First off, I’ll apologize for the length of the video. I hope you take time to listen. If not, I’ve included the transcript below.
All inspired by my friend Mike Brewer. He’s been doing some great work at his company Mills Properties, and I’ve envied his blogging efforts in 2014 so far. His post, Apartment Business is a Media Business, spurred this video. So please take time to check it out, and be sure to read through the comments as well. All good stuff.
Would love your feedback here on my blog or anywhere this has been shared. Thanks so much, and I hope to see you at AIM or NAA this year.
Read the transcript –
What’s going on everybody Mark Juleen here on MarkJuleen.com. It’s been a minute but hey I wanted to reach out. You know I’m always looking for inspiration online, and that comes via a number of channels. This week my inspiration comes from Mike Brewer, and for those that don’t follow mbrewergroup.com, his blog, he’s been blowing up this year with really good content. Now we had a great discussion on his post this week and that post really spurred me to think about a couple things related to apartment marketing, the apartment business, and some conversation that have really been going on as relates to a couple conferences that happened earlier this year as well as how it relates to this particular post that Mike put out.
Now, Mike’s post was on the apartment business is a media business, and went on to say that apartment marketing is a media business. I thought this was a really broad statement. I feel like I knew what Mike was trying to accomplish there when he was trying to say that if we’re looking for people’s attention we’re in the media business. But I don’t like the way he phrased it, and I want to touch on a couple points here. Number one, the apartment business is not a media business. I think that maybe didn’t mean it that way and I think I get what he was trying to say, but the apartment business is a relationship business. From all the relationships we have with getting our real estate deals done, to the end-user, the customer that’s moving into our communities, it’s a relationship business all day. So for us to say that we’re a media business… I don’t believe that’s the case.
However, I know another argument that is kinda out there is that if we are looking for attention, if we are a relationship business, and online media is the wave, right… and we need to build relationships then we need to push out content. Guess what?… We’re not the content business either. So we’re not in the media business, we’re not in the content business. I want everybody to kind of sit on that for second, think, and soak that in a little bit because here’s what the business is we are in… the relationship business.
Now, it may take content just for those conversations to begin building those relationships. And it may take using these media platforms to push some of these messages out or get creative with the way that we are sending our message’s, so that we can begin to communicate with our residents, our prospects, or whoever it may be. But, it’s all in an effort to build relationships. So I want everybody to be thinking about that. We are not in the media business, we’re not in the content business, we’re in the relationship business. From the front of the house, to the back to the house, to development, to finance that’s how we do it.
And to be honest with you … think about it … that’s about what every business does. It’s just the way that they’re going about it to build relationships. Apple may build relationships in a way that they build products that are gorgeous to their customers, and they’ve established a relationship in that way. And Google has established a relationship with its customers because it provides a search engine that we all basically have to have. That’s how they build a relationship with us it may not be that personal touch, may not be that one on one, but I believe as apartment marketers we definitely have an opportunity because we are a service business as well as a product business. We have an opportunity to build better relationships with customers.
So let me know what your feedback is on that. 🙂 Thanks to Mike for the inspiration. I hope to see you guys at AIM and NAA this year. I look forward to seeing everyone there.
