The company I currently work for hired me as a digital marketing specialist, however, they tend to not include me in marketing discussions, which really truly baffles me. Why hire someone who specializes in digital marketing, if you are not going to take advantage of said marketing specialist’s knowledge?
The latest issue concerns a promotion for a poorly performing property. To which the head of property management wants to run a special, offering a sliding scale rent which reduces from $390 to $300 for six months before ramping back up to $390 over the next six months, which raises the deposit from $200 to $390 to take advantage of the special. It’s confusing for everyone and a freaking accounting nightmare.
My reasons for disagreeing with this strategy are as follows. The special which we were running previously, was $200 deposit with the second month, i.e. first full month being rent free, a saving of $390. If the previous special wasn’t working, how could the new special work? The new special reduces savings to $220, taking into account, the higher $390 deposit, an increase of $190 over the standard deposit.
The head of property management also wants to word the special with very limited information, attempting to force potential residents to call to get information on the special. Which, in my opinion, doesn’t work, in the Internet age, more people want to Email or use live chat, not call. And with so much competition in the area we operate in, people will move on, rather than call to get further information.
Right now, in the rental home market, we are just coming out of the holiday’s slump, which runs from Thanksgiving through to mid-January. Statistically, leads drop off considerably during this time, this coupled with an unusually high amount of evictions has caused the current situation of high vacancy. In addition, despite more than 100 leads this month, many applicants have not qualified for a lease.
I had previously addressed this issue of not including the marketing guy with management before, an apology was issued to me, things got batter for a little while, and now we are back to where we started. So, I am just going to run what they want me to run, and move on, if they want to pay me a significant chunk of change for grunt work, so be it. I’m done getting upset about something I have no control over.
UPDATE [Feb, 12 2019, 15:27]: I have been proven correct again, the special,, outlined above, which I was 100% against, has been scrapped and we have returned to the previous special. How many times do I have to be vindicated before the powers that be seek my opinion before going off half cocked?