Excerpt from Chapter 4, Marketing Strategies
Defining Marketing Objectives
Each apartment community is a business, and all businesses need customers in order to succeed. By attracting a large pool of "quality" prospects to your apartment community, you can maintain the required level of occupancy needed to operate your business successfully. I emphasize "successfully" because in may instances an apartment community may include residents who do not contribute to its success. The impact of these residents' negative behavior far exceeds the obvious effects of property damage, poor rent-paying habits, and attracting others who behave similarly. Over the long term, these residents' behavior stereotypes a property and drives away the very customers you want to attract.
The main objective of marketing assisted housing properties is to attract a large enough pool of applicants so you can apply your resident selection criteria -i.e., paying rent on time, taking care of their apartments, and not disturbing their neighbors - uniformly and consistently and, thus, avoid potential problems. By gathering a large pool of prospects who meet these criteria, you will be able to establish a resident population that provides consistent revenue and observes the property's rules and regulations - your desired resident profile.