We have often said that the one differentiator that your competitors can never replicate are your residents themselves.  And an extension of that is their apartments!  So if we can highlight your residents pads, then we have showcased the community in an entirely unique way.  That is the inspiration behind an Apartment Decorating Contest, where we not only want to engage our residents and shine a spotlight on the creative and beautiful apartment decorations, but also use the results as a way to inspire prospects to live at our communities.

The Contest

Overall, the plan is fairly simple:  Encourage residents to showcase their apartments, whether it is just one room, or every room, for a chance to win the Apartment Decorating Contest.  Tell them they can submit several pictures, including:

·         Pictures of just the apartment

·         Pictures of themselves in the apartment

·         Pictures of their pets in the apartment

·         Creative "Action Shots" of them and their friends in their apartment

What we want to do is receive both beautifully decorated apartments AND creative pictures that include your residents and their pets!  Pet pictures are absolutely great for marketing.  The key is to make sure they understand they can submit all of these ideas, and others, so you get a full library of wonderful pictures to assess for the contest and use in future marketing.

Which brings us to the other important element:  Each resident included in a picture must give written approval to allow you to share their photo in order to be eligible!  You can't use their pictures for marketing unless you have this.

Photo Credit: rebstarr

The Results

In the end, you should hopefully end up with pictures to use in a variety of circumstances!  While your comps are sharing boring pictures of their model apartment, you will have a store of creative, quirky shots to share on social media, as well as beautifully decorated pictures to share in your traditional marketing endeavors.  Having pictures of real residents and pets gives prospects a connection to who is living there, making your community more "real" and accessible.

Also, remember to log the floor plan for each submission.  Considering that your model apartment only highlights one floor plan, this provides a decorated apartment to help visualize their future apartment when you only have vacants to show prospects!

Lastly, remember that this is a perfect opportunity for teaming up with a local store to furnish the prize, or team up to co-market each other's businesses!  In other words, you could team up with a furniture company to sponsor the event, and/or help publicize the program and the results.

Actual Resident-Created Images

We found plenty of examples of apartment residents who have shared pictures of their decorated apartments.  They hadn't shared it for this particular program, but we wanted to showcase them to show the possibilities, as we think many of these pictures are stunning!  (Or simply fun, as in the last example)

Photo credit:  wezed

Photo Credit:  Bread_n_brie

Photo Credit:  Brevities

Photo Credit:  ryspot

Photo credit:  http://flickrhivemind.net/