The local brand report: top multi-family brands 2021

What’s Inside:

• The top 10 brands in Online Reputation maintained an average review response rate of 88% in 2020.
• Our findings revealed that multi-family brands should focus more on rankings, which was the lowest category in the LBV score.
• Nearly half of all renters under the age of 30 and think digital, it’s vital for multi-family brands to ensure they’re being found online.

In Chatmeter’s latest edition of The Local Brand Report, we examine the top 50 largest multi-family brands in the U.S. to analyze which brands are creating a renter-friendly and consumer-centric experience today. Multi-family brands need to ensure that they’re leveraging local SEO and reputation management to create an exceptional experience from the start of a renter’s journey. The report identifies which leading brands are providing an excellent customer experience online and offline.

In this report, we rank and reveal the top 10 multi-family brands in two categories: Local Brand Visibility and Online Reputation.

2020 marked a year of drastic change and uncertainty for brands and consumers alike. As COVID-19 hit, we observed the needs and priorities for renters and tenants change as the pandemic evolved. Multi-family brands were forced to recreate their rental leasing experience in accordance to COVID-19 rules and regulations. Chatmeter wrote this report to uncover essential insights multi-family brands can use to cultivate a leading customer experience. To keep the analysis equal we used a sample of 35 locations from each brand. We analyzed the online visibility and reputation of each brand from thousands of customer reviews, local listings, and rankings.

Key Findings in Multi-Family

• The top 10 leading brands in Online Reputation maintained an average review response rate of 88%.
• The average star rating for multi-family brands was 3.7 stars.
• The average review response rate was 73%.

Local Brand Visibility & Online Reputation

Considering that nearly half of all renters under the age of 30 think digital, it’s vital for multi-family brands to ensure they’re being found online. The top 10 brands in Chatmeter’s Local Brand Visibility Category were determined using Chatmeter’s LBV score. The LBV score takes into consideration local listing accuracy and presence, local rankings in map and web searches, reviews, and local competition.  For the purpose of the report, we broke the score up into 4 key categories: reviews, listings, search rankings, and local competitors. The top 10 brands earned positions in Chatmeter’s Local Brand Visibility Category for their strength in online presence and visibility.

The top 10 brands in Chatmeter’s Online Reputation Category were determined with the review category of the LBV score. The Review category takes into consideration things like review volume, review velocity, review rating, response rate, and more when calculating the score. The top 10 multi-family brands earned spots in Chatmeter’s Online Reputation Category due to their commitment in responding back to customer feedback and high star ratings.

The Pandemic Impact on the Multi-Family Reviews

COVID-19 had a drastic impact on how customer sentiment shifted throughout 2020. In our report, we aimed to uncover insight into the most important review topics for renters during 2020 and how their feelings toward these topics shifted during the pandemic.

Our findings showed that the most common topics in reviews remained neutral in sentiment, averaging a 2.5 on a scale of 1-5 (negative to positive). By the end of 2020, we observed topics increase in positive sentiment by an average of .25 points, with certain topics increasing by as much as half a point. More insights can be found in the full report.

Despite challenges brought on by the pandemic, many multi-family brands were still able to deliver an exceptional online and offline experience. Our recommendations for the multi-family industry include focusing on the strength of their online visibility and reputation. The top 10 brands in Online Reputation maintained an average review response rate of 88% in 2020. Multi-family brands need to monitor, respond, and leverage customer feedback to improve the renter experience.

In regards to local brand visibility, our findings revealed that brands should focus more on rankings, which was the lowest category in the LBV score. Multi-family brands can spend some more time optimizing for their top unbranded keywords, such as “apartments near me” or “1 bedroom for rent”. Local rankings are the biggest opportunity for multi-location brands to improve their online visibility for the future. Multi-family brands that focus on these recommendations will stay ahead of the competition and deliver an exceptional renter experience online and offline.

Click the button below to read the full report.