Move The Google Needle

The Social Media buzz is everywhere, and lots of apartment communities are diving in. The yak amongst the pundits is that Social Media Marketing won't scale. We certainly don't agree with that here at the Urbane Lab, and we have some compelling experiments that will flush out that whole argument.

We are working with Paragon Properties, specifically to Move the Google Needle. A little bit about Paragon,;

Paragon Properties, headquartered in Bingham Farms, MI, is a privately owned company currently operating 4,400 apartment units throughout Southeast Michigan. We offer residents “Lifestyles for Everyday Living” with spacious floor plans at affordable prices. Many modern conveniences are offered such as online rent payments, online utility connections and online maintenance requests in addition to custom upgrades, fitness centers, free WiFi clubhouses, and resident social functions.

We are particularly excited about this Urbane Lab Project, as Paragon, albeit is a well run property management company, they are pretty average, pretty much the same as a lot of other property management companies that up until now has paid little attention to their Internet Marketing and Branding.

All Is About To Change
Paragon President, Justin Dunckel is taking the bull by the horns, and is jumping into Social Media Marketing full bore. The Urbane Lab has been given cart blanch free rein to design, implement and execute a Social Media Marketing Strategy, with a pretty tall expectation.

Target and Performance Goals for 2010 for Paragon Properties

• Increase Web Traffic by 60%
  
• Increase Physical Traffic, (Guest Cards) by 20%
• Decrease Market Costs by 30%,
  

We have logged all of the data, Pre and Post Launch of this nine to twelve month marketing campaign. We plan to Blow it Out of the Water and significantly Move The Google Needle. We will be reporting Year over Year Results each quarter. Hitting the above referenced targets will allow Paragon to propel past their comps.

What About Negative Comments
And for those apartment executives worried about those pesky "negative comments" that sometimes surface, Justin has agreed to personally address and answer those on the blogs. We think that is just uber cool, and may well start to put to rest the crazy over rated fear of negative comments.

Too, We will be doing a bi monthly video interview with Justin and his team members as to what is going right, what is going wrong and generally whats on their minds. Stay tuned for those, they should be great.

So, Does Your 2010 Marketing Plan call for a 50% swing, increasing traffic by 20% and lowering cost by 30%, Just Curious,