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Before AI, Know Your Audience · Net Effective

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm using AI, therefore my renters must be using AI.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the very first lessons that you learn in marketing is that you are not your customer.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: 5.7% of renters start their apartment search in an AI platform.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Just 5.7% of all searchers.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you want AI to recommend your property, it has to first be a property worth recommending.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Managers, client success folks are just getting buried with AI grenades, slap grenades, if you will.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: As the person on the other end of that, I'm like, holy cow, I don't have time to read all this.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: So what do I do?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'd run it through my LM and send it back, right?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Return the grenade, right?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's Joe Broman, and I'm Jonas Bordeaux, host of NetEffective and co-founder of Dwellzy.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us this week.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Really excited to talk to today's guest.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: He and I have had a number of interesting conversations about what's going on in the multifamily industry and in AI.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's got some really interesting perspectives, and I'm excited to dig deep.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this week's guest is Joe Broman.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's the president and COO of Rent Vision, which is a vacancy prevention platform for multifamily.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Joe, welcome to the show.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Really glad to have you here.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely, Jonas.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for uh bringing me on.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why don't you start off just uh give us a little bit about your background, how you got into the business?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a Nebraska native, grew up here, graduated from the University of Nebraska, actually joined the Marine Corps after college.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So spent 10 years in the Marine Corps doing strategic human resources type stuff.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Was fortunate enough to come back to Nebraska, my last stint there, and did some recruiting duty.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: From there, got out and happened to join Rent Vision on the HR side, actually.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I got introduced to multifamily.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: I did HR here for about a year, did marketing sales for a couple of years, and then moved into my current seat in 2024.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Congrats.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not very often you hear somebody starting their multifamily career in HR and transitioning to other aspects of the business.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's fascinating.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was kind of a uh risky decision on my part uh to try to sell into an industry I knew nothing about, but uh happened to pay off for me, I guess.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's fantastic.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Good for you.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to jump in on something you said to me when we met a couple of months ago, a couple of weeks ago, I guess.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: You commented that you thought that operators were overindexing on AI and GEO in particular.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you said, if I remember correctly, that the numbers really weren't there to justify people sweating it too much right now.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to dig in.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: What are you seeing on that front?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Are we just, you know, living in a bubble?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those of us who are thinking about AI and you know, the consumer, the renter, isn't there yet?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you bringing that up.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, we've talked to a number of operators across the United States and just in general in the multifamily industry, there is a lot of buzz and eagerness to start using AI, specifically on the marketing side, which is where I have most of my conversations with operators.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there's this idea concept that because I'm using AI, therefore my renters must be using AI.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the very first lessons that you learn in marketing is that you are not your customer, right?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Part of your job as a marketer is to get to know your customer first, understand them, their wants, their needs, their desires, and where they're searching for your product or like products.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where you want to inject yourself.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm seeing a lot of in the industry right now is people are running past that first step, which is where are my renters searching for an apartment?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they're going straight on into AI visibility.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: How can we get visibility?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm trying to ask people the question first of do you know that you need AI visibility first?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start there.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's super interesting.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: We had a guest on, I guess, a month or two ago now, Sarah Graham, who's a fantastic thinker on the multifamily side.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I believe her portfolios that she worries about are more class A.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she was very focused, and I thought it was really interesting on that properties need to be optimizing to be recommended now as opposed to optimizing to be found.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a class A view of the world?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because most properties are not class A by definition, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think uh it's important to understand that to be recommended, I think the first thing you need to do is get on the short list.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you can look at numerous studies.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the most recent, probably from Jay Turner, 5.7% of renters start their apartment search in an AI platform.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Just 5.7% of all searchers.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: 47 or 46% touch AI somewhere in their journey, right?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if they're using it to compare properties against each other, that short list was built somewhere else, either through referrals or traditional search, the ILS, the Map Pack.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't breeze past the part of the discovery, right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: You got to look at the funnel holistically and say, if I need to get on the short list, where are people searching first?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer part is important, absolutely.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: But what's important in it is that, in my view, the most important thing you can do as a marketer is present as much information about your property as possible.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Everything from location, fee, transparency is big, what's the lifestyle like, all these different things, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, AI is going to recommend the best property for that person, but the property's got to stand on its own.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So when I talk to operators about investing in AI visibility, I say if you want AI to recommend your property, it has to first be a property worth recommending.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if people show up on site and it's dirty or your leasing staff is rude, or you're getting bad reviews online, there's no amount of visibility that's gonna help you out.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like you need to be investing more in your on-site operations and property first to be a property worth recommending.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that being a property worth recommending, obviously, there's no substitute for actually being a great place to live.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not a great place to live, then you're not gonna get anywhere, right?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But if you assume you're in that cohort, then getting found is interesting.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm curious about that 5.7% from Jay Turner, a great research organization.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with their reports over the years on multiple occasions, but I'm curious how they're defining AI, because I I don't know about you, but my experience with Google now is a very AI-centric experience.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I do a traditional Google search, and generally all I see above the fold is the AI search result, which is a recommendation, generally speaking.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious if they're counting that as an AI experience or not, because I remember doing research a bunch of years ago, and the overwhelming majority of renters that I was marketing to at the time, as a head of marketing in the industry, were starting at Google.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: But 90 plus percent of folks were starting at Google.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I presume that's still the same behavior today.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is, is that a search experience or is that an AI experience?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which one is it?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think it depends on what the user is searching for.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I always encourage people to go do, right?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Go to Google and in your own experience, type in what you would type in if you're searching for an apartment.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Most of what I've seen is again some of the traditional things we always see.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the map pack, right?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the sponsored result.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there's an expandable AI section, okay?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then we move right back into organic section.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's there, absolutely.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Are people using it?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: The data is hard to come by.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Google's not necessarily releasing all of that.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the type of search is probably the most important thing.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Informational searches, oftentimes very, very top-of-the-fold AI or overview.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Transactional searches where I'm looking to buy something or looking for a place that's recommended, often start with the map pack with an option to dive into AI conversation below that.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I still think your traditional SEO and paid searches or strategies for search in that are super important.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: You can't gloss over that.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you're still seeing those perform in the industry, those kind of traditional tools for attracting renters.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people, the way they search, as you know, is they first find an area they want to live in, then they're discovering properties, right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to be found on that map, an easy way to do that is to pay for a spot, right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: That hasn't changed.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you see that merging into other AI platforms also.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you can run ads in ChatGPT now.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're more of a display type ad than a search ad, but they're there.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that's probably how most platforms are gonna move anyway, eventually.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at the data, I mean, a vast majority of Google's revenue comes off paid search.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have a hard time believing they're gonna give that up first for AI overviews, right?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's interesting though.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I, you know, again, you made the comment, and I think it's a very wise one that we are not our target market, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't find myself using Google that much anymore for searching.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I use Chrome and I end up in Google search in order to navigate to a website sometime.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the time I'm doing my search with AI tools.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that feels natural to me.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I think you're probably right that most people are not there yet.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're still using those other tools.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you're exactly right.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you fit the right demographic for someone who'd be an AI super user, I would assume.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if you look at the demographics, in terms of income, 77% of users who make over$100,000 in their in their household are daily users compared to 56% if your income is under 50,000.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're a parent, 84% of parents are daily users versus I think it's around 50% for non-parents, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you start to piece these different layers together in who might be a target demographic for AI superusers, people who use it on a daily basis.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you start to paint a picture of high-income earners, parents, highly educated.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And those end up being people who use AI on a daily basis compared to single or lower income or non-parents, tend to fall into the other end of the spectrum.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, it's very important for marketers to look at that data and say, like, is this worth my time and investing in this today, or can I wait?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: For some folks, class A properties, yeah, probably absolutely worth uh investing in.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you're B or C properties, maybe not all that important for you today.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting on multiple levels.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: You just mentioned a stat that kind of blew my mind, which is households that are making 50,000 or less.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did you say 56% of them are using AI on a daily basis?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's see here.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have it written down because I don't want to get it wrong if I have to repeat it.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 50K, 56% of households under 50K are daily users compared to 77% if your income is over 100,000.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously that's a pretty significant increase as you go up to a higher income level.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, you think about when was it that ChatGPT launched?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if that was current sort of the kickstart for all of this, that was three years ago?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: To get from zero to 56 as a low utilization level within three years, that's remarkable for a technology adoption curve.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at like technology adoption rates like the internet or smartphones, it took several decades for people to adopt those.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you're right.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: It is actually rapidly advancing.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: When is the cutoff?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows for sure.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And things are certainly, I think, bifurcating in some ways, right?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's certain segments of the population that are strictly anti-AI.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: If they detect AI, they want out.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in some parts of the demographic who are all in on AI.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there's probably the middle cohort, which is where I'm at, which is uh sometimes AI is good, sometimes AI is bad, and we're sort of navigating those waters on a case-by-case basis.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, changing gears a little bit, if I'm not mistaken, you guys forecast demand off of first-party user behavior, and that's an important part of what you do.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really interesting perspective for the operator.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: How are you interacting with that data today?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: How are operators better able to take advantage of that data now than they might have been before?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great question.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, we use web data to predict demand down to a property level.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So intuitively, we know that, for example, if you're shopping for a car online, you would spend a lot of time clicking through photos and viewing multiple pages on a website.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: The more time you spend on a website, the more pages, more photos you view, the more likely you are to become a purchaser of that vehicle.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing is true with apartments.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I come to a website, I'm viewing multiple floor plans, I'm scrolling photos, watching videos, I'm more likely to become a renter or at least a lead at that location.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we use that data to sort of predict demand because there's a lag time, right?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: People come to the website.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're not going to turn into a lead right away, but maybe three or four days or several weeks from now, they turn into a lead or a lease.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll try to track those patterns and see where demand is coming from, how much demand you have.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And based on your website to lead, lead to lease ratios, we can predict how many leases you're gonna get over the next 60 days.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, with that information, some things that we have on our radar to watch out for.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, as AI searches grow, we're seeing less web traffic.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: People are getting their questions answered and their recommendations right in the chat.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: How can we translate that to predict demand and predict leasing activity?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's those are the things that are on our radar and things that we're watching out for.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the data analysis at a user side, whether you use Rent Vision or not, is much easier now.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can go do these things today, hooking up Google Analytics with your preferred LLM and run that analysis yourself, you know.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the data availability is so far advanced right now.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you've had some folks on your podcast talking about data hygiene and cleanliness, which is uh kind of exposing some people, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very much so.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is such an interesting category of data.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always wrestled with it myself because I feel like the number of inquiries that you get as a property operator, you know, is really up to you, right?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a choose your own adventure item where you can choose to have a very high volume if that's important to you.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And some organizations really want that high volume of inquiries, or you can choose to have a relatively low volume, but very high quality lead flow.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I remember getting in a lot of trouble at one point when I turned off a high volume, low quality source.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, the organization lost its mind.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody thought they weren't going to be able to lease anything.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then they realized they were getting like, I think in the end, they got 40% of their time back and still leased all the apartments.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was you know, anyway, uh me saying I'm right in that situation.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I'm always I'm always very interested because fundamentally, each each apartment is like a one-unit monopoly that is looking for that perfect renter for whom it's the right distance from work, it's the right amenities, it's the right characteristics, it's the right configuration, it fits their family, it fits their needs.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And no two renters have the same preferences, and no two apartments are exactly identical.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So finding that perfect renter who is going to value that apartment most highly is really the challenge.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So overall demand can give you a sense of that, but it's not going to tell you whether you're finding that right person.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so curious, how do you actually work with that data, that demand data?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because my experience, it it can be messy, very messy.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think what it comes down to is that uh human behavior is not changing much as as fast as technology.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a lag there.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we still see the same things.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: When people come to a website from an AI interface, we see four to five times more engagement in terms of time on site and pages viewed compared to organic search or paid search.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the human behavior is still there.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's much more qualified traffic and it's much more engaged traffic to the website.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think all those things play a factor in we look at it from a source of sometimes we want to go big and wide, sometimes we need to go narrow.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always on the narrow and targeted side.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I want people to come to this website and say, oh, it feels like this apartment was built for me specifically, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: The data can be messy on that, and there's a thousand different ways you can slice the data to see what it is you're trying to see.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, as web traffic continues to shrink over time, you're gonna get better and and more qualified leads over time, would be my guess.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: AI only amplifies that.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can be the answer, you know pretty dang well that that person is going to have all their questions pre-qualified, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Before they even show up on site.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I would encourage people to lean into that, provide as much information as you can.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: You'll get fewer leads, and that's probably okay.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get a lot of time back.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Your lead-to-lease ratio will increase.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: You can spend time uh on site selling the property instead of touring a bunch of units.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I got in a debate a while ago with an operator who really didn't want to provide much information.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, well, if I tell them about the pet policy, then they won't call me to find out about the pet policy.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, yes.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you tell them about the pet policy, then they won't call you to find out about the pet policy.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the point, right?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the goal.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can triage up front and say, like, I'm really sorry, I love your Akita, but we don't have we don't allow it here, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you can be up front about that.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you don't provide that information, then it's your staff's time and resources that are going into handling that conversation.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a waste of everybody's time.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, maybe you don't even get the call because the renter feels like that's a pain.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't emphasize enough your point about providing more information, the more information you could provide as an operator.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we see that on DwellZ as well.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: The properties that provide more information are just more successful from a marketing standpoint.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can think about it in terms of time to respond, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody shoots you an email or calls in, how quickly can they get that answer?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: The absolute fastest time is if they just read it right there on the website or they get it right there in their LLM.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're going to measure response time for those kind of things, think about the same thing and not necessarily how quickly I can respond, but how quickly is the user getting the information that they're seeking.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And once you look at it in that lens, the obvious answer is to give them as much information as you can up front to help them make a decision.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's super helpful.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious because I feel like as an ILS here at Dwellsey, we see the beginning of the discovery process and have a pretty good handle on that.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we've seen some changes in how that's working, but not a lot.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious from the point that you start seeing folks come through your system.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen changes in how the renter's search is working?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes and no.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's still a good volume of traditional searches.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: People still go to Google and search for apartments near me or apartments in this town.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the data backs that up.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to keyword planner and search for those search queries.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the data says that they're that they're there.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I see it come through on the paid side in our traffic.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, you can go into Google Ads and see search queries specifically.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like when person somebody clicked this ad, what did they type into the search bar?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And those are getting longer, right?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: They are getting more specific and more targeted.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it is true that the way people are searching the questions that they're asking are changing.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically on a paid side, I feel like the systems are accounting for that, right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're still matching to traditional keywords that we have in the system.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I've also known that a lot of people are searching in a lot of different places, right?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they may start in Google, they may verify in LLM, they may also search socials for uh information about a property.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: So your job as a marketer on operator side is not getting easier.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's only getting harder.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: You have to uh provide this information in a multitude of spaces.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'd still go back again to who's your target audience, where are they searching?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where you should start if you want to know where to focus your time and energy.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Are you seeing any changes in how those channels are performing?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm a little obsessed with email right now because uh we've had a lot of success with email marketing over the years, and it's not working nearly as well as it used to.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm no longer reading my email directly.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm having it read for me.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't see marketing emails anymore.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see cold emails anymore.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if other people are doing that too, but I can tell you the emails that we're sending out are not performing as well as they used to.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And email volumes are way up.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's my own experience, and I've heard that from lots of other people.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one channel, but I'm curious if you're seeing different channels perform differently than they have historically right now.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I would echo that on the email front.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even in Gmail or whatever, there's platforms where it'll automatically read and screen out a bunch of that stuff.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the email side uh is becoming more and more difficult.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: I still see a lot of traction on MapPacks in Google or in Bing.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and interestingly, Bing has risen a lot as well.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people don't think about Bing as a search place, particularly on the West Coast, where you have a lot of Microsoft native shops.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: People tend to carry that behavior home.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so actually, for certain communities, Bing can be a really great underutilized or underadvertised on platform.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it really skews towards demographics.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Younger generations, they do not necessarily trust what they read online compared to other generations.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So they're more likely to search in multiple avenues or multiple places.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they prefer peer-to-peer content, right?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if they want to go look at a product, they're looking for people who are like them who have recommended the same product or not recommended the same product.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so they're much more granular in how they view recommendations from what I've seen.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: That generational difference is an interesting one.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh good for them for not trusting what they read online.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think we all need to channel a little bit more of that.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's more and more out there that's not trustworthy.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's come full circle, though, because I remember in grade school my parents telling me not to read everything that they that I see online.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm telling them the same thing, right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very, very true.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Telling, yeah, we have we have to tell our parents that, you know, uh, the scams out there targeting uh older folks is are terrifying.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many of those.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we could go down a rabbit hole there.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna choose not to.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: But so I I'm curious, you have uh, if I'm not mistaken, made AI tools available across the organization for your team.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh how has that gone?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: What have you done that worked?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where do you think there's more work to be done there?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: How I approached it was I need to get everybody level set on the same playing field.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that was.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Some people in my organization, AI superusers, right?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: They dove in early, early adopters.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: They've built this sort of wealth of information about how to use AI and what it's best for.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those things were true, some of them were not true, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then I had other people within the organization who had never used an AI chat other than for like what uh time of year is best to plant my tulips and weird things like that.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's broad spectrum.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so earlier this year, basically late 2025, like a lot of people, we came to this sort of aha moment where, oh, these models are getting good.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: They can do a lot of things and they are producing really good results.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: We need to sort of accelerate this within the company and get it in the hands of as many people as possible.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: So step one for me was to focus in on training.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: I got to get everybody on the same page about how LLMs work, what they produce, where hallucinations show up and where they don't, and all these different things.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So as part of our rollout plan, I put together AI training curriculum, sort of 101 for basic users and then another layer for managers and another layer for superusers, which I would encourage anybody who's doing an AI tool rollout within their organization to do.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't understand how the LLMs work, you're more susceptible towards hallucinations or bad inferences and all these different things, right?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we started with that and have seen really great success from that.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Even people who had been super users before going through the training came to me and said, I didn't know this about LLMs.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really glad that I went through this training.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: We selected Cloud as our enterprise platform, and they have a wealth of training curriculum that I would encourage people to look into.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's all free, it's all web-based, and so super helpful.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: But one thing that I keep noticing that I think is true no matter where you're at in your journey, if you're gonna use AI, it only amplifies what already exists.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have bad data, people talk about that all the time.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: It amplifies the fact that you have bad data.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you have bad process, it's only going to amplify that.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's interesting, I think it's probably true for people too.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have a really great employee, you give them an AI tool, they're gonna do phenomenal things with it.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you got an employee that's sort of borderline, mediocre to bad on that inference or on that side, and you give them an AI tool, it only amplifies it, right?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was the CEO of Salesforce coined the term AI slop grenades, right?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: So managers, and uh, we see it even on our client success team, they're just getting inundated with these emails day after day, these long paragraphs and questions about their ad strategy and all these different things.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Managers, client success folks are just getting buried with uh AI grenades, slopenades, if you will.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the things we're trying to combat right now is uh teaching people when to use AI and when not to.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when you send me an email that was written by AI and or a document or a proposal, you better be able to stand behind it and know what it means, what was written in here, and why did you make this recommendation?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's something we're we're navigating through now.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that the the AI slop grenade.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I see that all the time.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just so easy to send, you know.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why would I send a one-line email when I can send a you know 50-line email that I feel like maybe it's more impressive, uh, maybe it's more substantial.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: So no, that's fascinating.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as the person on the other end of that, I'm like, holy cow, I can't, I don't have time to read all this.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: So what do I do?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'd run it through my uh LLM and send it back, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh return the grenade, right?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there's lobbying grenades back and forth.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, seriously.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, a couple of quick ones for you.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think is the most overhyped AI promise in multifamily right now?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Overhyped AI promise.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think the most overhyped AI promise in multifamily is that it's gonna replace people.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't see that to be true.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh at least not yet.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll probably use that disqualifier for everything, AI.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, a couple years ago, people said it can't make images, and I said it can't make images yet, right?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then it started making images and it said, Oh, it can't make good images.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, uh, it can't make good images yet.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um, I don't think it's gonna replace a lot of people yet.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: It could maybe in the future, but that's not several years off, I think.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm there with you.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I feel like it is an enhancer and an enabler of human behavior, good or bad.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: But without the human, it's gonna struggle.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, absolutely.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: It needs a partner.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't anticipate that changing completely, but maybe I should add yeah to the end of that as well.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: What's your favorite AI tools that you're using right now?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: I use quite a few.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: I bounce back and forth between Claude and and chat.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I also use a lot of uh Nano Banano Pro for image generation.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of my backgrounds in marketing, so a lot of marketing-related tools.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not in the camp of everything I do should be recorded yet.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: I still feel a little hesitancy about that just because of the conversations that I have.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I know a lot of people are doing that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not quite there yet.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: What about in your personal life?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: How are you using AI in your personal life?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I am a parent.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so a lot of my usage is parenting-related topics as it shows up in the data.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, how can I keep my kids entertained?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my kids are driving me nuts, what should I do?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or uh my kids are sick as often, you know.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Let me put in a list of symptoms to figure out whether I should go to the ER or not, and all those other good things.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's probably how it shows up in my personal life.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: I also fantasize about the variety of different side hustles and businesses that I could start, which I probably never will, but it's fun to talk to Claude about those.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's fantastic.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm right there with you on the parenting side.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my favorite hacks is uh having it triage the never-ending stream of emails that I get from all of the different schools that the kids go to and the organizations they're involved with and figuring out who should be where when and coordinating carpools.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's been fantastic for that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're living in kind of a golden age of the side hustle right now because you can create things in a way you couldn't before.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're gonna see a lot of really interesting uh creativity and a lot of companies that are not expecting their employees to have side hustles, they're gonna have some interesting conversations in the years to come because things are gonna get created that are gonna take off.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be interesting.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, absolutely.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Joe, thanks again for coming on the podcast.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's been fantastic.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: If people want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you want to talk to RentVision, you can always go to our website and schedule a meeting on there.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to talk to me, you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just search for Joe Growman at RentVision and uh shoot me a message, be happy to talk about marketing strategy, revenue management, AI adoption, anything in between.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, fantastic.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you again.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's been a great conversation.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate your time.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thank you.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's NetEffective, new episodes weekly.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you're running rentals and figuring out AI, hit like, subscribe, follow, or whatever your app makes you do to get more of the show.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like to come on as a guest or subscribe to the weekly updates, go to neteffective.show.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jonas Bordeaux.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.