Welcome to the Digible Dudes Podcast. We’re back this week with another POV episode to look at the apartment marketing industry through another stakeholder’s perspective. Our guest today is Aaron Maas. Aaron is the vice president of multifamily operations at Origin Investments. In today’s episode, we talk about numerous aspects of multifamily real estate marketing, including market trends, partnering, technology, ad campaigns, and many more.

Aaron starts the conversation by sharing his ten-year career journey with several firms in the real estate industry. He dives into some of the work they do at his current position at Origin Investments as well. One of the main things Aaron shares with us is how the market changed and adapted throughout the year due to various contributing factors and how their strategies were fine-tuned to respond to the changing market conditions throughout the year.

In the next section, we dive into how partnering works in the real estate space. Aaron shares some of the unique tactics they use at Origin Investments for working with other firms and building strong relationships with them. Aaron gets into some of the challenges involved in working with other organizations and how to overcome these challenges. He also shares how they approach starting a new partnership with a firm, the process of going from pitching to starting a successful deal, and how to align the goals of the two parties involved.

Moving on to marketing, Aaron talks about trends he sees related to marketing strategies, technology, budgeting, and utilizing data-driven approaches for marketing. He talks about ways to improve retention and effectively respond to ever-changing situations and new competing technologies that emerge in the industry. He also talks about several things marketers should keep in mind with regard to budgeting. Towards the end of the episode, we share some valuable tips & tricks to improve your conversion rates by optimizing your website.

[09:34] Aaron’s Story – Aaron talks about how he got into the real estate industry and his work at Origin Investments.

[16:27] Market Behaviour – How the pandemic and other factors affected the multifamily real estate arena and how it affected Aaron’s strategies and decision-making process this year.

[21:10] The Secret Sauce – Aaron gives a sneak-peek of some of the unique tactics they use at Origin to ensure they’re building strong relationships with investors.

[25:27] Partnering with Other Companies – Advantages and challenges involved in working with multiple firms in several aspects of real estate operations, including technology, human resources, leadership, and autonomy.

[32:10] Partnering Process – Aaron shares his thoughts about how they start new partnerships and the process of pitching services, sharing ideas, and getting started with partnerships.

[38:31] Aligning Goals – How to collaborate with third-party management companies and get the goals of both parties aligned.

[43:06] Assessing Technology and Data – Aaron shares his take on where the multifamily real estate resides in terms of utilizing technology and data-driven strategies.

[48:25] Marketing & Advertising Technology – Aaron talks about the trends he sees in the real estate marketing arena with regard to ad campaigns, strategies, technology, and expenses.

[56:02] Marketing & Competition – Responding to changes that continuously happen in advertising platforms and managing expenditures while retaining the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

[01:00:00] Retention – Aaron shares his thought on some opportunities to improve your retention numbers under varying market conditions.

[01:04:03] Budgeting – Aaron shares some valuable strategies related to numerous aspects of marketing.