Your Property Management Company’s Guide to Leveraging AI in Multi-Location Marketing

Today, the enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its transformative influence on marketing and businesses is at an all-time high. AI can dramatically revolutionize your PMC’s business operations and multi-location marketing strategy.

This article explores how AI can enhance your PMC’s resident experience and marketing strategies, ultimately uplifting resident retention and signed leases. We’ll also explain how your PMC can best prepare and begin to implement AI into your PMC’s marketing strategy. 

For a quick summary, check out our infographic below.

How PMCs Can Best Use AI in Their Multi-Location Marketing Strategy

According to a recent survey conducted by SOCi, we found that nearly two-thirds of multi-location marketers have already implemented generative AI into their marketing strategy and day-to-day operations.

However, 70% of marketers feel inundated by its rapid development. Your PMC’s team members might have similar sentiments. We can help quell those fears by explaining where and how your PMC can utilize AI in marketing.

1. Respond to Reviews to Boost Your Online Reputation

Reviews heavily influence current and potential residents. They also care how PMCs respond to them. Research shows that:

• Ninety-six percent of people consider online reviews and ratings when searching for a rental property.
• More than 8 in 10 people look at online reviews at the beginning of their property search.
• Forty percent of consumers expect a response within 24 hours after a negative review is posted.

Generative AI can drastically improve your review response strategy by helping you draft well-written, authentic, and on-brand responses in seconds. 

Your local property management teams are likely stretched for time. Using generative AI to respond to reviews utilizes the transformative power and efficiency of AI.

2. Generate Content and Engage on Social Media

You can also use generative AI to draft social media content and interact with your audiences. With the various daily tasks your property teams must accomplish, it’s challenging to sit down and come up with engaging social media content.

Instead, use generative AI to create:

• Captions
• Campaign ideas
• Property descriptions
• Quizzes and polls
• Video scripts
• Neighborhood or local insights

Remember, generative AI is still a tool, and you need to ensure there’s human oversight. Your PMC and local teams know your residents and areas best, so adjust the AI-generated content accordingly!

It’s also worth noting that your PMC should produce locally relevant content when using generative AI. Our research found that on social media, localized content receives 12x the engagement rate of more general or “non-localized content.” So, try to keep incorporating local content into your generative AI prompts. Here’s an example of creating localized content ideas via ChatGPT:

3. Utilize Chatbots to Improve the Resident Experience

To convert apartment searchers, you need to make a positive impression within seconds of them visiting your website. To make this positive first impression, potential residents need to find and receive information about your property easily and quickly.

Chatbots can help your PMC present vital information in seconds, helping you differentiate yourself from competitors and convert more residents.

In 2022, 57% of people wanted “quick, detailed, and expert answers to [their] questions” when interacting with chatbots. A quality chatbot can do that as it relies on and uses elements of AI such as natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs).

Using AI fundamentals, chatbots can also gather and analyze data from interactions, enabling PMCs to gain insights into potential and current residents’ preferences and behaviors. 

For instance, are your most frequent questions about your properties’ rental costs? Or is there a positive sentiment around specific amenities to one region or area? These insights are important to know about and analyze. 

Ultimately, chatbots can help streamline operations by providing 24/7 support, improving resident services, and driving conversions. The ROI is undeniable as they save your PMC time, resources, and money.

4. Refine Your Resident Management With Superior Analytics

Perhaps one of AI’s most useful abilities is its aptness to gather and analyze large data sets. Data is particularly relevant for multi-location PMCs. You have numerous properties gaining millions of monthly data points across your local listings, local social profiles, chatbots, emails, etc.

AI organizes, compartmentalizes, and analyzes these data points and makes precision recommendations. 

For instance, you can use AI to:

• Analyze historical data from current and former residents’ online reviews, social media engagements, and survey responses.
  
• Use this historical data to influence your properties’ operations and quickly address residents’ feedback.
  
• Help create tailored marketing strategies and campaigns, and then analyze these campaigns’ performance.

These AI-backed analyses and their associated campaigns can help your properties better attract and retain residents.

How Your PMC Needs to Prepare for AI

As demonstrated, AI opens the door to countless possibilities for enhancing your PMC’s multi-location marketing strategy. But, how should your PMC prepare and begin to implement AI? Here’s a structured roadmap to start your AI journey:

Educate and Train

Employees need to have a base knowledge of AI to understand where and how they can use it. To support education, your PMC can offer AI-focused courses, workshops, and webinars to your employees. Also, make time for your team to attend these trainings by prioritizing them over other tasks.

It’s important to train your PMC on AI-related governance and compliance laws and rulings as well. Jonathan Moran, head of MarTech Solutions Marketing at SAS — an analytics and AI company — recently spoke on AI compliance and said, “If you get it [compliance] wrong, your company could be fined severely…with the EU AI Act, companies can be fined up to 7% of total turnover or revenue for using generative AI improperly.” 

That’s not an insignificant amount. So, ensure you’re keeping up with and adhering to all regulations around AI. 

Survey Employees

After your team has a baseline understanding of AI, try to identify where AI can make the most significant impact. Survey your corporate and local employees to discover where they struggle the most with their current marketing efforts. 

For instance, which tasks are repetitive and take up time? Are there specific pain points when communicating with future, current, and past residents? How can AI help? 

Define Clear Roles and Expectations

You also want to set clear and achievable goals for your AI projects. Your internal AI-related survey data and trainings should make it easier to set expectations across the organization.

Once your goals are set, ensure you have clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the campaigns and efforts that will include AI. Assign project managers, AI strategists, campaign owners, etc.

Monitor, Measure, and Evaluate Your AI 

Many of your current multi-location marketing KPIs will stay the same, such as resident retention, average engagement rate, review volume, and their sentiment. 

However, you should closely monitor how much time your marketers save with AI solutions and if they’re delivering quality content to audiences. As with any marketing campaign, try to A/B test and identify informative trends.

You can download our interactive workbook, A CMO’s Planning Guide to Navigating AI Transformation in 2024, for further details on implementing AI into your multi-location marketing strategy!

Evaluate and Select AI Vendors and Partners 

Your PMC likely doesn’t have its own internal AI-driven multi-location marketing solution. Thus, you need to collaborate with a business partner like SOCi.

At SOCi, we’re layering our comarketing software with SOCi Genius, our AI automation technology. We’re here to empower your teams to automate traditional marketing tasks, empowering you to focus more on your residents. We’re also here to help guide you along your AI transformation journey.

For a summary of the content covered in this blog, read our infographic below!

Request a demo today for a more in-depth look at how SOCi utilizes AI to help your PMC gain and retain more residents and stand out from competitors!