Over many years, our role as a full-service marketing partner has evolved in tandem with the growth of client PMC Property Group.
During that time, the firm — which ranks as one of the largest residential real estate development firms on the East Coast and the overall largest in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore — nearly doubled its holdings to include over 100 properties and more than 15,000 rental units plus millions of square feet of commercial space along the East Coast corridor.
What started as a corporate relations website and brand profile project grew to include an apartment rentals website and a virtual CMO role that now includes consultation and execution of a company-wide brand development program. During this time of explosive growth, we have designed and executed a cohesive portfolio-wide suite of distinct but related property identities and collateral crossover print marketing materials that span everything from business collateral to property-specific promotional materials, advertising, and environmental signage, as well as internal corporate materials. In addition, we have coordinated and overseen extensive integrated advertising efforts, including paid search and targeted social media placements across a selection of key properties to boost both inquiry and occupancy rates.
Over the years, we have iterated regularly on their digital products to keep them relevant and on the cutting edge of the market. We began a second phase of the main website project by adding lead reporting and queries to the site to allow PMC to remarket to leads by areas or geography of interest, creating a powerful addition to their online sales toolkit.
The third major iteration of the site also brought some significant changes in terms of user experience improvements. We completely re-envisioned the apartment search experience to be more easily digestible and upgraded the interface to allow users to find properties based not only on city, but also by specific neighborhood, price, number of bedrooms, and level of pet-friendliness. Real-time rents and availability are fed into the site from their Yardi RentCafe property management solution, also allowing them to promote properties with the best availability at the highest level, and a unique feed we created also allows them to automatically populate building information and unit pricing and availability to third-party listing sites like Zillow. There is also a new option for visitors to opt into a geolocation feature that will drive them more immediately to properties that are near and relevant to them — as well as the ability to browse the properties using a list or map view to see them in context within their respective cities. Finally, we merged the corporate and retail versions of the site into one seamless experience using a similar framework, added some overall graphic and aesthetic upgrades, and expanded important marketing tools like the case study and team bio collections.
As an extension of the client’s online retail portfolio, we also created a series of custom microsites in a flexible but custom, component-based design framework for flagship properties. These sites, which are optimized for easy viewing on any device, drill down deeper into property details and descriptions with a visually-focused user experience, embedded virtual tour videos, floorplans, area maps, and local points of interest. The goal? To create an immersive user experience that sparks excitement and action for prospective residents.
For example, the microsite for 1900 Arch in Philadelphia was coupled with a white-label branding and marketing campaign that included extensive on-site signage, an aggressive digital advertising effort, and a full suite of marketing collateral. These elements contributed to making the leasing effort a tremendous success, with more than 25% of the units rented within just 60 days, before construction had even been completed.
“I stood on the corner this morning in front of 1900 and Googled ‘1900 Arch.’ The first five entries that show up on my phone relate to 1900 Arch. Number one is the website, two is the Facebook page, three are images...I could not ask for better.”
In addition, The Mills microsite, which encompasses a three-property community in Columbia, SC, is infused with a youthful tone geared towards students and recent graduates of the University of South Carolina. This graphic-intensive site helps prospective young tenants delve deeper into the features, amenities, and lifestyle components of the properties — many of which are centered around the robust social scene of campus life including a social calendar of events held on the properties — and provides them with a user-friendly tool for requesting more information or scheduling a property tour.
Best of all, each of these microsites is created in a way that allows us to clone and modify the concept to roll out unique but consistently branded sites for other properties to coincide with their addition to the client’s vast and growing portfolio.
