms are starting to take into account um the uniqueness of each response. So if you're copying and pasting responses, um and you have even if you have a library of you know, here are responses or the shell of uh responses for positive and here's some kind of guidelines on negative, if you're reusing those throughout your your um your portfolio, it actually is hurting. So these are the things that a lot of people don't know about. And we we know this because we partner so closely with Google. So what Reputation has done to make it very simple for people to not have to really like constantly focus on all the little pieces of the algorithm is we've had now for well over a decade what we call the reputation score. And that reputation score is a score that easily lets you understand how your community is doing versus the competition versus your other communities, and it gives you such a simple metric. Now, obviously, there's much more beneath the surface, but um at a high level, if you focus on that score, and as a you know, as a partner of ours, we do obviously tell you all the different components, there's nine of them, and and we give you recommendations, so our platform doesn't just give you a reputation score for each of your communities, it actually gives you recommendations. And those recommendations are really important because for too long reputation management in this industry has really been about what are the insights, what are we hearing? Um, but then it's really up to you to figure out what to do. And our philosophy and every bit of our platform and every discrete product within our entire ecosystem, it's really very focused on recommendations and actions. Because insights are great, we know that, right? In this industry, we have no shortage of data, we have no shortage of reports and BI MBI, but um what isn't as always easy or isn't always as easy to come by are like what do I actually do? Let's drown out the noise, there's so much here. What should we focus on? And that's really one of the things that sets us apart, and we believe is a huge differentiator when it comes to your overall strategy.

SPEAKER_03 8:21

That's interesting, and you're probably talking about operational changes as well, uh things that can be implemented with processes, or maybe ensuring that site teams are follow following policies and procedures. You know, a lot of companies already have these foundational operational things, but sometimes having a gut check of like, oh, are they actually happening or not? Um and I think that's wonderful too, because I know a lot of times sometimes marketing and operations inadvertently speak different languages, and so to have a tool that allows marketers, um, you know, because in our case, marketers are typically the ones that have access to the reputation management platform. So then to allow us to have a tool to go to our operations team and saying, Here are the recommendations that we're seeing to make this property better so that the curb appeal is better, um, that's a huge win.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Right, absolutely. And what I what I like to think of the reputation score as it's definitely a bridge between marketing and operations because you're right, reputation management for so long has been part of just the marketing org, but we know that what happens at the site level, you know, the operations of the sites, that's really what drives the sentiment of your consumer. And so having a bridge between the two and one universal language helps everybody to be aligned, and that's the best type of strategy where it's not, hey, this is a marketing initiative, or what I've been hearing a lot lately is we have an executive who they're just very focused on our average Google review rating, and and as long as we have a 4.5 and above, they're happy, and so that becomes the pursuit, and the pursuit, and that pursuit is it's not a bad one, but it's a very limited one in in this day and age, and so it gives you it actually creates a lot of blind spots that people aren't really keeping into account, and having something that really makes it where everybody's aligned and can focus on the score. I saw that come to life at Bazoudo and Bazoudo, the reputation score is used on every BI report. Um, it's act it's the way that people at the site level get bonuses and get uh recognition and and and also in their performance reviews. But it's something that marketing focuses on as well. So everybody can be aligned, um, and there's again a lot of pieces that kind of make sure that you're really thinking holistically about the health of each location.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

I think that's really important as we talk about bridging the gap because we want to be able to give actionable tidbits to our site teams. Here's what's going well, and here's what we can work on. And I think with tools like yours, it gives us the ability to see what's working and what isn't, and where we can go, maybe tweak something. Maybe we have a process that's broken, maybe something's not working right on the prospect side, and we can get this information and go fix it before it becomes a huge problem, or ruins is their ruins the experience of the prospect slash resident when they move in.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

That's right, and really trying to isolate feedback to you know, in this industry we talk so much about the residence journey, right? The resident journey is is a long one, and it's one that we want to make sure our residents are happy throughout their entire life cycle with us. And the challenge has been for so long that with reviews, which are the most common type of feedback beyond surveys, is that you can't parse it down to, you can't always parse it down to what specific part of the journey that was in. And so what I love about our platform, Chris, is that we can take through just a normal review that's given on Google or or any other platform and really categorize it through our AI, categorizes it in different parts of the customer journey. So in but it's not one for one in a review. There's never one there's never a review that is only about one piece. Most times reviews kind of are broader in their feedback, and so you know, in one review, you can have multiple parts of the journey discussed. Um and so we we isolate that and we show you all your feedback across the board. What specific parts of the journey are you doing well, and what where are you lagging behind your competitors? So that's extremely important. Another thing that's um to your point about uh a platform like this is that sometimes you get reviews that are a five-star, right? So it's like if you're only focused on that, you're like, great, we got an amazing review that's helping our average score. Um, but what people often miss, it's a blind spot, is that a lot of times you do get a five-star review, but there is actually also some negative sentiment in there about one particular thing, right? And so, but you have uh uh in this case, whether it's a prospect or a resident that was kind enough to still give a five-star review, but there's some negative sentiment in there. Um, and and conversely, on negative reviews, maybe a three-star, there's some things that they'll mention that like this was great, but the reason I'm giving a three-star is because of this, right? And so without having a platform that can really dissect that for you at scale, you're missing a lot of feedback again if you're just focused on the average rating.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah, totally agree.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Yeah, because otherwise and you're having you're right, because I'm not gonna be able to go through a hundred reviews and like you said, like tag them with three different things. Like, I mean, I might be able to for one property, but not like a portfolio of properties. Um, I want to switch gears for a minute because we were talking before, and part of your new role is obviously you're now getting to work with a lot of different property management companies, operators, owners, and so I kind of want to hear from you a little bit about kind of in general how you're hearing your partners think about reputation score, reputation management surveys, feedback gathering, what are some good things you're seeing, and then if you have any maybe other things that you know people might need to change their perception on. But let's talk about the fun, the fun, good stuff. The good stuff. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

So it's definitely been eye-opening. I've been again now in the role for just a little bit over three months, and I've had the opportunity to speak to dozens of our clients, but also dozens of prospective clients that are really kind of rethinking their strategy. So on the good side, what I'm seeing is I'm seeing a greater understanding that um there's many operators now that are really honing in on the fact that you know our current solution as a whole is very piecemeal. We have one technology for reviews, we have another one for surveys, we have a social tool over here, and they're starting to understand that uh really what is the currency to improving your operations and your and your customer satisfaction or resident satisfaction is really bringing all the data centralized, right? Because without that, you're you know, you have one platform telling you like the insights are are are you know these are the insights from one platform one platform, then you have another platform with like very different findings, and so it just becomes really difficult to truly hone in on what to focus on. And I'm seeing more companies that are like, yeah, we recognize this is a challenge, um, and we've been doing it this way for so many years, and they're they're starting to recognize that this is something that really needs to be. If you don't have all that data centralized, you're gonna have a lot of noise, you're gonna have um sometimes the tail wagging the dog, right? And so um I'm seeing a greater understanding of this. Unfortunately, though, I would say that most companies, I'm seeing they're still doing that approach. So while they have an understanding that we need to go this direction, I would say that the most of the companies I've talked to are still using uh just so many different tech tech technologies within their stack for reputation.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

I think that makes sense. I mean, I think I told you that, you know, full disclosure, we use reputation.com, and that was one of the reasons that we switched when we went through the um, we didn't send out an RFP, but we had our own internal, you know. I I'm not thinking of the right word, but you know what I'm talking about. But anyway, one of our goals really was to consolidate our different platforms. We were using uh chat meter for like local listings and uh responding to reviews, and we were using SurveyMonkey, which was manual, you had to download an Excel spreadsheet and then upload it, and it was awful, to send out surveys, um, and we were able to consolidate, and then we were able to add a feature too by moving to Reputation.com, so it really was a game changer for us.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

Um and the access levels too, like we're able to automate reports out to our R VPs, um, they're able to have access to the platform, which wouldn't have been possible previously, only because to ask someone to log into like four different platforms is not realistic. Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

So and so I the way I think of that is you know, there's so many of us that are into the Apple, are in the Apple ecosystem, right? We have iPhones, it's the most popular phone out there. And uh you start to notice that even if you just have the iPhone and you don't necessarily have other Apple devices, just within the phone itself, all of the apps communicate, it's easy to share from one to the other. It just makes it so easy because it is an ecosystem. When Apple phones for when iPhones first came out, it wasn't that way. So you can really easily transfer data from one thing to the next, and it didn't give you that kind of just overall ecosystem feel that you have with Apple. So that's I would say it's the same thing. If if you have just different piecemeal approaches, you're not really getting streamlined insights, right? And actions that you should focus on. So I'm a big proponent of it. You know, obviously I'm a big fan of reputation's ecosystem because it it was something that we used at Bazoo and I saw the power of it there. Um but if you're you know, I what I would say is at a base level, you really should consider, all operators should consider going into an ecosystem that can have everything because that's really where you're gonna be able to take your business to the next level.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I mean it's so important that our reputation and how we're found and and your first impression that you get is just it's so valuable. And then to be able to take that and use the insights that you're providing to actually, I'm using these insights now to create copy on my website so I can get away from the resort style and luxury that we all overuse to actually talk about what my residents say in their reviews. The platforms out there are allowing marketers to unlock something. Yes. And and reputation is just, I mean, we all use it. So why wouldn't we want to spend a little bit of money to make sure that we have a tool in place that's putting our best foot forward and not using these canned responses and making it manual when AI is changing the world in every aspect?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

That's right. And one of the things that you touched on that I um I see is, you know, I I see in this industry there is an overemphasis and uh such a focus on the negative reviews. What are we gonna do about the negative reviews? What are they saying? How are we gonna fix this? And one of the missed opportunities uh to your point is the positive are the positive reviews, right? Because those residents are happy or those prospects are happy, and what we need to be doing as an industry is uh leveraging that and asking those residents that are happy to create some user-generated content to talk about us more, right? Reviews are great, but if they can start posting their sentiment on social media, um that's one of the things that we know that AI right now is surfacing, is surfacing real consumer insights, and that comes from definitely comes from social media and it can come from forums as well.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Okay, Reddit forums. Reddit is like the great big sorry, great big mystery that all marketers are trying to solve.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

That's right. Um it it is it is a challenge because of their their very high cost for their API to be able to funnel that data in internally into any platform. So while it is possible to tap into it via APIs, it is extremely costly, and most companies are not willing to pay those costs. That's so a lot of companies are just doing manual, right? Manual searches and kind of keeping up with it that way because again, the cost is very it's prohibitive.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

That's interesting. The cost to pull, so you're talking about almost monitoring it like a another reputation site, is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Oh, I never even thought about it like that.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

That's very interesting. Oh light bulb, I know.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Your favorite, Andy.

unknown 22:04

I know.

SPEAKER_03 22:05

Now you're gonna make me think about Reddit for days. Um we are almost out of time, which I'm so sad. I wish we had 10 hours. Um, but uh what else? Like what what else do you want to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

What I would say, and I know we touched on it earlier, is just really make sure that as an operator, whether you're on marketing or on the operations side, is that you're driving um home with your executives above your level, the need to go way beyond average review ratings. And I again I just hear so often that hey, our you know, this C level executive is all they care about. Is review ratings. They don't care about the surveys, they don't care about the sentiment or what we're actually learning from the reviews. They just want to make sure that we're at four or four point five and above. And again, I would say if if you're not educating them on how that approach really creates so many blind spots, then by default, if that's what if if you're going along with that requirement, then you're an order taker. And as executives, as thought leaders in our companies, though there's always going to be somebody above our level, we do need to be that consultative partner to the business to say, like, I understand and I respect that this is what you're focused on, but let me let me bring to light some other factors that we should be considering. Um and I'm not seeing enough of that because frankly, there's been a lot of prospects that I've been uh speaking with that they're just in the whole conversation is just what can you do to help us get better average ratings? And and when when I probe a little bit deeper, it's well, this is what these executives are focused on. And again, you can do that and it's a great thing to focus on, but if that's all you're focusing on, you're actually hurting your business, and you're not gonna be increasingly you're not gonna be recommended um as much as as much as your competitors who are focusing on a on a broader range of metrics.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

And you're not fixing, you're not ultimately going to fix your rating because you're not focused on the deeper issues that are impacting your rating. Like you might temporarily fix it with a contest or something like that, but ultimately the same problems are gonna exist. If someone isn't lucky enough to have reputation.com and a reputation score to add as a KPI, what other KPIs could they look at to kind of if they have to look at rating, is there anything else they could kind of pair to say like rating's good, but but we're performing poorly here because there's a deeper problem?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

So what I would say is um, you know, uh, and this this this uh level of insight is a is available publicly on our website. Even if you don't become a customer of ours, if you look up what the reputation score, all the different components to what makes up the score, there's nine different components, and if you really just take a look at those, um, and you can focus on that. You know, what what we see that the top 20% of communities on our platform do is they're asking for reviews more frequently than anybody else. They're they're getting more frequent reviews and they're focusing on responding to every review, whether it's negative or positive, and they're and they're doing unique responses. Those two things are extremely important, but again, I'd I'd recommend to look at what makes up the recommendation the sorry the reputation score, and you can easily track those metrics and do those on your own and drive those um those behaviors to your properties.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Okay, that's amazing. That's easy, foundational, easy stuff. Um, Daniel, thank you so much. Chris, thank you so much. Thank you to Flamingo, our sponsor. Thank you to Zillow Rentals Unlock, and uh until next time, this has been the apartment department.