More Than Marketing Presents: 5 Questions with Donje Putnam, Director of Marketing
More Than Marketing is a new educational series from Resident360, where we ask Marketing Directors throughout the country 5 questions. Today, you’ll meet Donje Putnam.
Donje Putnam, RAM, is a self-described Multi-Family Fanatic and Marketing Director & Compliance Manager for Signature Management Corporation in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She has over two decades of hands-on experience in apartment management and serves on the Virginia Apartment Management Association Board of Directors, along with holding other local association roles.
With a passion for marketing, sales, and social media, she is responsible for the leasing strategy and digital marketing initiatives at her company. She lives in Newport News, VA with her husband, two kids, a very hyper dog, Piper, and a snaggle-toothed cat named Squeak.
Q1: What are the top decisions you make as the Marketing Director of your organization?
#1. Where my properties are listed online and in print and how much I spend at each property. I’ve been working on marking in my analytics whenever we change what is on our website, when we start a campaign, or when we change the spend on Google Ads, Facebook or an ILS to see if I can tell what it does to my traffic and conversion.
I’m obsessed. I move things around on pages on my website to see if that changes people’s behavior. I change pictures on ads. Recently, I changed an entire campaign to read “you” instead of “our” because I read that people are more likely to buy when you use you. I’ll let you know how that goes…
#2. Search terms for my Google Ads. We’ve been doing a lot of experimentation with long tail “natural speak” searches and it’s been fun to track their performance against our “regular” ads.
#3. Guiding content and design decisions. I love trying to think of new content that isn’t salesy, but useful, interesting content that even people living at other apartments or in our neighborhood would enjoy watching or reading.
Q2: What small change has made a big difference in your life?
Posting on Google My Business weekly has driven a ton of traffic. Sometimes I just repost a property’s Facebook post. Still works.
Q3: What is one multifamily industry trend you are most excited about?
Welcoming the robot overlords: Self tours, automation of tedious tasks that I now do manually, AI that can make decisions about the best follow up (when and what).
Q4: What is something that you’ve learned that you lean on daily?
Asana task list & project manager. I put everything on there and check it off even if it is a small thing–like filling out this questionnaire. When you check off enough things, you get to see a unicorn or a monster! It’s gratifying, you can sort by the due date, you can also manage projects in there, which I frequently do when rolling out new products or company policies.
Q5: What are the biggest marketing challenges communities are facing today?
THINGS CHANGE SO FAST, it is a challenge to read and keep up with all the latest. Also, there are so many self-declared experts out there that it is also challenging to know who to listen to.
Questions or comments for Donje? Comment below:
Written by Josh Grillo
Josh Grillo is a #1 Best Selling Author, Speaker and Co-Founder of Resident360.
