They Ask, You Answer: How to Win Over Today’s Digital Customer

Author Marcus Sheridan Shares Guide to Earning Consumer Trust

What can your communities do to attract renters and gain their trust? Keynote speaker Marcus Sheridan outlined his guiding philosophy and top tips for customer success in a recent Apartments.com event for clients in Phoenix, AZ.

The marketing guru and bestselling author of They Ask, You Answer highlighted the importance of catering to the needs of the digital consumer in an era of fast-paced decisions.

Turning around a struggling pool business

October 10, 2008, was an unforgettable day for Sheridan. At the time, the entrepreneur was head of a small pool business in Virginia, and the crash in financial markets pushed his company to the brink of bankruptcy. Worried by the impending recession, customers left and right began canceling their plans for a pool installation.

“We lost a quarter of a million dollars within the first 48 hours,” Sheridan said.

To save his business, Sheridan launched a new approach to sales and content marketing, serving up as much information as possible to prospective customers.

“Every single question I’ve been asked by someone with respect to a swimming pool, I’m going to answer it,” Sheridan said, explaining that his goal was to “become the Wikipedia of pools.”

Video clip: Why you should focus on your customers’ needs

After this shift in strategy, Rivers Pools regained momentum, becoming the most trafficked pool website in the world and expanding into a nationwide company.

4 steps to building trust

To develop trust among renters, multifamily marketers need to understand the enemy of trust: doubt. Seeds of doubt create friction, which prevents customers from acting, Sheridan said.

To avoid this trap, Sheridan shared his four keys to building trust in the digital age:

1. You must be willing to talk about what others do not in your space.
2. You must be willing to show what others do not in your space.
3. You must be willing to sell in a way others won’t sell in your space.
4. You must be more human than anyone else in your space.

What does this look like in practice? Among the key considerations for renters, Sheridan highlighted cost and reviews. He underscored the need for transparency. Share costs and fees upfront, without making renters search for them.

“Whoever gives you what you’re looking for,” Sheridan said, “they’re going to get your business.”

Video clip: The role of customer frustration

The importance of video

Multimedia is an essential tool in addressing digital consumers’ questions and earning their trust, Sheridan said.

He highlighted a list of seven videos that apartment communities can use to bring in more renters, including personalized bio videos for each member of the leasing team and guided walkthrough videos that discuss who the apartments may and may not be a fit for.

“Oftentimes when we show something, we only say, ‘This is why it’s wonderful, this is why you’ll love it,’” Sheridan said, emphasizing the need to share both pros and cons to establish yourself as an authentic, trustworthy source.

Emails that get opened

How many one-to-one emails get opened? Only 18 percent, Sheridan said. Not only do recipients rarely open emails, those who do often don’t read them — or don’t understand them.

To increase this open rate, Sheridan recommended a complete overhaul of email strategy, starting with the subject line.

Video clip: How to improve your subject lines

Most leasing agents and sales teams haven’t been trained to write effective emails, he said. The result is generic subject lines like “Following up,” “Reaching out,” “Touching base,” and “Checking in.”

“We’re all guilty of this, but we can do better,” Sheridan said.

Instead, subject lines should include the recipient’s name, reference “video” (with a video included in the body of the email), and speak to the details of the person’s situation. This approach can increase the open rate from 18 percent to nearly 60 percent, Sheridan said.

What the seller-free experience looks like

Today’s consumers are 80 percent along the buying journey before they reach out to the company. And this shift isn’t going to reverse, Sheridan said, explaining that in 2017, this figure was only 70 percent.

“They are vetting us to death before we meet them,” he said.

Video clip: How the buyer journey has shortened

To help move prospective renters along the buyer journey, apartment operators should offer these three essentials:

• Self-scheduling
• Self-selection
• Self-pricing

“Anytime someone is trying to make a choice,” Sheridan said, “you can easily come up with a tool that allow them to make said choice before they have to talk with a human.”

With one-third of today’s consumers looking for a “seller-free” sales experience, it’s essential for apartment communities to answer renters’ questions upfront, Sheridan said, and to do so as transparently and authentically as possible.