Print is not dead.

Even as recently as a few years ago, if you asked apartment owners and managers their opinions of Internet marketing, you undoubtedly heard responses like, "The Internet is just a fad," "No one from my demographic goes online" and "Nobody uses the Internet to find an apartment."

It's amazing how times have changed. Today, Internet marketing is everywhere. It's a topic for seminars at virtually every industry conference, it's touted in major newspapers and it's become a line item on every savvy marketer's budget. Not surprisingly, almost all apartment print publications have Internet sites, as well.

Now apartment marketing experts are hearing just the opposite from management companies and owners: "We need to get out of print as soon as possible," "We are working to eliminate all print advertising" and "Print is dead. We get all of our leases from the Internet."

Print Misconceptions 

As surely as the Internet's initial industry buzz was wrong, so it seems is the buzz about print. Just ask Terry Slattery, For Rent Magazine's Vice President of Marketing. "For Rent Magazine prints more than 25 million publications annually nationwide, and we have a 96 percent pick-up rate," he said.

Not only is print thriving, but print drives renters to the Web, Slattery said. "According to comScore, more than 1.45 million visitors came to ForRent.com in February. More than 40 percent of our online traffic comes from direct navigation to our site. Users know our brand name so well from our publications and from our online distribution that they type our URL directly into the browser, visit our vanity URLs--our customers' individual ad pages--and bookmark our pages."

Slattery isn't the only person in the industry who says that print sends users to the Web. Claire Collins, Vice President of Education and Marketing for Boston-based Princeton Properties, said, "Having print and online advertising working in tandem yields greater results than the two alone. When we recently began using a call-tracking service, we were amazed by how much phone traffic was coming from our Web site service. We attribute this to placing our Web address in our print advertising."

Industry marketing expert Jennifer Nevitt Casey, CEO of Bravo Strategic Marketing, for years has advocated that companies change the way they track their marketing. Instead of asking prospects, "How did you hear about us?" thereby limiting the crediting of the prospects' inquiry or visit to only one source, Nevitt Casey asks leasing agents to query, "Where did you see our advertising?" in an attempt to determine as many sources as possible. Nevitt Casey realized long ago that prospects found rental communities through a variety of sources. Independent research data supports Nevitt Casey's theory.

What Renters Want

A recent study by the Opinion Research Corporation for Apartment Guide notes that 79 percent of renters use a variety of media to find their apartment homes. And the average renter used more than one Web site, as well as more than one print publication. Fifty percent of ApartmentGuide.com's site traffic comes directly from users of the print publication who are seeking additional information about rental communities they have seen in print.

Apartment Finder has taken the research a step further by creating a snapshot of today's renter. According to Marcia Bollinger, CAS, Senior Vice President of Apartment Finder, today's typical renter is a young, single female who is a working professional and a college graduate, earning $36,000 to $40,000 per year. The typical renter moves every year or two, often more than 10 miles from the previous home.

When marketing to this type of renter, according to Apartment Finder's research, it is important to be strategic and consistent with the marketing message and to diversify the marketing approaches. Today's renter uses three to four sources to gather information, and 77 percent of all apartment shoppers can be influenced multiple times with marketing messages during the buying cycle.

Lisa Trosien has more than 20 years of industry experience. She can be reached at [e-mail].