SHB Best Marketing & Lease-up Program - The Bridge on Forbes

SHB 2020

Best Marketing & Lease-Up Program The Bridge on Forbes M A N AG E M E N T

CO M PA N I E S

The Bridge on Forbes is a 473 bed student apartment community in Pittsburgh, PA that opened its doors August 2019. The community offers unparalleled student living in Pittsburgh. Residents enjoy access to amenities such as a massive 24-hour fitness center, private and group study rooms, an outdoor courtyard with large fire pit, an al fresco kitchen, and much more. Each unit is adorned with market leading finishes such as quartz counter tops, soft close cabinetry, under cabinet lighting, magnified makeup/shaving mirror, designer furniture, and more.

THE COMMUNITY

Ready to move-in? Unfortunately you canĘźt, weĘźre full.

The University of Pittsburgh was missing off-campus purpose built student housing in 2018. While this presented the community with great opportunity it also presented the challenge of students not generally understanding the concept. Our marketing strategy focused heavily on generating brand awareness and informing Pitt students about the concept of student housing. Our approach took the community from 0-100 in record breaking fashion.

THE BAC KGROUND

THE MARKETING STAC K AWARENESS

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The marketing stack for The Bridge on Forbes focused heavily on the awareness stage of the marketing funnel because the community was a lease-up with no brand recognition. Not only was there no brand recognition, but the concept of student housing was only introduced the prior year. Thus it was also important to make students aware of the new student housing product type in the market.

OUTREAC H

The Bridge on Forbes hit the pavement everyday looking to speak with students about their housing options. This took place on campus, at local hot spots, and with key partners.

The community leveraged social media to help drive awareness by targeting students attending the University of Pittsburgh and other smaller nearby campuses. A large portion of ad spend was earmarked for driving awareness of the new brand and housing market in the option.

SOCIAL MEDIA ADS

Word of mouth marketing compounds on itself as you capture brand advocates. After the initial push to gain brand awareness and create brand advocates, we leveraged them as additional mouthpieces to spread the word about The Bridge on Forbes.

This strategy was so successful it lead to 19% of our total signed leases.

REFERRALS

THE MARKETING STAC K INTEREST

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Once a prospect was brand aware via one or more of the previous tactics we adjusted our strategy to focus on keeping their interest high.

While many students werenĘźt ready to make their housing decisions yet we wanted to make sure that when they were, we were top of mind. Enter our organic social media, event marketing, and email marketing strategies.

EVENT MARKETING

With prospects now brand aware we threw numerous events on campus, at local hot spots, and with strategic partners to ensure that we maintained their interest in the community as well as attract even more brand awareness. These events gave prospects opportunity to ask more detailed questions and for us to continually leak sneak peeks.

Everyone knows that social media is an important channel in student housing, but most try and force organic social media to the bottom of the funnel by posting about specials and hard sales messages. Our approach was different. We focused more top of the funnel by keeping interest of those already brand aware high by giving them a forum to ask questions on stories, and other insider info.

ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA

As our interest list ballooned, email marketing became more and more of a powerful tool. Much like organic social media, its main focus was on keeping prospects interested with new information and sneak peeks.

EMAIL MARKETING

THE MARKETING STAC K DESIRE

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While the channels used during the desire phase were similar to the interest phase the messaging had a clear distinction. Prospects who were interested were moved into the desire phase with this tweaked messaging.

EVENT MARKETING

The Bridge on Forbes held many events to drive brand awareness and keep interest piqued, but events in the desire phase took on a new twist. Examples included hard hat tours and tour and win events. However, the most successful event was our Parents Weekend brunch where we invited parents and their students to the community over brunch.

With interest piqued for many prospects, our organic social media started to add in video tours of units, social proofing of posts showing others signing leases, and scarcity of unit availability.

ORGANIC SOC I A L M E D I A

THE MARKETING STAC K ACTION

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Our marketing strategy was extremely successful at moving prospects through the top portions of the funnel. This paid major dividends in the action due to the large pool of interest. This led to an extremely quick lease up.

By focusing on strategies that focused on delivering the right messaging at the right phase in the renterĘźs journey we were quickly able to go from 0 awareness to 100% leased. The following pages outline samples of some of the content and tools used during the lease up.

THE TOOLS

WEBSITE

COMMUNITY VIDEO

YO D E L WORTHY C AMPAIGN We collaborated with internet star, Mason Ramsey aka Yodel Boy, on a series of videos promoting features of the community. The campaign created quite a bit of buzz and thousands of views on social media.

MERCH

exactly where you need to be.

The Bridge On Forbes

ONLINE REPUTATION

93

62

63

THE COMPS

N ATION AL AVERAGE

J Turner's ORA Score

PRE-LEASING 2 019 - 2 0 2 0

100% PRE-LEASED

PRE-LEASING 2 0 2 0 - 2 0 21 *AS OF JANUARY 31S T 2020

100%

48%

THE COMPS

ABOUT US

MANAGEMENT Cardinal Group Management (“CGM�) is a full service real estate management firm. CGM has a specialized platform that allows them to handle all facets of real estate management throughout the United States.

CGM leverages their culture, unique company structure, accountability, focus on top-line revenue and high regard of technology to deliver superior results and reporting to its clients.

PORTFOLIO Cardinal Group Management oversees a portfolio of 50,000+ beds around the country. In addition, Cardinal Group advises on a $3 billion mixed-use urban redevelopment in Denver, CO.

C O N TAC T U S

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

RYAN SUNDLING, Marketing Manager Cardinal Group Management Ryan.Sundling@CardinalGroup.com