One Year Later – What 52 Episodes Taught Us About Multifamily Marketing

One year. Fifty-two episodes. Countless conversations about what’s changing in multifamily marketing.

In this special anniversary episode of The Multifamily Marketers Podcast, hosts Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills reflect on their first year of the show, sharing the biggest lessons they’ve learned, the topics that surprised them most, and how multifamily marketing has evolved over the past 12 months.

From AI and search to lead quality, reporting, and the future of marketing, this episode offers a candid look back—and an exciting look ahead.

You’ll learn:

• The biggest marketing trends that shaped the past year
• Why the conversation shifted from more leads to better leads
• How AI evolved from a writing tool into a strategic marketing advantage
• The hosts’ favorite episodes and biggest takeaways from the past year
• Which marketing investments remain the most underrated
• Why reporting, transparency, and outcomes are becoming more important than ever
• The advice Josh and Caroline wish they had before recording Episode One

To suggest a topic, get in touch!

For more multifamily marketing help, connect with us at Resident360.

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TRANSCRIPT

Episode 52: One Year Later – What 52 Episodes Taught Us About Multifamily Marketing

Podcast Co-Hosts: Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills, Resident360

Josh: Welcome back to the Multifamily Marketers Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Grillo, co-founder here at Resident360, and I’m joined by my co-host, Caroline Mills, our director of digital marketing. Caroline, we’ve got a super fun episode today, don’t we?

Caroline: I’m so excited for today, because it marks one year of doing this podcast together. That feels really crazy, thinking about where we were sitting a year ago when we started.

Josh: It really does. Believe it or not, 52 episodes later. I don’t know how we got here, but we got here.

Caroline: It feels crazy, through all the holidays, through summer, Christmas, New Year’s, and through all your travel and mine. It’s been really fun.

Josh: It’s been fun. So do you want to get us started with today’s episode?

Caroline: Yeah, I thought this could be a fun one. It officially means we’ve spent an entire year talking about multifamily marketing with you guys every single week. When we recorded our first episode, I don’t think we realized how quickly we’d get here, or how fast we’d adapt and catch on. So today we’re taking a look back. We’ll share what surprised us most, some of our favorite episodes, how marketing has changed over the last year, some things we’ve changed our minds about, and where we think the industry is headed next.

Josh: Pretty exciting to me. Can’t wait.

Caroline: So whether you’ve been here since episode one (thank you!) or this is your first episode, thanks for joining us. Let’s jump in. I want to start with a fun one. Looking back over the last year, what surprised you the most?

Josh: Ooh, that’s a tough one. I’ll tell the audience I haven’t really prepared answers to the questions Caroline is going to ask.

Caroline: Catching you off the cuff.

Josh: Yeah, I’ll just go with what comes to mind. I think one of the biggest surprises was being able to keep the show going. It’s really hard. Think about it: 52 episodes, one every single week since we started. There’s a lot that goes into getting that first episode out. But I think we figured out a good process for ourselves. For those of you who don’t know, Caroline is a very process-oriented person. She’s an all-around pleasant person, but very process-oriented. I’m kind of the opposite. I live a little more in the gray, with a more creative way of thinking.

But the two of us have been able to put the episode topics together, which is another big one. Think about that: 52 episodes with no guests, or maybe one or two. That really surprised me. I didn’t know we’d be able to do 52 episodes of fairly original content without guests, because most podcasts rely on guests. But you and I talked about it. When you have guests on a podcast, it’s a bit of an uncontrollable variable. There could be audio issues, video issues, all kinds of things. So we said, “Let’s just keep it the two of us for now and see how it goes.” And we made it this far. That’s one of the things that surprised me most.

Another one is more on the marketing side, and it’s something I tend to lose sleep over, for some reason: Resident360’s search engine rankings as a company. We’ve always been very diligent about having our website rank for the big keywords people search in the industry, like apartment website design, digital marketing, or branding. Showing up in positions one, two, or three. With all the AI changes happening throughout the year, one big thing I was losing sleep over was whether we’d lose rankings or gain them.

We did a ton over the last 12 months. We put out a ton of education. And yes, we did lose rankings for some major keywords, and I’m still wondering why. But we picked up rankings for a lot of other keywords, so it really balanced out, even with everything happening with AI. AI hasn’t disrupted localized Google search as much as I thought it would by now, though it’s definitely happening. But we’re holding rank, as I like to say. That’s good, because it means people are still interested in our products and services and still reaching out through our website, finding us through Google searches, ChatGPT searches, the podcast, and other channels. So that’s what surprised me: We were able to hold rank over the last 12 months. How about you?

Caroline: I really like your answer about the year, because we did have times when we’d hit a lull and say, “I don’t know, we just talked about that recently.” Then we’d sit with it for a few days and come back with fresh ideas. And I think still getting to talk with clients keeps topics top of mind for me, so I like that part.

Another one for me, tying back into the marketing side, is how our conversations have shifted. A year ago, I feel like the focus was, “How do I get more leads? How do I get more leads?” Fast-forward to today, and a lot of our conversations are about, “How do I get better, higher-quality leads? How do I improve my conversion rate?” It’s been interesting to watch the industry change. We have all these different sources now: all the ILSs, Google Ads, geofencing, and now AI tools. So with all these tools out there, the focus is really on quality.

Josh: Great point. Let me ask you this: What’s been your biggest takeaway from recording a podcast every week?

Caroline: Ooh, that’s a good one. Looking back, honestly, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. We’ve talked with so many on-site teams and covered so many topics, and every property has different challenges. But there are some universal principles: Know your data, understand your audience, and don’t make decisions based on assumptions or without understanding your data and where it’s coming from.

Josh: All right, let’s talk topics. We’ve covered 52 episodes’ worth. Do you have a favorite topic, Caroline?

Caroline: I have a few, and you guys know I reference some of them all the time. I love our episode “You Don’t Have a Lead Problem. You’ve Got a Quality Lead Problem!” We talked about what goes into quality leads and how on-site teams handle them. I think so many marketers experience that.

I also loved our episode “Apartment Marketing Advice We Secretly Can’t Stand.” It was fun to challenge some common industry advice and explain why context matters. And lastly, I really enjoy our practical episodes. We just did one I really liked, the weekly marketing audit, because listeners can take it and use it right away. What about you?

Josh: I like our very first episode…

Caroline: Digital curb appeal!

Josh: …because it was the one where I could finally say, “Okay, I did it. I got it done.” Speaking about the show itself, just getting that first episode out.

Caroline: The first time talking together with our mics and everything.

Josh: Getting it all out there. But more specifically, I’d pick the episode we just did. If you haven’t listened yet, it’s “AI in Multifamily – What Operators Are Actually Asking.” It was one of the first times we did a small, bite-sized industry case study, or industry survey, of people using AI and what they think about it. We published the results in a nice report and did a podcast episode on it, and I thought there was some really good insight there. Like I said on that episode, I’d like to run the exact same survey 12 months from now and do a follow-up episode to see how much has changed, because I guarantee it will.

Caroline: That was a good one. It’s funny, because the episodes we think will be the biggest hits can switch. Sometimes it’s the ones where we said, “Okay, let’s throw this together; we just heard about this,” that end up producing the most practical conversations. And at industry conferences or events we’re sponsoring, people recognize the podcast, which is always super fun. I love talking with people about it, and they’ll actually mention specific episodes. That’s always a good feeling.

Josh: We’re so popular. What can I say?

Caroline: I know! It’s funny. We bring flyers to events, and depending on which way they’re facing, someone will pick one up and flip it over, and it’s me, standing right there. That’s fun.

Josh: All right, here’s a good one for you. If you had to summarize this past year in multifamily marketing with one theme, what would it be?

Caroline: Ooh, I’d say adaptation. Everything moved much faster than people expected, and AI became part of nearly every marketing conversation. We saw search behavior start to change. We saw video become more important. We have owners wanting better reporting. Marketing teams were asked to do more with the same or sometimes smaller budgets. The marketers who adapted quickly are the ones seeing the most success so far.

Josh: Couldn’t agree more. One thing I noticed is that owners and operators became much more interested in understanding marketing, not just approving invoices. They’re asking better questions about attribution and what success actually looks like. I love that. When people are asking those questions… that’s always been my background. It’s what I’ve talked about for many, many years. So that stuff definitely excites me.

Caroline: Completely agree. That’s a good one. Okay, the next section is what changed our minds. I think this is one of my favorite questions: What’s something you believed a year ago that you’ve changed your mind about since?

Josh: Probably how impactful AI is, not just for the industry, but for us as a company, and how much we’ve embraced it. I knew AI was around, but a year ago, I never thought it would be as impactful as it is now. Back then, we were just messing around with ChatGPT for copy projects, emails, and things like that. Now it has totally morphed into big Claude projects, developing plugins and code, you name it. It’s been really, really impactful for us as a company and for a lot of people out there using it. I knew it was here; I just didn’t know how involved we’d become. Now we’re fully immersed in it, and it’s been great for us in a lot of different ways.

Caroline: I completely agree. I was going to piggyback, because I also had AI. A year ago, there was a lot of fear about how AI was going to work and whether it would replace marketers. We talk about this all the time: It’s not replacing great marketers, but it does help us move faster and get more done. Like you said, I started out using it to brainstorm ideas, write copy, look at SEO, whatever it may be. Now we’re using it to analyze data and for strategy. It’s crazy how much it’s shifted, and we’re seeing huge platforms move in this direction, like Ask Maps, which launched in the last year. Now we even have reporting on what people are entering into these AI platforms. That’s been really fun. So it’s become another tool in the toolbox, not something people are afraid of.

Josh: Speaking of Ask Maps: When it came out, I thought, “I don’t know why I’d ever use this.” But I was on a big trip, and I found myself using Ask Maps.

Caroline: I love that.

Josh: I wanted to know how long it would take to get from point A to point B and the ideal time to leave. So I’d ask something like, “I’m driving to Bodega Bay. What time do I need to leave this city to check into my hotel at 4:00 p.m.?” And it worked like magic. That was a real-world way I used it, and it was really helpful.

Caroline: Isn’t that crazy, thinking about five or 10 years ago and the difference in having that?

Josh: That’s the thing. You just have to know the tools exist. There’s almost a tool for everything now.

Caroline: Completely. All right, we’ve got our lightning round.

Josh: Ready. Let’s do it.

Caroline: Okay, quick lightning round. What’s one marketing trend you’re excited about?

Josh: I don’t know if it’s a trend, but I’ll say AI SEO, or GEO, or whatever you want to call it: showing up on the different AI platforms, and how media plays a part in that. The search landscape has moved so fast. Now everybody is using their own individual agents, from ChatGPT to Claude to whatever, to research almost everything. So how do we properly show up there? I think it’s fascinating, I really do. It’s about understanding where these platforms pull their information from, how you make sure they’re pulling and showing you, and what information, from earned media to owned media, you need out there to represent yourself. That’s super exciting and changing by the week.

Caroline: That’s a good one. And what’s your most underrated marketing investment?

Josh: Ooh. I’ve got to go with the old tried-and-true Google Business Profile.

Caroline: Good one.

Josh: It’s one of those things that just sits out there, staring you in the face. Everybody pays attention to it, because you can’t get away from it if you do any specific, hyperlocal Google search. You’re going to run across it. We’ve done enough episodes on how you really need to pay attention to it and optimize your Google Business Profile as much as you possibly can. So for me, that’s definitely one of the most underrated marketing investments you can make.

Caroline: That’s a good one. And what’s one thing every property should stop doing?

Josh: This is kind of a pet peeve of mine: landing on a property website with more than one pop-up going off. It’s absolutely insane. You go to a website, and one pop-up comes up, maybe a special. Then a chatbot pops up, then a cookie policy, and who knows, maybe some other plugin. You find yourself closing them out over and over, and then you just get fed up and leave the site. So that’s definitely one thing every property should stop doing. They really need to look at their website and set a real policy on how many pop-ups they’re going to have.

Caroline: I like that. That’s a good “stop” one. Flipping it around, what’s one thing every property should start doing?

Josh: I think this is a good one. If you listened to our last episode, it was about weekly audits. Very simple. The 10-minute audit is a great thing, and Caroline, you came up with the idea: Do your 10-minute audit every Monday. We covered it all in that episode. It keeps your eye on the prize and lets you make sure things are actually working and consistent. With marketing, one of the big things people forget about is consistency across all your channels. These are things you have to pay attention to, and if you only check once a quarter or once every six months, you’ll miss out. So a weekly audit is something every property should start doing.

Caroline: That’s a good one.

Josh: Now it’s my turn. Let’s ask you: What’s the marketing hill you’ll always die on? Oh my goodness, that’s a good one.

Caroline: Ooh, definitely quality over quantity. I was just talking about this recently, but I’d rather a team have fewer qualified leads than hundreds of leads that never get their calls answered or never schedule a tour. I talk with teams about this all the time: Can your team even handle it? If you have 100 leads that convert into 40 tours and 20 leases, that’s fantastic, and you get to spend one-on-one time with those people. If you suddenly have 600 leads, now the leasing team is too busy to personally answer the phone, and it takes days to get back to people. You’ve invested all that money and oversaturated the team with leads, so the really good, high-quality ones don’t get the service they expect or deserve. So, absolutely: quality over quantity every time.

Josh: All right, what’s one metric you wish people would stop obsessing over?

Caroline: Ooh, I kind of mentioned this in the last one, but cost per lead, because it’s only one piece of the story. I’d rather look at the entire funnel across all your marketing sources. I’d rather know your cost per lease, your lead conversion rates, and your overall return on investment. If one ILS has a higher cost per lead than another, but it only took a few weeks to close those leads, they were high quality, and you’re getting a strong return, that source means more to you, even if it costs $50 more per lead or per lease. It all ties back to quality: making sure you’re getting quality leads, that the sources make sense, and that even if one source costs more, the leads are high quality and take little effort from your team. Those are the things to look at.

Josh: One tool you couldn’t live without?

Caroline: Probably, and we were talking about this, Looker Studio, formerly Data Studio; they changed the name. We’ve been talking about our dashboards and reporting, and having a place where the data tells a story instead of just saying, “You got this many conversions.” It lets me talk with teams and say, “How was the quality? I know you had this many tours scheduled and this many phone calls. Let’s dig into it and talk about what’s been going on.” Being able to take that data and really relate it to the teams is the most powerful part.

Josh: All right, let’s do a little looking ahead. As we head into another year, believe it or not, what are you most excited about, Caroline?

Caroline: This has been a big year, so I’m excited to see how things continue to evolve. You’ve made some really good points about how AI search will only become more important. Websites have always played a big role, but I think they’ll play an even bigger role in conversions and AI search. And we always talk about authentic video. I think we’ll continue to see it outperform polished content. And those who really embrace marketing changes instead of resisting them will have a huge advantage.

Josh: I’ll contribute to this as well. I think reporting and transparency are only going to become more important. Owners don’t just want activity; they want outcomes. Marketers who can clearly connect marketing efforts to leasing results will be the ones who stand out.

Caroline: That’s very true, and well said. Before we wrap up, I have one last question: If you could go back and give yourself advice before recording episode one, what would it be?

Josh: Oh my gosh. Don’t overthink it.

Caroline: I was literally thinking the same thing. We were talking about that earlier.

Josh: I’ll be very transparent: I think I had “start a podcast” on my list for probably three years before we started this one. I wrote the whole book a long time ago; I think it was back in 2013. We started the company in 2010. I’ve always been in a lot of big marketing mastermind groups here in San Diego, and there are a lot of very smart marketers here, mainly online marketers. In one mastermind group, everybody said the same thing: “Josh, you’ve got to write a book.” So we basically had a book-writing party, and everybody in that group wrote a book. I was one of the last people.

Caroline: That’s awesome.

Josh: Well, not the last. There was one guy, a mortgage guy, who came into our mastermind meeting, threw his book on the table, and said, “Look, I finally finished my book.” And I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me. He wrote a book, and I still don’t have one. What’s wrong with me?” Overthinking it. Overthinking it. So I got right to it and wrote the book, and that was way before AI or any of those tools. That was basically pen and paper.

And here’s a funny story. When I wrote that very first edition of The Definitive Guide to Apartment Marketing, which is still on Amazon, I needed an editor. I went on one of those outsourcing sites, like Upwork. I think at the time it was called Elance, where you could find writers, developers, whatever. I found an editor because I needed somebody to read and edit the book. I hired her and got it all back. I remember sitting in Hawaii with my wife, reading through all her changes, and I said, “Her changes are kind of weird. They sound British or something. The grammar is weird.” My wife said, “Yeah, this is weird.” Then I looked back, and the editor was based in London.

Caroline: That’s hilarious.

Josh: Some of the wording is just different. When I realized that and told my wife, she said, “You idiot. Why didn’t you pay more attention to that?” And I said, “I don’t know.” So my wife ended up doing the original editing of the book. She edited the whole thing, and she’s fantastic at that stuff. We put it out there, and back then, when we were small, we’d take 300 or 400 copies to every trade show and stack them on the table. The book had super bright colors. I did that on purpose, because I wanted to draw people to our tables, and I’d have little book-signing parties. It was a lot of fun, and we got a lot of clients from it. It worked out really well. Then I did the updated version several years later, and that worked out well, too.

What I’m getting at is that this podcast was a natural evolution after the books, but it took me so many years to work up the courage to do it, which is kind of weird. I just had it on my goal list for years and years, and finally I said, “Okay, I’m doing it.” It just took the right person to do it with, and Caroline, you’re that person. You’re a good complement to make it happen. So yeah, the advice I’d give myself is: Don’t overthink it. Just do it, get it done, put it out there, and see what happens.

Caroline: I completely agree. This was something new for us, and when we started talking about it, we got really excited and planned our episodes. Sometimes we’d take a break when we were feeling burnt out and come back with new ideas, or we’d just jump into an episode. Before our last recording, we were talking about how we can now jump into these episodes and go back and forth on the fly, versus the beginning, when we overthought it and focused on what our script would say. Now we can usually just jump in and keep going, which is really fun. Some of our favorite episodes, and some of the ones that performed best, didn’t have the fanciest outlines. They just had really good conversation that felt natural.

Josh: And that’s really it. You probably know we’re here to deliver value. We’re not selling anything on these podcasts. We’ve never really pitched any products. From a marketing perspective, it’s all about education for me. I like to deliver as much value as I possibly can. That’s always been my background and my backbone, and it’s what we like to do here at Resident360. I hope everybody listening gets something out of these shows. Whether you’re an active listener or you just tune in from time to time, I hope you can take at least one thing away and act on it.

And maybe sometime you’ll send an email or a comment like, “Hey, Josh and Caroline, I really got something out of that episode.” Because doing these shows, 52 of them, we like hearing that. You don’t always hear it, and sometimes you feel like you’re just sending it out into the world and nothing happens. It’s definitely been a journey, and from the bottom of my heart, it’s been great. Thank you for continuing to tune in and hear what we have to say. I know sometimes we ramble, and sometimes we might not be that exciting, but that’s okay, because Caroline is on the call, and she’s always exciting.

Caroline: Seriously, thank you to everyone who has listened. If you’ve shared an episode, left us a review, or reached out to tell us what helped you, like Josh said, thank you. Getting to see you guys in person and talk about it is always really fun. All the connection that’s come from it has been a great part of this.

Josh: All right, Caroline, I think we’ll leave it at that. We appreciate everybody listening today. As always, next week we’ll have something brand-new for you, so take care. And Caroline, take care out there as well. Appreciate your time.

Caroline: Thank you, guys. Bye!