With a new decade rapidly approaching, it’s time to start thinking about which new technologies you want to add to your stack in 2020. Keep in mind that we’re in the age of the customer, and according to Forrester Research, companies who are ahead in customer experience have five times greater revenue growth than those who are laggard. It’s because they understand their buyers and how they want to buy and they understand what they expect and how they want to engage. 

Whether your main goal is to increase net rental income, fill occupancies, or thoughtfully guide seniors and their families through one of life’s most difficult decisions, these marketing trends will help you succeed not only in the new year, but well into the next decade. 

Top Marketing Trends for 2020

Predictive Marketing 

With so many unique customer journeys, knowing where to invest your marketing dollars for the greatest impact can be difficult. The key to getting the best return on your investment is attribution – and it’s more than assigning credit. Attribution is the backbone of predictive marketing. 

Predictive marketing takes into account the performance of each previous digital advertising campaign and determines the probability of it contributing to a conversion. It does this by using an advanced attribution model that analyzes the entire customer journey and prioritizes campaigns that have the biggest impact on performance. 

Real estate marketers that utilize predictive marketing in 2020 can be nimble by using data and automation to make proactive strategy adjustments that will ultimately save them time and money. 

Website Accessibility

Individuals with disabilities often face barriers that make content on the internet inaccessible. Back in August, we wrote about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and the importance of compliance in digital marketing. Going forward, website accessibility – meaning the design and development best practices that all users need to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with a website – will play a large role in website design trends. 

In order to make the web a more accessible place for all users, website accessibility and compliance should be a top priority for marketers. Here’s why it’s important:

  • Ease Legal Risks – Nearly 20 lawsuits regarding website accessibility were brought to federal courtrooms in the U.S. during 2018 alone. Take action by making your website more accessible and avoid potential litigation. 
  • Improve Website Performance – Making your website more accessible can have a positive impact on overall performance, including usability and search engine optimization (SEO).
  • Reach a Wider Audience – Nearly 20% of Internet users have a disability. By ignoring website accessibility, you may be missing out on traffic from this large portion of the population.
  • Stand Out From Your Competition – Ensuring your website meets website accessibility guidelines helps your property stand out from competitors who haven’t invested in these updates yet.
  • Show Your Customers You Care – Reach a wider audience with a website that communicates your focus on providing a positive experience to all of your customers.

Having an accessible website not only helps you stand out from the competition, it also provides a positive user experience for all customers, which is good business.

Guided-Renting Experiences

Your website is one of the most important channels for connecting with users and communicating with them on their own terms. Chatbots are an alternative communication tool that can be programmed to help recruit new renters and assist residents with common requests. Users want to interact with companies in their own time, on their own terms. By implementing a chatbot on your website in 2020, users won’t have to wait on a human to reply to their message and questions can be answered 24 hours a day. 

But chatbots aren’t the only technology that can be used to supplement the rental experience. Texting and messenger services also improve contact rates.

Crowd-Sourced Reputation

Your online reputation is your brand. Your business needs to have a strong focus on reputation management in order to build brand trust. You must proactively manage your brand online in order to attract the most qualified interest in your properties. With a brand reputation management strategy you can leverage the value of your brand and community, leading to an improved online presence and ranking. Two of the key factors in your online reputation are your reviews and what people are saying about you on social media. 

Everyone from Gen Z to Baby Boomers check social media and review sites. Positive online reviews play an important role in your future renters’ customer journey as well as your pricing by driving demand. It’s important to treat reviews and what people say about your brand online like the valuable asset they are. 

Respond to all reviews, be prompt, and be specific. Users don’t want to read a generic response that you copied and pasted. Don’t ignore negative reviews — 30 percent of customers who received a response to their negative review later changed it to a positive one. Be sure to respond appropriately and don’t go back and forth publicly with an unhappy customer. Your reputation management strategy should include a response strategy and be authentic. 

With a scalable solution for reputation management, you can actively manage your reputation, monitor competitors, know what’s being said about you online, and attract the most qualified interest in your property.

Personalization Through Dynamic Content 

Expect to see an emergence in technologies that recognize users and personalize content based on their Google ID. For example, ads that drop you back on the last page you visited of a website may become more prevalent in 2020. Today’s consumers have changed their buying habits to reflect the experiences they have with a company. 

Renters want more personalization and more positive moments. Dynamic content changes based on customer segmentation and database-driven signals that inform rules-based triggers. By taking advantage of dynamic content personalization, your brand may experience increased visitor engagement, improved customer experience, increased conversion rates, and increased lead generation. 

Sales and marketing departments have access to a vast amount of data and personal information about prospects today. In an effort to drive the most qualified leads, personalization through dynamic content will automate retargeted ad creative according to users browsing history.

Stay on Trend in 2020

A brand new decade promises more innovation in technology and artificial intelligence. We can’t wait to see what the ‘20s bring to marketing automation and real estate marketing. Stay ahead of emerging trends by downloading one of our new on-demand webinars, Turn Marketing Into Move-ins: Top Trends in 2020.

Multifamily Webinar – Presented by Megg Shaw-Butler, Sr. Director of Multifamily Strategy and Christina Aguet, Multifamily Key Account Manager

Senior Living Webinar – Presented by Jamison Gosselin, VP of Senior Living Strategy; Craig Branstad, Solutions Engineer; and Celena Canode, Senior Living Marketing Manager

Self Storage Webinar – Presented by Adam Mackie, Director of Self Storage Account Management and Sarah Stangel, Self Storage Key Account Manager

See you in 2020!