Collaboration and Creativity in Multifamily with Kara Rafferty

In this episode Anne and Chris sit down with Kara Rafferty, National Director of Sales at Apartment Geo-Fencing, for a long-anticipated conversation on what collaboration in multifamily really looks like.

Kara brings a wide-ranging perspective shaped by years on the vendor side of the industry, deep involvement with apartment associations, and a passion for building relationships that go beyond transactions. The conversation explores the shared responsibility between vendors and operators, the importance of transparency and respect, and why defaulting to blame or rigid marketing templates often misses the bigger picture.

The group also dives into Kara’s approach to brand awareness, including the role of streaming TV, geo-fencing, and video in reaching renters earlier in their decision-making process. Throughout the discussion, she challenges marketers to move from “checkers to chess” by prioritizing creativity, storytelling, and differentiation in an increasingly crowded landscape.

The episode wraps with a look at the Multifamily Marketing Hive, a community Kara helped co-found to encourage open learning and idea sharing without a sales agenda, reinforcing the central theme of collaboration as a driver of better outcomes for the industry.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi everyone and welcome to the apartment department. My name is Ann Baume. With me as always, is my co-host Chris Johnson. And we have a very, very special guest with us today, Kara Afferty. She is the National Director of Sales from Apartment Geofencing. And first of all, we have to say we both love Kara so much. So this was such a treat that we were able to get her on the podcast. Also, this was a long time in the making. I think we've been trying to schedule this for six to eight months now.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

So Chris and I started talking in aim like we could talk about this, we could talk about that. And we'll we'll talk later. We'll talk later. And then we come back together an hour later and talk about it some more.

unknown 0:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

So I don't, and I think we went back and forth. So you guys, you know it's gonna be good when we've been thinking about it for this long. So, Kara, tell us a little bit about yourself, and then I think we'll go ahead and jump into our topic for the day.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Sure, I'd love to. Thank you so much for having me. I love getting to know both of you over the last, let's say, year or so. And I think I got to know both of you first and foremost by listening to this podcast. So for, you know, full circle. Um, my first exposure to the apartment industry um came uh when I sold the local apartment association bagels for a golf outing when I was selling catering for Panera. So a lot of people in the industry still refer to me as Kara Panera from this day. And then um a couple of years later, if you haven't heard that yet, have you, Ann? You know, you'll be uh sitting in the hall of them NAA, you know, just here to cater a Panera down the hall. It still warms my heart. But um, fun story. So um I'm actually wrapping up um a six to ten year, either way you want to see it, six to ten year journey with that association. I served on the executive board, and that's where a lot of my um best moments in multifamily were. Um, learning the ropes, learning what mattered to regionals, to maintenance professionals, to the entire industry. So pretty much um if you're if you're new in the industry and you're listening to this, go see your local association, go get involved. So that's kind of the start of my story with multifamily and that you haven't heard before. And Chris, you probably've heard some of it, but news stories are fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

So I love that. And I'm also now making like a sign on fluorescent posterboard to bring to a conference and just like carry around the halls for when I see you. So I know we were going back and forth a lot because you are chalk full of so many different passions in the industry. Um, but I think what we decided that we wanted to talk with you about is really something that we haven't spoken about before with other guests. And it's really around this idea of kind of this vendor supplier, operator-client relationship. And what are the responsibilities, you know, I would say from a vendor side, but also I think we should talk a little bit about the responsibilities from a client or operator side as well. Um, I think that, you know, this is something that I've been thinking a lot about lately is am I a good client um to my vendor suppliers? And so I think it's time we have a conversation like this. I I think we need to hear from the vendor suppliers on, you know, kind of what their responsibilities are, and then also how can we make sure we're doing the right things um as your partners as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

I I love this. Um, I have so many thoughts on it and things that I've done because it's the right thing to do, and how I paid it forward and I feel that I I've received it back when when it was time, maybe not even from the same person, but just the energy putting out there into the universe. Chris, is there any other, you know, thoughts that you had before I kind of just start chomping at the vet and talking here about it?

SPEAKER_03 3:46

Here's the thing I think the relationship is so we know the relationships are very important, but I would like to get the ins and outs on what that relationship looks like and when it's okay to say, Hey, I got it. You know, enough is enough. We understand what's going on, or when we can also continue the conversation or become partners, or how to keep the and then at the end, how to keep the relationship strong, right? Those are the two that's the other piece of it is like how do you make sure that both sides are happy?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I think that this is actually very timely, right? So um, I'm gonna say the thing that is very obvious, but neither party knows unless somebody speaks up. There should never be any assumptions, right? And so I think one thing that really caught me off guard last year was I had um a client tell me that they had budgeted for a full year and we don't we don't do 12 month contracts at Apartment Geoffin's and we don't, and I don't ever see us ever doing it that way. And um, but we plan like anyone does. And so when they came to me at six months and said, that's it, you know, we're out of budget for the year, we're good, let's go ahead and put it in our pause or our cancel. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, so um we of course were happy to accept it, but I think that we just need to have open conversations. And the other thing that's just like really hard right now that is different than it was 10 years ago or even five years ago, guys, is we are taking video calls at this astronomical rate. I mean, there is this joke of a video meme where it says like meeting, meeting, meaning between eight and five. And then the guy asks, you know, when do I do my work? And they're like, any time outside eight to five, you know, and and we all do it to ourselves. And so either two things happen. You never meet with your venditors because there's no time because you're cramming in everything else, or we're passing by and just checkboxing it. You know, maybe we're not coming with a strong agenda. And I'm putting that responsibility on both sides at the moment. We're gonna get into what responsibilities each side could possibly bring to the table. But for generic purposes, I think um there's a also a saying out there is, you know, no agenda, no meeting. Of course, that's something that we could implement. And agendas don't have to be long and difficult. Um, one thing that I um have really loved from a coaching and leadership perspective is start, stop, continue, right? Like what should we start doing? What should we stop doing? What can we continue doing? It could be as simple as that. Um, so I'll just stop for a second. I mean, does that make do you guys agree that we're just in such a busy go, go, go mode that either we're not making the time or it's not intention-filled? Do you guys see that as well?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah, I do. And it brings me back to a time I used to work at an agency a long time ago. I've spoken about this, and um, I it was the same. I think I was clocking 70 to 80 percent of my time in meetings with clients. Um, and then it would and we would have meetings on a weekly basis, which was too much, by the way. Uh, but we felt obligated because that was the cadence that was set, and no one ever felt comfortable being like, whoa, we don't have to meet this much, you know what I mean? But like basically we would have a meeting, have a bunch of to-do's, have to go over a report, and then it would be like half an hour before the meeting the next week, and we'd be like, Oh my gosh, did we do like any of the things we talked about? No, because one, a week isn't enough time, and two, we were so busy with other things, and so I think you're exactly right. Like, it inadvertently, like because we were trying to show that we were like always paying attention and always on top of things, it actually caused the opposite, and we were just running around doing the bare minimum almost. It was b it was bad.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

I so I feel the pain right now, just in general, and I think I think what is happening is there's a script. This is my take. This is Chris's opinion. Obviously, I I want Kara to say yes or no, and I'm not talking about your company in general, just from what you're hearing out there. Yeah. I just feel like there's a script, and I feel like here's what you're gonna talk about, here's what you're gonna touch on, but you're not you're not customizing it to the client. So, what is Chris like what do I care about? I don't need a report. I don't need you to run through a report. What I need is I can look at a report. What I need is my partners come to me and say, here's what we noticed, here's a low-hanging fruit, here's something you could do to make something actionable today. Um and just for the record, your team does that all the time. I get emails and it's like, hey, we reviewed the data. Yeah, and like, here's what we think you should do. And it's like, Chris, do you agree or not agree? And that's uh that isn't even a phone call sometimes, right? Um, although I do think having the face-to-face is good because you want to build relationships because you want you want both teams to care about each other and have buy-in. And I think that comes in either a lunch meeting or a video call. They don't need to be long, but just to catch up, like how's life outside of work and what is going on at work and what's new in the industry, just to have that relationship. But I do think that we're getting away from actually caring about what the customer in the seat wants. Um, and there's a lot of people in my seat that just they do want to go over that report, and that's fine, I don't care, there's no judgment. But I think Anne looks at it much differently than I do, and I look at it differently than Kara does. And I think it would be nice if it wasn't such just cookie cutter, here's what's worked at whatever XYZ company, and we're gonna bring it to the industry. Um, and that by the way, on the sales stuff, I feel like it's it's one or the other. Like you either get ghosted or or it takes forever to get it to pricing, or you're on like a million calls to get there. And that that's the other frustration for me. It's like, guys, we know what the service is. Can we talk about how you're gonna help me? I don't need to go through seven discovery calls. I I just don't, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

So those those are some frustrations that I've got yeah, and I can absolutely kind of tell you what I'm hearing and seeing out there. And you know, I've worked for a couple of those different companies, right? I've worked for some of them, or I've been on my job search and I've been like, no, no, no, no, no, because you know, some of it was a little of that. So kind of two kind of two things. Um I think first off, if you're a CRO or you're leading a sales team, I think it's really important that you rewind and listen to what Chris just said, because in order to create this frequency and this repetition and this speed, you're giving the leaders are giving these templates as directive. So I think you need to go back and listen to that, Chris, because it's not helping. In fact, sometimes it's hurting. Now, I do think those templates have a time and a place, to your point. And I do think that you can, you know, and you can have kind of three different scenarios where you have, you know, this is our go-to template. Then we're gonna have, you know, and you don't need to go above and beyond crazy. If you meet a client that has, you know, the desire to go off script, go in and look at the campaign and come up with a few of those things. You know, you get to know them, it comes easier over time. And then have your third type of conversation, which is completely off the script. Come with an interesting topic like um um um I was coming to the table. I'll give you a quick example. I was coming to the table and sharing with marketers, hey, do you if your uh investors and owners are ever ever coming to you and saying, you know, what are you doing about um bots? I was able to say, hey, you know, geofencing allows for you to say that you have a portion of your marketing strategy that is bot proof. And just giving, just giving them little things like that to have in their back pocket to feel good and to feel like they're making good decisions and bringing it to owners. Like sometimes it's just bringing those small things. Um, so Chris, I think the best thing that our vendors and suppliers and the responsibility that we have is to ask good questions early and verify how much time we have on the call. Um, I love spending time with my clients, but an hour is far too long right now. I would rather have a solid good 30 minutes with you and then give you 15 minutes back to digest what we said and prepare for your next meeting. I also think something that could be very unpopular, but needs to be said. I don't think that in this culture we are allowing our vendors to charge a price that is allowing for good service to happen. So we want the lowest prices possible. I mean, I don't do I need to elaborate, or is that pretty much just like mic drop and no?

SPEAKER_03 12:30

I think look, I think that's very smart, and I think you can apply that to other things in life. I do that with food all the time. People ask me, why do you like to eat a nice meal? Well, you get what you pay for in my the quality or how they present it or the combinations or whatever. And I think you're right. We have we do try to grind down the price a lot from all of our vendors. It's not just marketing, all of operations. And I think that's a really good thing to think about. And I think our listeners need to remember that too when they're having these conversations. I don't think it has to be perfect. I just think we want to have a relationship that works for both sides. And at the end of the day, I love the partners I have. Quite frankly, I'm not complaining about anybody. And on on most of the sales calls I'm on, I let people know, like, I'm gonna be transparent with you whether I go with you or not. Because this industry is so small and you're a person and you're doing the best you can to get the sale. It may not work for me today, but who knows what happens in ten years because I'm still gonna know you, right? Um, and I think there needs to be respect on both sides. So one hundred percent it's on our we need to treat our vendors with respect. I've heard horror stories of how our side has treated your side, and it's not cool. Like these are you're all people here, you know, and and everybody's just trying to do a job. And so um sometimes I think it's short-sighted to just blame the vendor for all of the issues in marketing if you're not driving the right traffic or you didn't get the right conversion rate or the number of leases you're trying to get. It's not the vendor's fault. It's it could be a market, it could be you need to tweak something. Everybody needs to work together. It can't be I personally cannot go blame, you know, somebody on the other side for that. And I think we need to take our responsibility to make sure we're treating people with respect too. It goes both ways.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

I've worked for some large names out there, and I will say, um, didn't have the best reputation. You know, a lot of people would call on multifamily from this company, and the people that stood out to me that I had the most respect for are the ones that took 30 seconds just to say, hey, you know what? I had a bad experience. I'm not interested. It's not you. And I had so much respect for them, and I did everything I could to not spam their inbox at the time. You know, mid-COVID, it was email, email, email, you know. So I did everything I could to not do that to that person because they took 30 seconds. So I guess that would be my other thing since I I'm given the form in the soapbox, is when somebody takes the time to be honest with you, please do everything you can to respect them back. And here, and here's a pro tip. When somebody says no, I do firmly believe it means not now, but that doesn't mean six months. So a really good pro tip, right? I'm sure you guys have heard good salespeople ask you this is hey, I understand that you're not interested right now. May I stay in touch with articles that might be interesting to you over you know over the next time? And you're probably gonna say yes, right? You're probably gonna say yes because then they'd shift from being annoying salesperson prospecting you to a value-led industry professional, you know. So you could stay in touch with people without, you know, doing the are you interested now? Has your occupancy dipped to 98%? And by the way, when are we gonna learn to ask what occupancy number actually does matter? Some people, 98, they're jumping from the rooftop. Other people are crying. Yeah, and that's probably not the number to use, but 89. Let's go with 89. Some people would be ecstatic at 89, right? Um anywho, so that's my next soapbox comment is respect the answers you're given and do, you know, your best with them. That's a responsibility right there.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

And you're thinking.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah, I'm thinking. I'm thinking, I just think it's I don't know. I I think something that I've found difficult is that I really like talking with people and collaborating. And so sometimes I get um tricked into maybe inadvertently um being in a sales conversation that I don't mean to be in because I think we're having like a conversation about ideas, and then I'll realize like, oh my gosh, I'm in like a sales cycle, and I thought that we were just like friends. Yeah, I guess like sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

So how what is so is that like a friend zone, the sales, but you just created a sales zone.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

What is a good way? Like, if you have someone that knows that maybe they're not interested in your product, but they actually want to have a relationship with you, like what is a good way for a potential client to say that to you?

unknown 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Um, that's no, that is honestly a really good question because we also need the ability to be able to meet with people and learn from each other without having to buy from each other. We need that safe space. I want that. I want that so bad. Yeah. Um, I guess the best thing to say to that person is I know that you have a quota to meet, and this is the reason that I'm not a good fit for you right now, but I feel like we can learn from each other. And the knowledge I give you, you can probably take into another conversation, right? Um, I think that's probably the best way to kind of let them down. And by the way, Anne, I was really bad at letting down dates that didn't go well. So you're probably asking the person. Um, I met my husband on match.com, but when I was in the process of meeting him, I kept a$5 bill in my back pocket because I was more than prepared to drop it at for my coffee and run out the door and just never see them again. So I'm probably the worst person to ask that question. So, but I will answer it a different way. Um, I also didn't want to waste people's time. So um, shameless plug, I created a safe space for that. Um, and you guys have heard about it. So I'm gonna use this platform to also share a little bit about it. So um me and a few folks um met at Multifamily Marketing East, which is in Baltimore. Um they've had it for two years in 2026. This is taking place on June 1st and June 2nd. If you want to learn more, go check out MME 2026, Multifamily Marketing East. And it's a great day, day and a half uh collaboration event. Well, some of us met and we said that this was great, but once a year is not enough. So we uh formed this meetup virtually called the multifamily hive. And our currency is knowledge, is sharing, is sharing information. There's no cost. Um, it's not a vendor fest, even though vendors are welcome. It's not a ton of people. And so the group of us said, you know what, we want to do this, but we can't just do it once a year. So we formed this group, the multifamily um marketing hive, or multifamily marketing hive for short. And we meet up virtually once a month. Um, and we just pick a topic and go. And so you know the topic in advance. Um, and there's not a ton of vendors. Vendors are welcome, but that's definitely not a goal of talking about products. It's idea sharing, it's best practice troubleshooting. And um, we have one group that meets the fourth Thursday at 9:30 a.m. Eastern. And starting next year, we are going to meet in the central time zone at um noon. So I'm going to um have that on my LinkedIn. So if anyone wants to find me on LinkedIn, I'll have that on there. But and um, we create that safe space for that reason. So it is a shameless plug, but I found, and I found the same problem. I wanted to get to know people and I didn't want them to think it was a sales pitch, but I do have a certain number of sales meetings I need to have every week. So I was like, how can I meet new people and how can I be me without being like, I love streaming TV, you know, because I'm gonna do that no matter what. So um long story short, you can create your little OA, your own oasis if you want to, or you can come to mine and you can do it there too.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

I love it. And this is this, it's good. And I can have a note card with my phrase, hello friend. I would love to share ideas with you.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

This isn't this is my actually, you know what you could also do, Anne, for fun. Maybe, maybe you could limit yourself uh to you know, one of those a week or two a month and let them know this is this is my time to be, this is my coffee chat time. I'm gonna put you in my coffee chat time, which is not my sales time. Sales time.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Okay. Yeah. Anyone I've heard I've hurt in the past by inadvertently getting in a sales cycle with you, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

I would not mind being rejected by you. It would be a lovely rejection, Anne.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

I'm just I'm just I'm just playing, I'm just messing around.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

I think they all struggle though. It's it's real though, because I care about people. Me too. And I I actually when it's when I ask you like how's life, I I actually care and remember and will ask you about it next time I see you. Yeah, it's not just a filler for me. And so I do struggle when I like the people and I like so many people in this industry, and we have these discussions, and you have to sometimes you have to say no and it sucks. But I do try to stay in contact because again, you never know, and and everybody's got knowledge. Tara, I think this was really great. I think what I got out of it is both sides have to have a responsibility for the relationship, and there are gonna be boundaries, and it's okay to set those boundaries up front. That's what I got out of it. Um, and it's not that I we can't talk about this forever, but I want to jump into brand maybe too.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Um I have one other thing though that's really relevant before we run. Yes. Can we talk about those that are not like the two? Of you and the two that do want to stay strictly business and what the cons are from that, because you guys are not those type of people. I'm not suggesting that you need to get to know all of your vendors' kids' names or their hobbies or that they have to do the same for you. You can have your work boundaries. But please, please do not give a vendor 15 minutes and then push them to discount through the nose, push them to meet deadlines that don't all of a sudden request that they move the earth and sun for you when you couldn't give them 15 minutes. So that's just my I think if you put, if you do your foundation early, you have earned the right to ask them to do all of that. Whether they can do it is, you know, each story. But Chris, I just had to add that because I think that that's also an important piece that if we don't just state, you know, give a little in the beginning to get exactly what you need when you want it, I think is is a really important takeaway as well. But you two lay the groundwork. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

I don't know. I I know we want to move into talking about brand and the value there. I just I'm really am fascinated by this whole um something else I've been running into recently too is um really understanding kind of the operations, like what we're asking of our vendors, and then also kind of the operational side of our vendor partners. So I'm talking about like invoice processes, what happens if uh when are invoices delivered? How are they delivered? Can you deliver them in the way that we're asking? If they don't get paid, what does that process look like? How is the vendor following up? What is our responsibility in facilitating that with our properties? Like I'm now finding this whole layer that I didn't really I knew existed before, but I didn't necessarily think about as part of the vetting process because we do have a vendor management system that we use, and our assumption is that people are going to use it. But I I've realized recently that I haven't necessarily asked the vendors, do you use this? And if we require you to use it, what what does that mean on your end? Do you even want to do this? Is it a do you know what I mean? So I think there's only steel breaker.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Is it going to create more additional approvals on both sides? You're right. Like what what is the cost value?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Doing is yeah, like, you know, I what if all of a sudden I've inadvertently caused someone 20 hours extra of work to I keep using the invoicing system, but you know, whatever. There's whatever custom thing we might be asking. Like, are we, you know, and did that come out in the sales cycle, or does it become an afterthought of like, oh yeah, by the way, just to let you know, you have to like do this crazy thing? And so um, I think that's something that I would again, that's something that I'm starting to think about more is like, what does this, what does the entire relationship look like and what is required on on both sides? And it wasn't before it was only about like, can you drive me clicks or can you drive me impressions or whatever? And and it there are more implications to the business than just what the actual end product is.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

I think that I'm gonna bring that to the hive and see if we can talk about that in February. So you should join. I think you're right. I think you're right. Um, my favorite thing that I do is when I finish up my sales presentation with someone the first time, I ask them, can I share with you what everybody asked me later that you haven't asked me yet?

SPEAKER_00 26:26

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

And it varies.

unknown 26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

It varies, right? Just based on the conversation. But um I find that that builds a lot of good respect because they have seen that I heard what they said throughout the conversation that they would find valuable, right? So um more to come, more to come. And I love this. I love this topic. But what is it specifically about my my love of branding that you guys would want to jump into at the time we have left?

SPEAKER_03 26:58

Well, we love branding, and you have some really good ideas, and we want we want to unlock on our coffee talk right now. This isn't even a pod, right? It's just a coffee talk. We're just talking.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Oh, yeah, scattered coffee talk.

SPEAKER_03 27:10

Yay.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

You said you said the word that uh GPT told me I can't use in my email subject line anymore. It said that unlock was the most overused subject, and I said I love unlock. So you use one of my favorite words.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Um that's because we're on the same page. No, but what tell us about branding and why it's so important. What are we missing out on as marketers? And and every company is different and they look at branding differently, but it it certainly matters. Um, what are we doing if we don't care about brand? Um, tell us about it. Tell us your thoughts. And then I know Anne, obviously, this is a passion passion project for Anne. So I'd love to get her thoughts after you kind of unwrap it.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

What a gift unwrap. So, couple thoughts here. I think that there are a couple tools in the marketer's toolkit right now that we can unlock for pennies, uh, reminiscent to the early days of Facebook. The early days of Facebook, and I'm not talking meta, I'm talking when it was just little old Facebook, and I was walking around selling apartment guide listings, told, honey, come back when you have a guide, because it was all digital and everyone was telling me they wanted print. And I remember everyone saying, I post on Craigslist, I post on Facebook. It was open, and those that got to the table early in the early days of Craigslist, in the early days of Facebook, paid nothing and got everything. So I feel that streaming TV is very reminiscent of that time. We did a case study with town properties, ironically, and we're able to show cost per view down to even four cents. And we all know that pennies don't exist anymore. So pennies are fleeting. Four cents will be fleeting, four to nine cents. So to be able to have a cost per view like that and be branded on the biggest screen of the house in the, you know, on the TV, I am passionate about it because I think it works. I think it's affordable for multifamily the way we do it. And I think the biggest thing right now is whether you're doing it on the front end, because let's say you are geofencing your competitor's leasing office. They walk in for a tour and maybe that leasing agent at your competitor didn't listen to them. Does that ever happen? I mean, didn't listen. They're saying, you know, what's your weight limit for a dog? And they're like, when do you want to move in? They're like, what's the weight limit for your dog? And they're like, are you interested in one bedroom or two bedroom? Like a robot. Does this happen? Yeah. So they leave the office feeling not heard. And you have a curated commercial that talks about how pet friendly you are. Do you think they're gonna go look at you now? Absolutely. I'm trying not to swear there. So I believe in the power of branding and video marketing, but then I also believe that the biggest problem 10 years later is people are still trying to lessen their low funnel dependency on these other tools. And um, I hate saying ILS because I got my start there, right? It has a time and a place. I'm not saying leave them. I will never, ever, ever tell my client to leave ILSs. But if you're looking to like lessen your dependency and you're not putting the efforts in on the front end to get people before they're there, then you have no hill to cry on. You have no hill to stand on. Um, and then just one other kind of uh present in box I want to set up is we're not, and I'm and I'm looking forward to 2026 to talk a lot about this throughout the year at sessions on podcasts. Uh, I'm speaking on Caden's Connect uh next month. Um I want to talk about oh, there you go. So I want to talk a little bit more, and I'm gonna scope this out at a later time, and I'm gonna drop a little bit here. Is if you're not paying for your branding now, there's a chance you're paying for it down the line later. And when you're paying later, there is such a black box enigma of how much that's going to cost you in the form of concessions, in the form of what's gonna cost staff fatigue. And one other thing to set you up pay now, pay later. I was listening to some great analytics with the uh apartment list. They do a great job with Air Autonomous. They do a great job. And I was listening to him uh a few months ago, and he talked about how March or April to May and June. So you're talking, you know, early leasing season. That's when you're looking at achieving your optimal rents. So we should be branding November, December, January, February. So we can get our optimal rents March, April, May, June. Because what are we doing in July, August, and September? Concessions, price discounts, have your ninja breeze for free, whatever we're doing. And we're giving it away there. So why wouldn't we spend the money in the front end that's predictable, that's budgeted to try to close the gap and not have concessions? So I think I gave you guys a lot to sit on there. I'm gonna shut up for a minute.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, I think um, I think you're right, brand is 100% underrated, both from an awareness standpoint. And I think what you're talking about too, that four cents, you know, per view is really interesting because that's not that cost per impression per view CPM is pretty common in other industries as kind of a metric of cost. But I think a lot of times we're so focused on like the cost per lead or cost per lease within multifamily marketing that this idea of another cost metric that lives up here is almost foreign. And frankly, we don't really have a even a great way. You guys have great reporting, but like we don't even have a way to report it kind of all across the board. And so I think then it becomes a hard story too. Like, well, why am I gonna do this? How many leads am I gonna get from it? How many leases? And you're trying to, again, you guys have reporting of walk-ins, and so you've you've tried to bridge that gap as close as possible. But I think that that's where the disconnect lies is that within how do we sell the idea then to an you know an R VP or an owner or something like that before it's too late. Not, you know, not at the 11th hour when you're like, just do whatever. I don't even care. You know what I mean? But it's like how you're absolutely right. How do you tell you right?

SPEAKER_01 33:34

How do you tell how? How do you go to your owner, your investor, and say, I have this marketing tool, but you can't measure it like anything else I've shown you.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah. Now the cool thing is geofencing is cool. Streaming ads are cool. Actually, I we have a great story. We were having an open house at one of our properties. We ran a geofencing ad for it. Someone came into the open house because they saw the ad. They went to a competitor that was geofenced, saw the ad, came to our open house. True story.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

But anyway, um sometimes sometimes it takes one story, but you know what? To go full circle, you need to be talking with your vendors or your client success rep in our case to uncover those little things, right? And then just have that story. Um, yeah, it is tough. And we try to arm our clients with as much as we can. And I think we're gonna get closer. I mean, I think every single month I I ping our CEO and ask him if we've unlocked this feature where you know you're streaming and you can like send information, which Amazon is like gatekeeping that. Right, they're like gatekeeping that. And when they first launched it, it would only let me add the$500 pool vacuum, which I don't own a pool. But now I see that they're letting me send information to myself about$15 trash bags. So we'll see when that comes. I I think it's gonna help us tell our story, but hopefully we don't get that consolidation of brands and and drive the cost up before that happens. So hopefully we'll come up with some better ideas or hopefully technology can catch up to us a little bit, Anne. But Chris, have you, I mean, there's so many brand awareness things that I mean, and even to go back to something else, you have had successful local sports campaigns with your with your billboards, you know, because I don't want to just glamorize geofencing and streaming. Brand awareness is so much more. You know, Chris, have how have you how have you told the story in your in your properties? How did it work for you?

SPEAKER_03 35:35

So for the last call it year and a half, almost two now, we've been focusing in on our property management company with everything that we do. So we're part of the apartment that that brand, we are establishing the brand of who we are because we're a great company. We have the cleanest communities I've ever been a part of, and I'm not just saying that. Um people love living at where they live for a reason, and so we are really starting to pump it up of not just being the community, but also who's overseeing that community and how the staff works and and everybody that's involved. Um, so that's been a big push. Nothing like Am is doing. I mean, she's doing some really fantastic stuff, but we're getting there, we're getting closer. I would say this I think it's important for people to be able to trust that the community that they're moving to is not fly by night and not just somebody that's out there that is is gonna squeeze every penny. Where people live matters, and I think that's where the brand comes in. Not everybody in our industry is doing that. In fact, it's opposite. Most people in our industry are love putting people in homes, love, get a lot of satisfaction of it. No matter if it's class A or class C, it doesn't really matter. We get a lot of satisfaction in putting somebody in a house. And you think about how much you spend to live with us in our industry, whatever nutro it is, it's a big chunk. And so it's really important for us to make sure people understand that that we're gonna take care of you as much as um you know you're putting your trust in us and and we're trying to do the same with you. Look, I I grew up at the Lewis group of companies, and I I still talk to those to those a lot of the folks over there. We had a 30-day move-in guarantee when I started there, and basically if if you weren't happy with a certain checklist of items, you could move out at no cost to you. Um you know, that was it that I've been around companies that actually care and do this and where the brand matters more than anything else that you're doing. Um, and I think it's kind of sad that we've gotten away from it. Um But I think that's a sign of the times. But I also think I'm rambling here um because I'm so passionate about it. But I think it's just like anything else. I think we go on cycles. Ann talks about it all the time with some of the things that she's done in her career and it's coming back, or how we used to do multi- you know, we'd have one single domain, then we went to multi-domain, now we're going back to single along with multi because we figured out how to do it correctly using both in some cases, and landing pages are coming back. So I just think it's about getting snarter. Even technology, think about QR codes, when they first came out, it was kind of a bust. Like I tried them, but everybody had a different technology that they were using. It's kind of like the AI battle today. You don't really know who's winning. Chat is it? I don't even know. Is Chat even the number one now? Gemini's making a push, right? Um, my old friends at Google. So and um but the point is like tech like there are wars and technology changes, but now a QR code, you don't need it programmed, right? You could just use camera technology, allows you to use any QR code, right? So I think with the streaming, that's gonna, that's that's definitely gonna make a difference.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Well, let me jump in here and say this this is one thing that branding does strategies like geofencing, strategies like billboards at local sporting events, strategies, all the above. It allows you to curate a very special story. Yeah, a story for you to stand out. And I think where we need to also think about this, and I know we talk we talk about it a lot, right? But it's like that resident lifetime value and that story of why they move in will potentially carry through to the renewal, you know, and it and it it's it is cyclical. What is old is new again, you know. So there's a wonderful loft style apartment up the road from me, and it was one of the first apartments I ever sold advertising to. And they were um they're they're next to a river, and it is the largest river uh in New York State next to Niagara Falls. So it's second, and it's because it has so much power, it was a cotton mill. And so it's the Lost of Harmony Mills. In fact, if you guys like watching HBO and the Gilded Age, a lot of the um actors are in front of this building. Fun fact. Yeah, and so they're in this area. So if you love uh upstate New York culture, give me a call. I'll bring you back tour all around the area, tour, New York, all that stuff. Love it, love it. So their story is all around this old mill and the historic and this and this and this. And you know what? It was one of one of the early loss. So they continue to narrate and share this story, and people don't just stay because it was one of the first properties that had no plant restrictions. They didn't stay because of the underground parking and the wintry upstate New York. They're saying because they want to live in that type of fun historic building. You know, they can go anywhere and get that. So I think we need to also start thinking about branding from a renewal perspective as well.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

Well, and I think you bring up a good point because we're talking, you know, we started talking specifically about the tactic of brand awareness, using geofencing, streaming to build brand awareness. But I think what I'm hearing you say is that you have to know what your brand is first. Yeah. In order to first, you know, to be able to tell a cohesive story, like you're talking about your mill, they know who they are, right? Like they're embracing that they do the right thing, that they have no pet policy, or I mean a I think it's interesting because then they're like become multiple layers of cont like it's the marketing of the brand, but you have to have the foundation of the brand first to know, like we always talk about that our property management brand of town properties is basically how we do business, right? And that's how we that's basically how we show our residents what we stand for, is because we have strong policies and procedures, and when we follow them, our residents have a great experience. That is our brand. A handbook is our brand because it encompasses everything that we want to be, we want to create great places to live. How do you do that? You you know, you follow so and then an apartment has a brand, and then you have to talk about those two brands together, and it's it's all it's very interesting. But I think you're right, going back to one of your other points, that we are at the forefront of something new, and people that can unlock it and use it well are going to be at an advantage. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

If someone can sit down and do what you just said, and that is wonderful, I was slightly mortified at how much work that would be, right? It's like work, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:19

So if you're chat GPT though, it's easy. It only takes about eight hours with Chat GPT.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Okay, so let's say you have two hours or less. Let's pretend. Okay, because I'm not because I learned something in my life. I don't know um if anyone's done uh the habits, uh, you know, all your habits and your superpowers and all these things, but I've learned that I make things sound easier than they are. Like I can get people like to be on my kickball team that can't run, right? So if you have two hours or less, let's boil it down. I want you to look at your reputation and I want you to look at the things that people like about you. And I want you to go to your top two or three competitors and see what people don't like about them. And I want you to find the needle in the haystack, and I want you to promote that one thing that you do that they don't. And maybe it is just you have washers and dryers that are coin operated. Like be proud. Be proud. Be proud of what you offer that's unique and special to your audience, to Chris's point. I don't care if it's you have fresh paint on your walls. If that's your special thing and that matters to somebody, that matters to somebody. And then that's what we go after with brand awareness. Do this.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

Go ahead, Greece. Me and you, me and you did this because I gave you guys why our residents love living there. And we we took that from our actual reviews and we actually put that into our branding ads with you. But I think branding too, like it's about culture as well. So we've been we've been working on why we're different as a culture, what we're doing, because we weren't doing that before either. Not because we weren't doing it, we just weren't promoting it. And I think that makes a difference too. So it's a whole picture, it's not just for the prospects and it's not just for the residents, it's also for the employees and and potential employees and or vendors. I mean, Kara, if you're doing your research, going back to vendor um partnerships, and I I really I don't even call them vendors, I just call my partners in general because they are. But um you're probably doing research on the company, right? So you want to know what we're all about as well to do a good job.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

It's almost not doing research on you in the light of Gemini and GPT. You know, we've got problems. Um, so I think this is the other thing that I want to make sure I I at least say before you know we wrap today, and I'm sure we'll have a few more things to. Talk about, but when you are playing in the PPC game, the ILS game, the social media game, everything is templated. Now, am I going to say that we have our own themes and templates at AppGeo? Yeah, of course, of course we do. But when you're on your ILS, you're going to have the amenities in the same order as everybody else. You are literally playing checkers when you're doing these other methods. Where when you're doing brand awareness campaigns, whether it be a billboard, a sporting event, geofencing, a bicycle going down the street with a sign behind it, which no, I do not offer and I do not bicycle ride if anyone's asking for fun, doing your signage. But my point is, no matter how you do this, it is completely your own message. And that is the opportunity. The opportunity is to stand alone and stand apart and put that in their brain while they are not comparing you to everyone else. If you see a$200 pair of jeans by itself on the rack in the store and you pick it up and you just love them so much and you never look at the price tag, you might buy them. If you see them on the rack next to$50 pairs of jeans and this and that, you are not even going to try those on. It's all about being in your own arena for consideration and not that compare-contrast game. Let's play chess in 2026, not checkers. Can I ask you a question?

SPEAKER_00 46:13

Have you ever seen anyone have an ad for a unit? Not a property, but a specific unit.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Yes. And mostly I saw this done in corporate housing, and I love it because I think if you can talk up your least popular unit style and really focus in on that, people are going to come look at your other, like they're going to come look at everything else. If it's not for them, then they're just going to go look at anything, everything else you had, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Okay. That's like double checkers. I am obsessed with this idea of unit level marketing. And when I say that, like I know we were just talking about brand and how much we love brand. So I know now what I'm saying is like complete the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

So like no, but if that's what it's not. But if that's what you need to move that one part. Okay, so here, so okay, this is this is the other thing I like to uh same, same situation. When I worked for apartment guide, we'd go through the list do you have nios, do you have ones, do you have twos? And I they would say they have threes. And I would say, How often do your threes become available?

SPEAKER_00 47:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

And they'd say never. Never. Like, why are we listing them? Then why are we listing them? Because all you're getting is hundreds of leads. So listen, everyone needs to pick a strategy that works for them. And if that excites you, and you can say to an owner, if you can say to an owner, I'm filling unit J and that makes them happy, then that makes us happy.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

So can I ask a dumb question? This now we're really off topic, and I knew this was gonna happen. So this is probably a dumb question, but it's it's also serious. Why where I want to I want to be careful about how I say this. I just want to make it clear I love working in this industry, and it's so fun to be a marketer here because things change all the time. But why do we feel like as an industry, and I'm I'm included in this because I'm sure I do it too. Why are we so templated? When did we become so templated, I guess? And why where did the individuality kind of go out the door for us in general?

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Um I already gave you the answer, Chris. No, no, no. I I'm not trying to pick on you, I'm just saying I already gave you the answer. It is completely stemmed from the fact. Well, two things. We have been put in a situation where speed is king and it's copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, pick one, two, three, pick ABC. And two, we can replicate things at a low cost at a price when it's true.

SPEAKER_03 48:44

I get that. But if you're willing to go out, I get that. And I'm not that wasn't even my question, though. Like, why why haven't we been more experimental, especially on the marketing side? Like, we are not nobody is gonna die if we try something and make a mistake, you know. Like, we there are there are industries and companies out there that really swing for it, you know. I would I you know like Red Bull ads now are nothing, right? But when they first came out, that was like groundbreaking, right? You could go back to we're old, so we could talk about Apple and the first ads that they had and how groundbreaking it was, and people went nuts on their Super Bowl commercial, which if you're a marketing, you know, who hasn't talked about that? But I guess I'm just saying, like, we have an opportunity, we're providing housing, and as much as our houses are templated, they're not. Everybody has a unique, just like you just said, and you're talking about unit level terror, you're talking about owning that we have coin-based laundry and we're gonna own that and love it because you get to do laundry on your time, and you know, maybe it's cheaper at the end of the day than having it in your unit, whatever, you could spin it however. But why where did we get a why are we getting away from why are we afraid to be into be individual with our stuff? I'm just talking like marketers. Excuse me.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

I I'm gonna put back on you guys a teeny bit because this is what I'm hearing, but what I'm hearing isn't always the truth, right? Because people don't want to hurt people's feelings. We have we already talked about that. I'm hearing capacity is a big concern. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

And I just read somewhere last night. I saved it. I'm looking around like it's at my table, it's online somewhere. And maybe it was um Globe Street, maybe it was something uh on LinkedIn, but uh Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, marketers are getting cut. I I just saw it posted yesterday about marketing jobs getting cut in light of AI. I have not read it yet. But I think um hopefully it's not happening. Hopefully it's not interest specific, the article in Wall Street Journal. But um, capacity is something I hear is a big concern these days. How can I do more with less?

SPEAKER_03 50:42

Yeah, I would just make the argument. I've I've for most of my career been a small team. You can do it if you want to. Um, you have to prioritize and you gotta figure it out, but it's possible.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Yeah, because I was gonna say sheer volume of of properties typically, but we usually have a couple properties at a time that we're running unique projects with. And so that's how we're able to be unique and scalable at the same time, where we have an idea, we maybe have someone that we trust, you know, a regional leader who kind of knows, hey, we're testing this out, they're okay with the risk factor, etc. So I think that's a good strategy. If people are like, oh my gosh, I couldn't possibly take a risk at all of my properties, pick one. Um that's that's how we've been successful. But I think smart like a test lab. Yeah, exactly. Like uh we used to call it um, oh my gosh, an incubate. So uh when I worked, I worked at a SAS platform and I ran the marketing services department, and we were constantly coming up with new services to sell to our clients, and we called it an incubator, right? And so um basically we would have a product in the incubator and we would test it out and then it would come out of the incubator and then be available to sell. Um, but yeah, so that is a good that is the the that's a good way to not make it overwhelming, um, but to still kind of have a little fire and sp and spark. Um because it's so fun to be in marketing. Like it's so fun. I think it's hard though. I mean, we it's really interesting to see like the the wide variety of you know, a lot of the requests we're getting lately now are like, hey, this why is the information on my website not the same as an IL listing, right? Like there's feed issues, they're broken. You have to reach out to your PMS, and then you have to reach out to the vendor, and then you're going back and forth, and then the manager at the property, now you've got three people and you're emailing back and forth, and some like little minor thing that's a big thing, by the way. Like information should be the same across the board. So it's like not a big thing, but it's a huge thing. But all of a sudden, uh that can take two to four hours, and by the way, like a week or so to fix. And so, how do you, you know, Chris? I think your question is great. Like, how do you rise above that kind of day-to-day minutiae minutia that just by the way, can we please find a better system? Like, there has to be a better way to keep track of all this stuff. I know I always talk about this, and one day I will find it because even if we're auditing it, even if we're automating that part, like you still have to go fix the issue, and it's mind-numbing.

SPEAKER_03 53:33

Let's I know we I know we're time, but but I do want to say this on that piece. I know I do too. I want to say this piece. It's because, for whatever reason, a lot of I think this is my take again, but some of these platforms were built on old technology and old code, and it's easier to just band-aid what they built 20 years ago than it is to kind of redo the code to make it easier. But I mean, I I run into this even with pricing. Uh, like you're one source of truth of pricing, right? But what they send out to the vendors comes in different forms, it's not clear in the coding and the API that's going from PMS to to vendors in some cases, not all. Yeah, and even like something as simple as that, forget about amenities and all that like yeah, what you know, at Zillow at the conference at Zillow, it was great. Like, Gray Star was talking about this whole thing with fee transparency. Just Graystar alone had 500 different names for stuff, right? Yep, and they had to go figure out each of those names. Well, that's on us as an industry. We call some of it's valet trash, some of it's trash service, right? But that difference would be different in the code, right? So some of it's us, some of it's our vendors, and some of it's the code. But you're right. We somebody whoever can invent that, Kara, maybe you, who's smart. We'll go invent this API that's like open source. Yeah, a true open source API, right? Like that's what we need.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Well, I want to go back to your question as one of my final things to say, because it's kind of uh I love I love that you brought it up about, you know, why why don't we get out of the day to day, get out of our own way and do some of this stuff, right? Maybe it's just one property, maybe it's our maybe it's our bottom performing and our top performing so we can see where the needle moves, whatever, two tests. But a lot of my clients are third party managers. And if you're not doing stuff that challenges you and is creative, you have nothing to stand toe-to-toe next to somebody else and say, we do this or we do this differently, and this is why. And then another thing too is I really hope that the marketers that are listening to this are in their forever home, but you're probably not. So get out there and try something new. So, so I just think that we're we are so I'm guilty of it too. I'm so guilty of not getting out of my own way. So we need to figure out how to get out of our own way for you know, competitive advantage, for growth for so many reasons. So I'm all for it, Chris. I'm all for it. We'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 56:06

These little steps, just this conversation gets people thinking.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

It does. Um, and uh everything's changing every day. New York State outlawed revenue management on December 15th, and Real Page is suing for freedom of speech. Um, and I was just reading up on that because we're we're looking into that as an industry here in New York. And I'm just saying, like everything is changing every day. And so the only thing I hope in five years that we're not talking about is um, you know, price price feeds and everything going indirectly. Everything else is is on the table.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

I love it. Kara, you've been such a wonderful guest. We can't thank you enough. Um, like I said, we wish there were a hundred hours in the day just to be able to talk to you. Um, but thank you for everything that you do for our industry. Thank you for being willing to be so candid with us. Um, thank you to Chris, thank you to Carlos, thank you to our sponsor, Flamingo. If you all want to get in touch with Kara, find her on LinkedIn, find her at the New York Apartment Association, um, find her at a conference near you. Uh, and until next time, this has been the apartment department.