Renters Decide Before They Tour: The New Reality of Multifamily Marketing

In this episode of The Apartment Department, Anne and Chris sit down with D.D. Cobb, Regional Director at Apartments.com, to unpack how the apartment search has fundamentally changed.

Today’s renters are making decisions long before they ever tour a property. Powered by AI, mobile-first search, and radically different expectations around transparency, the traditional prospect journey is being replaced by a digital-first experience where research happens early and intent forms fast.

D.D. shares what this shift means for multifamily marketers, including why lead volume is becoming a less reliable metric, how exposure and engagement better reflect influence, and what operators need to understand about fee transparency, mobile optimization, and visual content. The conversation also grounds the future of marketing in a simple truth: even as technology evolves, fundamentals like comfort, air conditioning, and pet-friendly living still matter.

Flamingo - Resident Retention App
400K+ units use Flamingo’s Resident Retention Platform to stop Retention Leak & hit 63%+ retention.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Hi everyone and welcome to the apartment department. My name is Ann Downe, and with me as always my co-host Chris Johnson. We have a great guest today, Dee Dee Cobb. She is a regional director at apartments.com. And Dee Dee is really passionate about one thing, maybe things, lots of things, but one thing that we're going to talk about today. And that's really um something that a lot of marketers are talking about across the multifamily space. And it's how the prospect journey is shifting and how we as marketers can do two things. One, understand the shifting search landscape. And second, how we can also lean into some fundamentals that have existed for a long time to reconnect ourselves with the uh shifting landscape. So, Didi, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Thank you for having me. I know we've been trying for a while and I couldn't make it happen. I'm so mad we're kicking off the new year and I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Yes. Thank you. We're happy to have you, Chris says wonderful, wonderful things about you. Oh, please. And so he was like, we must have Dee Dee on. I'm like, yes, whatever you say.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Oh, I love that. Thank you. Jim and I have been working together for a while now, and so I greatly appreciate it, Chris.

SPEAKER_05 1:15

Of course. Glad to have you on.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

So tell us your work at apartments.com. I do. I've been here for a little while. You've been there for you've been in the industry for a while. So talk to us about, you know, from a personal standpoint and then also from a professional standpoint. What are you seeing that's changing with how prospects are looking for apartments?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

You know, I think so many things right now. Um, you know, AI is coming into play. So people are searching on AI right now. They're making friends with their chat bestie. I love my chat bestie. I ask her things all the time. And so people are engaging with their chat bestie and they're asking her, where should I live? Should I live in this country or another? Um, so you know, I think that that is is coming into play these days. And then also how you utilize chat, um, having AI chatbots answer your, you know, prospect calls and emails and stuff. I had lunch with a client today, and you know, it's always the struggle of trying to figure out where the prospect is searching and how you drill that down and how you attribute that to your marketing dollars. And, you know, I think the biggest thing is that when I look at my own kids that are moving into apartments now, they always just start with a very broad search. Um, and then they start to drill down. And, you know, they're getting all the information that they need online. They're getting, you know, they're looking at the pictures, they're looking at your prices, they're looking at your specials, and then they make the decision to send it to their roommate. My daughter goes to Colorado, she goes to CU Boulder and um Scobuffs, and she's a cheerleader there. Uh, and so she got her first apartment and she is paying an arm and a leg. I am paying an arm and a leg for it. And uh, she found out really quickly, as much as she loved these girls, they are not the girls that she would like to live with next year. And I kind of am fearful that this is going to be a pattern that happens every year so that we can try out a new place and find new people. So um, but she is searching on apartments.com for her next place. And, you know, she's sending them links to me and she's like, hey, what do you think about this one? You know, can I go talk to them? And she's sending them to her roommates. And then they just make the decision to go there, right? They don't call the property, they don't send the email and go, hey, will you be open? Like you, they have all of that information available to them. Uh, they go from apartments.com to your property website, and then they also see what, you know, they they see more pictures. They, you know, if you have more candid shots and you have resident functions posted and that kind of stuff, they check out your social media and so they do all of those things and then they just decide on a Saturday when they don't have cheer practice that they're gonna go check it out. And so when they walk in the door, they don't necessarily ever tell you where they started their search and that, you know, they were sitting down having pizza and they saw an apartments.com commercial and they were like, oh yeah, what are we gonna do? Are we gonna look for an apartment today? Are we gonna go look this weekend? Did you see the one that I texted you about? They just make the decision and they walk in your door. And then when your leasing consultant greets them and they're like, How did you hear about us? They're like, Oh, I found you on Google. And a lot of times we don't drill down on that. Um, or sometimes they'll go, Okay, well, you went to Google, but did you go to a website? And they're like, Oh, yeah, I saw your property website. And then I also saw your social. And they're like, Oh, okay, that's great. And she is looking for a student property, right? So she is looking at your social. She wants to find out if you have, you know, food truck Fridays and if you have cool pool parties on Saturdays. So, you know, they do, they do check all of those different places, but she didn't tell you that she started her search on apartments.com and then she drilled it down and she sent it to her roommates and all of that stuff. So I think it's just, it's really hard for us to pinpoint what works. Um, I think a lot of times once they go to your property website and they get information, and then they, if they do choose to call, they call you from your property website, your phone rings, there's no whisper feature that says, you're getting a lead from apartments.com. It's just a lead from your property website. And so again, I've lost, I've lost credit for what we've done, right? Um, she goes to your property website and then she goes, sends it to her roommate. Her roommate goes to Google and it's like, oh my God, it was called something on the hill. What was it called? And then they go to Google and they go, you know, apartments named the hill on in Boulder. And then she finds that your property website pops up and she clicks on it. Then Google gets credit for that, right? But again, I didn't get credit for creating the interest in that, you know, Boulder on the Hill community or whatever it's called. So I do feel like there's so many different ways. And at the end of the day, we do a lot to invest in our product for our customers and you know, really helping your prospects get as much information as they can. Um, fee transparency is a really big thing right now. You know, you want to know if it's gonna cost $1,200, that when you get there, you're gonna be told it costs $1,200, that you're not gonna get there and be all, oh, so don't forget you have to pay the pet rent. And don't forget we have a trash fee. And oh, you want uh now some properties are charging a um uh what is a fitness facility charge or amenities fee. Have y'all heard about that yet?

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

The amenities it's out there. Um there's fancy amenities now, and so I mean, I'm not saying that I would pay for a wine bar amenity, but you know, they there's fees out there now for that. And so they want to know what the total price is, especially somebody like Ava, my daughter, that's on a very fixed budget. She knows that she can't spend more than $1,500 for her one room. You know, she can't go into someplace thinking that it's $1,500. And then when she walks out, she's like, hey, mom, it's $1675. I'm like, no, sis, we said $1,500. You got to stick to that. So um, that is kind of a big, a big thing that's changing right now.

SPEAKER_05 6:51

I was just gonna say that was a lot to unpack. Uh, I know we're gonna have some questions. And I bet you, Ann had an aha moment, or it's coming. So go ahead, Ann. I'm gonna go.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

No, I mean, I just think it's interesting what you're talking about. Do you think it's time that maybe we, or is there an opportunity? You know, you're talking about a source, apartments.com, that has a large reach. Um, from although you have called actions on your site, it's a lot about awareness. You're showing up in organic searches, pay-per-click searches. The scenario you just described, people are looking at listings and then taking a different action. Is there a different way that we should be maybe thinking about ILSs and measuring success? Like, should we be maybe calculating in some sort of cost per impression, or maybe looking at it more in a traditional awareness sense to try and, you know, I think for so long it's like, what was the cost per lead? What was the cost per lease? Should we shift our thinking to assign value in a different way?

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Yes, Anne, you got it. You did. Um, so we actually just created a report that shows that your cost per click.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

So if Google is going to tell you, Anne, you're investing $2,000 and here's your cost per click, and you're like, that's fantastic. We had 50,000 clicks in a month. That doesn't mean that 50,000 people, it like they clicked your site, didn't necessarily mean that they stayed on for very long. It didn't necessarily mean that it matches your their search criteria. So we're doing the same, right? We want you to know that if you're paying X amount of dollars a month, like we are showing you how many times your ad came up in search results and then how many times they clicked into your ad. Because you're right, like there, we shouldn't just give value to lead leads anymore, because at the end of the day, a lot of these young ones, like they don't want to engage. I again, the client lunch I had today, she was like, I don't, I can't even get my leasing consultants to engage, much less people calling in anymore. And I'm sure that at the conference that you were at when you heard um one of our representatives from apartments.com speak, like we are seeing fewer and fewer leads being sent because they don't need to. They just get all the information. So we really are focusing on the amount of exposure that your listing gets, right? So if your exposure is really low and your click-throughs are really low, then we can look at that. And when, you know, my rep and I meet with Chris, we can sit there and go, okay, this one's got great exposure and lots of click-throughs, but this one does not. Let's look. And then we can go, oh, their pictures are a little bit old or your rates are too high. And then we can start to assess from that perspective. But we can't just sit there and look at leads anymore because I mean, I don't know about you guys. I know Chris has some children, but like my kids that are older and in college age, like they don't call people. They have a fear of calling people. Um, and then their mindset is to use an email, they're just going to get more spam emails, right? So they don't want to do those things either. So I definitely think that just getting the information and walking in the door is what more and more of them are doing. And it's so hard because you're trying to track down the source, and it's it's virtually impossible right now. So that's where we stand. We are definitely trying to get hard, you know, further down the line line of being able to go, well, you have this many that started here and they, you know, went here. But we were assigning UTM codes, um, which are on your property website. So then that way when they go there, you can look on your back end and see how much traffic we sent to your property website. But again, um, it's real funny. And the I've been here for 15 years. And um, two things that we've done in my time here have made people kind of rattled. Um and one was taking off the property website links. We removed those for a while. And people were like, oh my God, I'm not gonna advertise with you or you don't add the proper link. I'm like, well, you will give me credit for the property website link.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

But now that I've taken it away, now you're like losing your mind. Um, so that was um a shaker and a rattler because people then gave us credit.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

They realized they were like, oh yeah, we do get people that come from apartments.com to our property website. And then the other thing we did was adding reviews. Um, way back in the day when we first launched reviews on our property websites. Uh, people really got really upset about that because they were like, oh my God, like you're just I'm paying you and you're letting people post negative stuff. And I'm like, well, let's find the happy people. Um, you know, like let's not get them when they're angry, let's get them when they're happy. And then, you know, Google launched reviews and everybody under the sun has reviews. And so we are just one more place that has reviews. But, you know, making sure, again, that's where your preference.com rep is going to your properties and they're visiting with them and they're looking and going, Chris, this one has five bad reviews. Like, we got to do something to get some better reviews. Um, and you and that's how we work together, um, making sure your descriptions are good, making sure your specials are there, all that kind of stuff, because that creates more engagement because your prospects give you just like any other social site, right? You have like a scroll of the of the side. And if you don't catch their attention with a good price and a good picture, then you're just gonna be the next scroll. And so that's what our job is to stop them from scrolling and give them a call to action to reach out to you.

SPEAKER_05 12:10

I I have a follow-up. Could you just give our audience some tips and tools on what works best in search? What people are actually searching. Are we are they searching zip code still? Are they searching neighborhood near? Are you know obviously if they're searching the name of the community, then they've seen it somewhere else. How are our prospects searching? Is the first question in my famous two questions. Yeah. So let's start there. I just gonna be I'd really like to know how are people searching on your site? Because I think that gives us some insight on how they're doing other searches as well. So, how do people search? Which do you know what the most popular search is?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

I think the most popular search is always like a a circle, just like you know, when you're on Google and you're like restaurants near me, you know, we have a map on our site. And so, you know, even if they start their search on Google and they're like apartments near me, apartments.com is going to come up at the top of the search results nine times out of 10. Um, and then once they get to apartments.com, then they're like, oh, okay, there's a map. I can circle an area, then they can circle an area, or they'll type in a zip code. And then it's definitely rent, it's definitely price driven, right? Like I can only like Ava can only afford $1,500, you know, times three for a three-bedroom. And so that's what her max is gonna be. And then they search by areas and stuff. But again, we have an easy report. We have an easy report that I can share with you that shows you that.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

Um yeah, no, I don't know that I I just like to we like to give tools like whether people are using apartments.com or not in our audience. Like if people are searching by zip, um, that's interesting to me because you know our own biases can't get in the way. I've never in my career, except when I'm checking something, I've searched something by zip, I search a totally different way. And so I was just curious on what you're seeing on your site. And then can you search um like apartments under 1500? Um, and does that type of search get get a lot of traction for you?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Yes, prices what drives people for a lot of times. Number one, it's jobs, and number two, it's schools. Um, so a lot of people you'll see in their search, like when when we come to the communities and we look at red comp reports, we'll see that they're searching in an area. So if your property is near a school, you'll see all the searches are kind of around the same school area, right? Um, then when you get to a certain price range, like usually paying more than you know, $3,000 for a two-bedroom, it's more of a lifestyle, right? So you'll see pockets and they're searching for all of our, you know, high-end stuff in San Antonio. So it's kind of interesting. It it varies. And so, like for some young professionals, they don't care how much it costs. They want to live in downtown Austin. Um, if they want to pay $16,000 for the penthouse, they're gonna pay $16,000 for the penthouse. Um, and then there's others that are very price-driven, and so they're going to be and and like by schools and areas, and so they're pockets put together, I would say for the most part.

SPEAKER_05 15:09

But see, my aha moment here, Ann, isn't like the price. I think we know that it's the school districts or the other little pockets that maybe we're not thinking of that people are trying to be by or are important to them that maybe sometimes we're not talking about. Um, I don't know if I always promote a good school district on my website, and we have some in some of the good school districts. I don't know if we pump it.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

You can search by a school district and a school name on apartments.com now, and we have them for y'all. So, you know, you know, Wa Calero, any of your communities, they are in a northeast school district. That's a very desired school district. That school, that property is right next door to a very highly accredited elementary school. It's down the street from a really successful middle school. It feeds into a really successful high school. And so a lot of people, they want to make sure that their kids are going to school. I I am currently living in a rental right now because I don't know where I'm going. And this family moved out of this house to rent a house on the other side of town because they wanted their kid to go to a better school.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

And I I was like, well, my kids went to um Clark and they survived. It's gave them a good tough learning lesson, you know. You're like, you're like, did they just insult me accidentally? It was a little bit, man. I was just like, oh, I'm moving here because I have to stay in the school district because I two kids going to Clark, but this guy's leaving because he doesn't want his kid to go to Clark and he's going to the other side of the city to go to a better school. I'm like, okay, whatever. I'm like, well, my kids are gonna know the hard knocks life, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

Like, I I taught them well. I I think this is interesting though, because I think it goes it's going back to what we've been talking about in a change of searcher behavior. And it it we're talking about personalization. When we're talking about AI search engines, we're talking about searches becoming conversations, searches being personalized, results being personalized. And so I think what we're talking about, and like you said, this aha moment is like we have to be representing our properties for what they are and everything that's included, not what we want them to be, not what we think people are looking for, but what they are, so that when the person who wants to live in our community because of whatever it offers is looking for it, we then show up. Yeah. And so I think that that's I mean, I think that's really interesting. And so maybe talk to us a little bit about well, I now I have like three questions. So um one, well, I wanted to go back. Can you when you talk about are there success metrics of you kind of talked about like your profile showing up in search on apartments.com and then click through to the profile. Is there kind of a benchmark of what that click through rate should be?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah, we usually look at it. I I'm old school, and so I'm like, if 10% of what you're searching doesn't go through to click, I'm like, oh God, we had a problem. Like, why are they just constantly scrolling through and they're not clicking into it? Um, is it your, you know, right now, it's the beginning of the year, and what do we want to do at the beginning of the year? We want to get in shape. So for spring, yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

So I used to go to all my properties and I'd go, hey, everybody wants to get in shape right now. You need to put your fitness facility as your main image, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Um, in the summertime, if you have a rock and pool, like we got to put a picture of your swimming pool. In the wintertime, you want to put a cozy, like living room scene. If you have a freaking clubhouse that has the fireplace going, like, you know, because again, that imagery is what's going to catch people's attention. I hate monument signs. That's not doing anything. I feel like a monument sign is like covering for something, you know, like it your grass and your buildings are better than just a monument sign. They're seeing the name of your property, right? Um, so I think that that's really important. Um, and then I think, you know, looking, sitting down and having a conversation, going, your prices are really high. Sometimes people are really content with being the highest kid on the block. And they're like, I'm weeding out all the ones that I don't want to get. And people are gonna come here and they're gonna know what they're getting. Um, and so that could attribute to lower click-throughs. But if there's a lower click through, we try to deal, you know, drill down and figure out what's going on because there's a there's obviously an issue, right? We want people to see your ad and mosey in and take a look. It's your virtual door. That's what I tell people all the time. I'm like, you on the right hand rail is people driving up and down the street, and then people clicking into your ad is people walking into your front door. And so if they're not going through your front door, we got a problem. We got to figure out what's going on. And then if you have engagement and then you're not getting success, then we listen to calls and we go, okay, Chris, let's listen to some phone calls. Um, one of my rex listened to some calls on Friday and she texts, she's like, Oh, this is so painful. And you know, then we always jump in and we're like, let's go to the uh all of our associations have great leasing classes, you know. We do leasing classes, like we'll do whatever we can to try to help our on-site teams, but it's the the landscape is shifting, right? And wouldn't you agree? Like the talent that you're hiring is different, but the way that we people search is different. And so I think that also like the it's kind of uh somebody that I met with the other day said something really interesting. She goes, you know, we get onto the on-site teams because they're not answering the phone, and it's not like the old school days where it was um like as soon as it's on your feet and off your seat, you know, like we're not from that, but the people walking through the door are from a different generation too. And so she was like, So maybe we need to find the middle ground between the persons that are the people that are in our office and the people that are walking in. Because again, remember, the people in the door walking through are like Ava, they don't want to engage either.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

So maybe they're okay that I'm sitting down and I'm not jumping up to shake their hand because that's intimidating to them.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

And so maybe what this girl is doing now in her generation as a lacing consultant, you know, having a softer approach is way better than me being overzealous and anxious and exciting, like I always am.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

And they're like, oh, yeah, this lady's too much.

SPEAKER_04 21:27

It's too much. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that that could be a whole separate conversation. But um, could have been a step.

SPEAKER_05 21:34

That's a whole pod right there.

SPEAKER_04 21:35

Yeah, exactly. Um I was like, that's like a whole but I think that's interesting because honestly, like we optimize our listings from a view to lead conversion rate. And um I like the idea of going one step up and saying, first are people clicking into because they can't submit leads unless they're actually going to your profile. Uh talk to us about the importance of the completeness of. A listing um on apartments.com and and how that impacts visibility, findability, all the things that we're gonna talk about today.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

I know all the things. So again, I hate to go back to I we all said if we say the word fee transparency one more time today, we were gonna explode. But it is a big thing. And so fee transparency, having that fee transparency, that's gonna be really important. It's gonna help you search higher in the search results within apartments.com right now, only because you have the most accurate information presenting to your prospects, right? So think again, Ann and Chris, if they don't want to engage with you, they want to know that this one bedroom is gonna cost them $13.75, everything included. Um, and then also like we have a checklist kind of, and so we can give you 100 and most properties are around a 75 or an 80 score, and we can tell you what you're lacking. If you don't have enough reviews, if you don't have enough photos. Some properties, you know, some marketing folks think that we should have 100 photos on our ad. Nobody's screwing the 100 photos. Like 30 is like the sweet spot. So if you have too many photos, you know, you might get a ding for that. And we can say, hey, let's go through these and like maybe we don't have the picture of the dog running in the dog park, we just show the dog park, or maybe we show the dog in the dog park, whatever. And then having content like good a narrative and description about your community, um, having your property website link, um, all those things we give scores and ratings on, and then we can show you how we can improve the quality of your ad so that you'll have more engagement because the more information we give them, the more reason they'll engage.

SPEAKER_05 23:32

So, you know, just sitting here thinking about this, just want to say it, it's pretty it's a miracle that we get people in with all the information that they get, with all of the competitors that we're competing against. Like they picked you out of all of these people to come in and and check out your community, whatever that traffic is. I think we need to realize that when they come in the door, they're informed that um we did something right to get them there with everything that's going on, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:00

You said it.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

That's like literally what we that was my mission of all of 2024. On average, a a prospect will only send a lead to one property. One. So that means out of the hundreds of thousands of people that are looking for an apartment, they're only submitting one, maybe three at most, leads. So they and that's even if they submit a lead, right? Like again, most of them are not because they're getting all the information. They're just walking through the door. So that's why we're really impressing upon our on-site teams. We're like, you hold the keys to the million-dollar castle, and this person has picked your community. Like, let's do everything we can to nail them down, other than you know, your credit criteria, your qualifying criteria criteria, a lot of times is not on your property websites, definitely not a primas.com. So those are the only things that they don't know, but they've made the decision that this is where they want to live. And so we really need to step up and do our part to close the deal.

SPEAKER_05 25:02

Interesting you talk about the credit piece. I don't know how you feel about this, Ann, or if you've given this any thought, but it always surprises me when we get people that come in, apply, but don't qualify, knowing that they how much the rent is, they know how much they make. It's just it's always something that interests me. And do we have any idea of why that happens? Or or maybe they just don't realize what two times or three times the rent means, and we need to do a better job of explaining it on site. I'm not saying we should put it out on our websites or apartments, I'm not suggesting that, but it's just interesting to me when you have all this information that that would be the disqualifier.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

I don't know if I have something to think about thoughts. Yes, I don't have direct thoughts about that right now, but I think it is interesting. But yeah, I think it's interesting. Um, okay, so then let's talk about something else that we've heard a lot about AI search, which I referenced before, but I think there's this thought process right now that uh now I don't even know if I'm gonna say this right, but basically that sites like apartments.com, Zillow, Apartment List, kind of these high authority domains are being favored from a result standpoint in AI search engines. So do you guys have any, you know, so as our listeners are thinking about their geo strategy, their AI search strategy, do you does apartments.com have any kind of comment about their visibility within these AI search tools?

SPEAKER_01 26:40

So there are partnerships being formed, of course, with certain ones. Um on my chat bestie, I'll check periodically, my reps will check periodically, and she's still giving you up whatever kind of is in that area. Um, it's you know, the machine is only as good as the information that she's gathering and feed and being fed at the same time. So, like when I did a search, we started talking about it last year at TAA in Houston. And so she was giving me apartments in like random areas that weren't even close to where we were. So I think as every day, millions of people engaging, it's going to continue to get better. There are partnerships that are being formed, but she always sort sources who the information is coming from. Or she'll say something like, you can always go to a site like apartments.com or Zolo or apartment list and get more information. And I've seen that Google is doing the same thing with Gemini. It's very much the same. Like they're not, it's not very good at pinpointing a specific community. If you see you want a two-bedroom apartment for $2,500 near the medical center in San Antonio, Texas, she might give you one that's like on 281 and like it's that's 20 miles away from where you're searching. So it's not that good yet, but every day it's getting wiser and she's getting smarter and the data is being drilled down. But they always reference you back to, but you can get more information like this from apartments.com or Zillow or Apartmentless. So they reference you to go back to sites like this, and and again, partnerships are being formed. I that's above my pay grade. I don't know if that's what we're doing right now.

SPEAKER_04 28:12

Yeah, no, and that's totally okay. I mean, I just was thinking about it because personally, like um at our company, we talked at the end of last year, like, do we put all of our properties for a long time? We were optimizing all of our ILSs to be very performance-based, leak cost per lease what was the primary kind of measurement. Um, but last year we talked about, well, do we put all of our properties back on apartments.com at the lowest package just so that they have a paid listing that then is crawlable and and visible. Um, you know, does that become an SEO strategy now? Um, and so I don't that was a complete shift from how we've previously thought about utilizing ILSs in our marketing strategy.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Well, and I will say that that's what we say a lot of times when we meet with our marketing managers is that we're like, you don't have to be the biggest package, you just need to have placement. It's like if we go back to the days, I'm no spring chicken of when we had the phone book and I used to sell Yellow Cage advertising. So I've been selling advertising for a really long time. And I used to tell the guys, I'm like, you know, AAA auger service. I'm like, just because you don't have 15 A's before your name and you're not buying the double truck ad, you can still get exposure by just being the small little one-inch ad, you know, and it's what's in your budget. And somebody's still gonna call you because they're gonna think, oh, the big guy has bought all the advertising space. He's probably super expensive and he's really busy. And I'm gonna call this little guy down here. So there's a place for everyone. And I think by the way our site is set up and people being able to drill down and put in their search filters, like it is definitely like having a listing and a yellow page directory, right? It's better for you to be somewhere than to be nowhere and then to invest heavily in your PPC campaign and you're coming up every time in the Google search results. If you, if your keyword that you bought today is two bedroom apartments near downtown San Antonio, near the Alamo Dome. And that Alamo Dome is your keyword, and you know, Google just charged you $5 for it, and somebody clicked into it, and then they're like, oh, it's not a senior property, and they bounced right off. Like that didn't that charged you a click, but it wasn't worth anything, right? So at least on our site, they can gather the information that they want, you know what you're paying monthly, and then we can work on how many times they're clicking through, how we can improve your engagement on your ad. And then they're going to your property website anyway. So I always say we all work together.

SPEAKER_05 30:45

It's true. And and I'm really been giving this thought with my own budgets on how I'm spending my PPC versus SEO over it. Like, what is my strategy actually for this community? What do I need to focus on? And spending $500 or $750 or $1,000 on PPC, is that the right answer if they're at 98% all the time? Or should I be pumping that money into something that may help me in the SEO game for the long term, as you know, my company were holders forever. Yeah, so SEO actually matters, right? Yeah, um, and so I think it's just going back and figuring out what works best for each property. I don't think I don't think it all has to be the same. And I think when you're when you're big and you're busy, it's sometimes it's hard to be like, hey, I'm gonna do you know 35 different budgets or a hundred different budgets, whatever it is. But at the same time, sometimes putting in that work and actually knowing what is gonna drive you the most traffic long term might make a difference. And putting some money into SEO right now, as Anne was saying, like with her strategy, I think that's brilliant because you're getting a play on somebody who's spending a lot of money to be both organic and paid at the top. Um, it will help you at some point, it just does because they're aggregators. So um, I think to the audience, it's okay to be a little bit different and try things. That's what's so great about us being marketers. We can we can try stuff and no nobody's gonna die. We're not breeding on somebody's brain, we're not doing brain surgery. Um, we can make mistakes or we can try something that actually works, you know? Right? It's true. Like we can make a mistake and nobody's gonna die, usually.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

And we have the measurement, we have the ability to measure.

SPEAKER_05 32:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:27

You know, so all of the data together allows for a measurement strategy. You know, you don't have to be like, well, I don't know if the attribution's gonna be 100% correct or whatever. It's like, okay, then look at it an overall market, you know, put all the impressions together, put all the clicks together, put all the spend together, put all the leads, and look at how did your overall marketing performance shift when you changed a specific strategy? Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Testify.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

I'm all like I'm Ryle.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

That's I'm ready. Exactly. I think, you know, I used to work on site and people used to have a book and they'd circle, they'd tab the pages and they'd walk in with the book and they'd go, you know, you had you have one month off. I'm like, oh, that magazine's three months old. That special done sale. And that's the beauty of the internet, right? You can change your specials and up, it's updated within 30 minutes. You have a unit that's not leasing, and you could go on and put a special for that specific unit. Like, that's the beauty of the world that we live in with this instant information. But the instant information, there's also a lot of it. And so they are, they don't need us as much because they're getting it all, and then they just make the decision. Sometimes, a lot of times, they apply online. They never even see your community. They see your 3D tours, you know, they they look at all of your videos, they go to your socials, they go to your property website, they apply online. And then once they apply online, they come and they sometimes are now even asking the leasing consultants, can you just put a lockbox and put the key in the door? Because I'm driving in from Tennessee in the middle of the night, you know. So, I mean, if we can buy multi-million dollar houses over the internet and Ferraris, I mean, I'm I'm we are leasing apartments over the internet too. So it happens.

SPEAKER_05 34:10

I mean, you're right. It's true. Um, I always thought I always found it interesting that people would do that, but they people do. They buy houses without really looking at them. They they rent apartments without really looking at them because they know the area. They there's so much info you can get Google and get on the street and look around and do all the things or whatever, whatever you're using um for your maps. So that that is interesting. I mean, the information is there.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Yeah, yep, for sure. I mean, you rent an Airbnb on the luxurious beach location, and you just have to hope that all of their pictures and all of the reviews are truthful because you're investing your weeks-long vacation, your money and your relaxation time on this place. And if it's not gonna be good, you're gonna be very disappointed, right? And so, for in those instances, you know, people are spending thousands of dollars and then they get there and they're either very happy and they have a great vacation or they're very disappointed because they got what is it, catfished, you know.

SPEAKER_04 35:06

So, but I love Airbnb. We stayed at a place, you're reminding me. I we stayed at a place in New Orleans for spring break. We went down, the place was darling, but when you walked out to the right and went around the block, there were it was very sad, but it was there uh it wasn't a very nice block. Um, and then when you walked out the door and went to the left, it was fine, and the block was very fine, and the instructions in the unit specifically said, when you want to go to the trolley, go out the front door and turn to the left.

SPEAKER_03 35:44

Like they were like don't dare go to the right, and yeah, like don't go to the right, and I was like, Yeah, they forgot the pictures to the right, they forgot to include those in the listing, and it ended up being fine, but it's just it's kind of what you're talking about. It's like they they they told their own um narrative of the Yeah, well, because it's it what is it that they always say you can always put lipstick on a pig on the internet because people don't know until they get there, and then they're just like, whoa, this isn't what I pictured at all.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

But for the most part, you know, I mean, I like you said, Chris, people can go to Google Earth, they can see the street view, they can look on a map, see where it's located, see what it's around there, see where they're even on apartments.com, they can put in their gym address, their Starbucks, and they can see how far those are from the community. If they're, you know, at least kids these days, they're real addicted to that lot, what is a grande matcha nonsense. And so they gotta make sure there's a coffee place nearby. Um, and they can find all that stuff out and do their research. And, you know, I I had two reps in Austin that moved sight unseen. Um, one moved from Richmond, Virginia, one moved from Atlanta, Georgia, and they leased apartments online and just picked up the keys, signed their lease, and moved in. So it happens all the time.

SPEAKER_05 36:59

I have a quick question. So we're talking about the the generations. Are most of your users on mobile? I would assume.

unknown 37:05

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 37:07

We just go to So that's another thing to keep in mind. Like when you're thinking about how the listing is going to look, and we all look at stuff uh from our desk on desktop. We have to remember, go look at it on the mobile. How are you presenting with everybody else? Um and I know on a site like yours, it's all going to be categorized, but it's something to think about, you know, that people are using their mobile phone more and more.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yep. We have it broken down on this new report that we just launched today, and it shows how many people are searching on the desktop and how many people are so searching on mobile. Because I do think, right, like let's say I'm at work and then I'm like, oh God, I got a text from Ann. I got to decide if I'm renewing my lease or not. And so I'm sitting at work and I'm gonna go on like two bedroom apartments near whatever my office is, and then I start getting served up stuff, and then I go on of hermitts.com and then I'm like sending it to, you know, to Chris. I'm like, hey, Chris, like check this one out, man. Do we want to move here? They got a two-month free and increasing the rent, you know, not $200 anymore. It's only like $50. Now are the renewal increases, but you know, still there's a $50 increase. We can go live in a brand new one that has, you know, so that's how it starts. A lot of times it will start online and then they'll move to mobile so they can share it with their roommate or their significant other, or they'll do all the search online themselves and go, okay, I'm gonna go see this one on Saturday. Um, but they don't make the choice to go see very many. I mean, my my kids are all in apartments and they make very few choices on the ones that they're gonna see. Um, my son went and saw three, and every single one, he told them how they found it, how he found the apartment. None of them asked, not one single leasing consultant asked. And he said, Do you don't you want to know how I found this apartment? They're like, Yeah. And he was like, Well, I found it on apartments.com. They're like, Oh, that's great. Didn't write it down anywhere. Then he went to another one and the girl was like, Look at this sparkling pool. And he was like, Yep, saw that on apartments.com. She's like, Look at this spacious closet. And he's like, Yep. And she goes, like, do you work for them? And he goes, No, but my mom does. And she goes, Oh, wow. She goes, Who's your mom? And he was like, Didi Cobb.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

And she was like, Oh my god, we love Dee Dee. And Matthew calls me and he goes, Mom, they love you, but nobody cares. Nobody's asking. Nobody cares. I'm like, did you tell her, Matthew? And he was like, Yeah, no, I told her.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

He goes, and then he goes, I went to another place and the girl was like, Oh, is she a locator? And he is like, No, he goes, It's in a website. She goes, Oh, and the manager popped her head out and goes, We pay to advertise on there in the police and salt. And I was like, Oh, okay. So she was like, Well, just let me know if we need to pay someone. Matthew was like, This is a learning problem. He's like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 39:38

So now we gotta, we have to, we have to do more training on on what we're doing for our marketing. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah, yeah, that does make sense. Yeah, it's you know, it's never there's never an easy answer. And I think it's it's it's it's hard on everybody, right? You're spending dollars, you want the dollars to work. We're trying to prove our validity and prove that we we are doing what we are what we're promising to do for you, which is give you exposure and put your name out there. And it's hard. And you know, that's why it's definitely an education process, and that's why we love trying to meet with our mic doesn't happen all the time, Chris, but we love to try to meet with our marketing team once a quarter because there's updates all the time. Um, we just launched Matterport Max, and that's a great package. We ship the Matterport camera to you, and you can shoot Matterports of everything that you have at your community, all of your units, all of your amenities. Um, and then you host you post them on your site. So when somebody is moving from Atlanta, Georgia, and they want to move into 2202, they can actually see what 2202 looks like inside and what the view is on the outside. And so it's very just giving them more information and working them down the funnel to make the decision to lease at your community. And so we just we try to meet with you guys to tell you these things because a lot of times you're making the decision between $3,000 and where you're gonna put it. And we don't want all your money, we just want some of it.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

Just a little, just a little, Chris, just a little.

SPEAKER_05 41:02

Just a smidgen.

SPEAKER_04 41:04

I think that's interesting too. Do you ever envision a world where maybe the units when more unit level assets are available across properties where maybe the units are being highlighted first instead of the properties? Because right now, um, apartment marketing is very much community focused, right? But like if you I don't know, I've always and I've talked about this a couple of times on various podcasts, and I think about it a lot, but I think about the idea of renting apartments as a single product, as opposed to, you know, like if you buy, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

I just I think about that is I just like again back to your Airbnb story, like wasting each unit individually. And and we do have, if you have the integrations, like there's a lot of um mapping software now where they show your floor plans, unit level floor plans, and they actually show that I'm going to lease 2202, and you click on it, it shows that exact floor plan. The only way to show that actual unit, like what we were just talking about, is like with Matterport doing the actual video tour of that unit. And but yeah, I mean, they want to see on the map that they're gonna lease 2202 and it's on the second floor and it overlooks the pool because then that that brings value to me. I like the noise, I want to see the people, I want to sit out there and have coffee and look at the people at the pool. So that's I would love to lease 2202. Chris may never want to live in 2202. He wants to live in, you know, 3606 that faces the water tower that's on the third floor and is very quiet and secluded. You know, he likes his piece. It and that information again helps them go farther down the search journey and make a better decision on leasing at your community. So a lot of times people you probably have residents that live at your properties right now and they don't know the name of their property, they just know the unit number, their address, and the unit number that they, you know, roll into. So ultimately they are just purchasing that unit. A lot sometimes they don't even engage with your activities or your amenities or anything like that. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_05 43:10

This was a really good conversation. And in the last piece on the amenities, I wanted to kind of pop a random question. Usually Ann and I ask our guests if they think Google's gonna die. And um, I think Google's around forever, and answers, but Anne thinks it's gonna die.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Ann, do you think chat GPT is gonna demolish Google, or what are you thinking? What is your thoughts?

SPEAKER_04 43:32

Yeah, I yeah, I mean, I do, yes, I do think so. Um, yes, those were my thoughts. Was that um eventually, much like you say, oh, just Google it, it would be oh, just GPT. Yeah, ask my chat GPT.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

Do you have a chat platform that you like over another?

SPEAKER_04 43:51

Yeah, I mean, I use Chat GPT. I like I have one for my personal and then I have one for work, and so my work. Is a paid one, um, and my personal is a not paid one. Um those that's really what I've fallen into, although I keep telling myself, you know, because now I'm hearing, well, each of these platforms serves a different purpose. So like perplexity might help you do. I was talking to someone about SEO the other day, and they said, Oh, I really like to use perplexity to come up with um FAQs and stuff. So I'm like, oh no, no, I gotta like learn all these things.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

When my Governor, one of my best friends sold all of her worldly possessions and and decided to travel across the world and she's been to Bali and Thailand and Italy and Spain, like all the places. And Claude was what she used. There's a a Claude and I think there's a Claude and Chloe or something, but she was using Claude. So when she was like, I did all my research on Claude, you need to use Claude. So I downloaded Claude, I was using Claude all the time. She's like, girl, Claude's dead. You gotta move on to chat GPT. And I was like, Well, you told me I needed to use Claude. And she was like, he doesn't have good information anymore. Everybody's using chat, so it's feeding the beast, and so chat's better. I'm like, okay. So I pay for the paid version of chat because she will only answer so many questions in a day, right? Ann? And then she's like, You've hit your limit.

SPEAKER_04 45:12

And I like models. Yeah, I'm like, I need you to know me better. I mean, I'm to a point now, like, if if someone says something to me and I say this kindly and that it like confuses me a little bit, I'll go to Chat GPT and I'll be like, what do you think they meant by this? And then it will like literally like now, it's always so kind, right? Like, we'll probably said this because of your like your ability to ask questions, and I'm like, I think you're like be knowed anyway. Like, that's the point of inter that's like the level of interaction I have now. And so it's yeah, it's really interesting. Okay, but I totally no but you're just good.

SPEAKER_05 45:53

Yeah, I use Gemini in chat, but you wouldn't be surprised for me to use Gemini, I'm sure. Um, if you listen to the pod and my love for Google, right? Um, and in fact, I think I think I just read that they're signing the deal with Apple. Uh Apple's gonna use Gemini, not chat, for their knowledge base. So that's true. If I just read that breaking news on the pod, um that's pretty big for Google. Um, and Google will live forever, and um, but I did have a quick off-the-wall question for you. As we close out the pod, you have been doing this a long time. What amenities matter? And what should we be promoting? And I know every property is different, but just in general, like very high level. And what what's the next phase? Like, what's the future of amenities? Is it what we're offering now, or is there something that we're going to be offering, or you think we should be offering in the future? Um, that we haven't really thought about.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

You know what the number one searched amenity is on apartments.com without fail, all the time, air conditioning. And got it.

SPEAKER_05 46:52

Congratulations, yay, and gold star, gold star, and by you didn't know I had that.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

It didn't you didn't know that that was just tucked away in here.

SPEAKER_05 47:01

That is amazing. What recall you had right there. I know the answer. Call of me, Professor.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

And got it. It's air conditioning.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Um, and then things like dog park. It's and it's also so interesting because you know, I used to oversee Austin, I don't have Austin anymore, but um, I have Austin San Antonio, Al Paso and Corpus in the Valley. And so the the search results, like the amenities that are rent ranges are different, unit types are different, and amenities are different. And like Austin, they're always looking for those um what do you call EV things, the plug-in cars to plug in your car. E V charging EV charging stations, is that what it is? So they're always looking for that in Austin. They ain't searching that in San Antonio. So it's really interesting how like amenities can be searched, you know, different different engagement things, but it's always air conditioning number one. Doesn't matter if you live on the East Coast, the West Coast, always air conditioning.

SPEAKER_05 47:55

Anything on the in the future that you think people are gonna start think that we need in these apartment communities that we don't provide?

SPEAKER_01 48:02

You know, I mean the dog parks are obviously a big thing. Everybody turned in their dilapidated tennis courts and basketball courts into dog parks. Every, you know, a lot my own son that is a grown adult does not have a child, he has a dog. And so dog parks are obviously a very big thing. You know, um, a big trend we saw for a little while were wine bars. So they'd have windown Wednesday, and so they have like wine caves or wine cellars in their clubhouses. Um, but I think it's more of experience. Like, you know, they want to see that there's fun and activities there. Like people, most people want to engage and do fun things. And so if you have windown Wednesday or Food Truck Friday or movie in the park and all that kind of stuff, like those are the kind of things that I think draw residents in more so than just like a fitness facility, right? Because they like to go to their anytime fitness or lifetime or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 48:49

So awesome. That's interesting. Should ooh, communities that would be interesting. Communities not having a fitness center, but instead like supplementing a membership. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Well, because when you go to the fitness center, how many people are in there at any given time? I mean, we go to communities all the time. Yeah. I go, I mean, uh we go see 10, 15 properties a day, and there is no one in a gym. And we go from early in the morning to late in the afternoon, and there's nobody in the gym. People lay out by the pool for sure. Um, but I don't see many people in the gym. I don't see many, I never see anybody in a movie room anymore. And it's so funny because like if I go to a property that still has a movie room, I'm like, look at this thing still kicking around. They got a movie room.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

You know, we got one.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

It's you know awesome, it's great, but like, what do you do with it? Like, you have to just make it engaging by having Windown Wednesday and a movie or chip flick Friday or something, you know, like you got to find a way to make it creative. But you know, there is a lot of spaces, office spaces. Although I did go to a property the other day and there was somebody in the office, so I was like, maybe the office thing is still a useful thing.

SPEAKER_05 49:55

So this is a few years ago for me, but in early in my career when I had to do, you know, some stuff like look at a video of a gym and see how much use it was getting at two in the morning. Our at the time that our gyms did get used 24 hours a day, like there would be doctors and nurses or police officers that work a late shift that come in at three in the morning to go use that gym, and it always surprises us how much use it was getting. Um, but I get your point. Like during the day, you know, people are working, whatever, they may not be able to go use those facilities. Yeah, but that's really interesting. I think the little aha there is that maybe it's not necessarily an amenity on site, but it's an event that you're throwing, or you're consistent with your events, or you're doing something within the community that everybody can rally around. So that was really nice, DD. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Yeah, oh absolutely. I've had a great time. That's a good plug for our sponsor too, Flamingo.

SPEAKER_05 50:48

That's right. They do events.

SPEAKER_04 50:50

Yes, you can they have this whole platform.

SPEAKER_05 50:53

It's really cool, actually.

SPEAKER_04 50:54

Yes, yeah, they have a whole platform that you go in and you can order an event, and it's really cool. Yeah, so you basically, I'm not explaining it well, but like let's say that you were like, Oh, I want to throw a movie night, but you were like, but I don't want to go buy all the things. You would go to Flamingo and basically order it, and someone would come in and bring all the things for the movie and yeah, they have hundreds of options. It's really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

It's like a party in a box, yeah, kind of.

SPEAKER_04 51:24

Yeah. Um, and it allows you to, you know, then all of a sudden you're not limited by your time and creativity. And, you know, like if I had to throw an event, I'd be like, who wants to fill out spreadsheets together? Like it would be really I have a sign-up sheet. Everybody pick something. Yeah, like that's a true story, but you know, anyway, so thank you for um uh you know giving uh giving a segue to flamingo. But yes, Dee Dee, thank you so much for being here. This was amazing. We have to have a part two.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

Um, yeah, I'd love to.

SPEAKER_04 51:58

And we appreciate you. Thank you always to Carlos, thank you to Chris, of course. Didi, thank you. Thank you to Flamingo, our sponsor. And until next time, this has been the apartment department.