“I like to remind folks that brand building takes time. It's not easy, it takes a sustained effort over a prolonged period of time to create that repetition.” — Chris Willoughby

Data is the lifeblood of marketing and can help power your marketing programs, or so our guest today believes! Chris Willoughby, Vice President of Marketing for InterRent Real Estate Investment Trust, headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. Chris specializes in residential real estate, and owns, and operates nearly 13,000 suites across Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia. As listeners tune in they’ll hear from Chris about how he has been educating property managers about the importance of marketing, how to decide what marketing channels to use, and why in addition to focusing on quantity, you need to also hone in on quality. He reiterates why it’s crucial to collect data to measure things and know where you are spending your dollars. Don’t miss out on all this and more!

Key points from this episode:

• What led Chris to the rental housing industry and what differentiates his skillset from others.
• How Chris has been educating property managers about the importance of marketing.
• Chris’s thoughts on the challenges presented in marketing attribution.
• How to decide what marketing channels to use.
• The importance of focusing on quality in addition to quantity.
• How Chris views using social media as a marketing channel.
• How the rental demand being down affects his marketing strategies.
• Why it’s important to be able to measure things and know how you are spending your dollars.
• The importance of building a strong brand that resonates with potential renters.
• Why you should be building out the marketing strategy well before the ground is broken.
• How COVID affected their thinking towards an online/ digital footprint.
• Chris speaks to the future of marketing in the multifamily industry.
• He shares present and future endeavours he is excited to share about InterRent REIT.

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