How AppFolio Thinks About AI, Brand, and Customer Focus with Lisa Horner | Peter Lohmann’s Podcast

If you are not putting agentic capabilities to work in your business right now, you're already behind. And so the people that are putting agentic capabilities to work in their business are gonna be spending their time thinking about that higher order stuff. And so that is the whole thing of this paradigm shift. That's what we're trying to talk about is, you know, this old world of sitting in property management software in front of the pane of glass and typing all day. That's not the world we live in. It's a new world. Real estate performance management is you being able to take your time and do what humans do best. And how are you gonna allocate your time when you get help from technology? Sure.

Right?

And, and it is real. It is not in the future. This is the real deal. And so start planning that. Like, what am I going to do in my business to get help from technology? And what are these next 5 things I'm actually going to spend my time on now?

Lisa, it's so nice to be here with you at the AppFolio Future Conference.

You as well, Peter.

I want to start by jumping in the conversation about AI. We hear a lot about AI and I wanted to get your perspective from the marketing angle. We hear so much about AI. How do you go about talking about AI and the value of the AI components in AppFolio to customers, honestly, without their eyes glazing over because it's become such a buzzword?

Yes. I think you see a lot of people naming their products actually with AI in it.

Mm-hmm.

And I think you see a lot of marketers talking about AI for AI's sake when, to your point, customers I think really care about what the yield or dividend or impact of AI is. So like at AppFolio, what we've tried to do is really think about Like, what is, what truly are the outcomes and impacts of AI? And start there and then go as technically deep as a customer wants to go.

And do you feel like some, some customers, they're looking for that AI component at like when they're shopping, you know, across features or different platforms? They, they, are you getting the sense that it's important to them that the product is AI native? But like, I'm curious about how you talk about that without just using a bunch of jargon that's gonna sort of go over the head of the average customer.

Well, I, I mean, I, I kind of feel right now AI's table stakes. Mm-hmm. I, I really actually do. And so if you are a technology provider, you, you have to illuminate that you have AI capabilities, obviously. But if you lead in storytelling with just AI, it just doesn't land with customers, I don't think. I think they really have to make the connection to the benefit. And some of them are very, very articulate and very technically savvy. You have to be able to have that next tier down conversation. But I just don't think leading with the technical jargon is the best approach.

Is it kind of like the old features versus benefits? That's right. Conversation just reborn for the AI era. That's right.

I think so. But I do think it's table stakes right now, and I think everybody is afraid of being left out of being able to leverage AI. And so it's an imperative.

There's definitely a lot of fear. I sense the fear around AI, not that people are scared of the technology, but from the operator side, I sense fear that I'm not implementing the latest tools. My vendors and my software providers are not integrating AI and they're going to fall behind. And then on the vendor side, you know, I'm friends with a ton of vendors in our space and I hear that from them too. They're worried that they're going to be disrupted by vibe coding or that their customers are going to be able to develop their own AI-driven tools. So it's really an interesting time in our, in our industry where there's this fear around AI, but there's also so much excitement and so much anticipation.

No, I agree. And, you know, a lot of the, the things that we're talking about here at Future are around us trying to partner with our customers to, you know, really take advantage of AI capabilities, right? And not have it be so much the hype of it. Like, we're not marketing it for the hype. We're trying— we're not even marketing, right? Don't even think of it that way. Like, my favorite view of marketing is to think of marketing as services, right? And so we have to partner with our customers to ensure they understand how to take advantage of the AI capabilities. And There's, there's lots of things that they could be doing, and they need technology partners that are hand in hand with them in, in getting an unlocking and understanding so they can move forward.

Love that. Speaking of the, your customers, I'm curious how marketing has shifted here in the last year or two. I've really noticed, again, with some of my friends in the industry who are vendors, they're having a much harder time punching through the noise and reaching their customers, property management business owners and operators. So how has Appfolio thought about shifting your marketing strategy to make sure that you're still front of mind, you're still relevant, and you're showing up in your customers' feeds on the various algorithms on the social platforms, in their inboxes, and just really showing up the way that you want the brand and the products to show up?

Yeah, I think, you know, to my earlier answer around marketing, like, it's our job to deeply understand our customer. That's our job. And when we do, we can then show up in a way that they can hear it, right? So that's part of the job of marketing is it's not just talking about ourselves. It's actually talking about our customer and meeting them exactly where they are. And I think that punches through the noise.

As I think about marketing my own property management company.

Yeah.

That advice of don't talk about your company or yourself, talk about your customer. You know, the old saying is like, if you can articulate your customer's problem better than they can, you have their attention.

Yes.

But I'm always curious, like, I mean, I could talk about my customer's problems all day long, but then how do I insert my own solution into that conversation and make them aware of the latest things that we offer? And in your case, like your latest products and updates without sort of coming across as unnatural or it's like, hey, I thought we were talking about me and my problems and now you want to talk about you.

Yeah. And I think, you know, we're all here to solve our customers' problems. That's what we're doing, you know, and we're innovating to solve the problem in a new way.

Yeah.

Right? And so, you know, marketing is only as good as the promises you can keep. So if the products, if your products can't keep and deliver on the promises that you make, you're in trouble.

Yeah.

Your marketing only works for so long. So for us, At Appfolio, you know, we, we spend a lot of time understanding the innovation that we're bringing and what that means to our customer, and we weave that into the storytelling, but we have to be able to deliver on the promises that marketing is making to the world, or it has a very short shelf life.

People are very tuned into that. I've noticed that especially in property management. Property management business owners are a little battle-hardened.

Yeah.

And they're used to being made a lot of promises and they're very keyed into how's this actually going to work?

That's right.

In my business.

Yeah. And good for them. And they should be, you know, they're business leaders and business owners that they need to have that perspective as a matter of fact.

Yeah. You mentioned earlier about, you know, AppFolio really being in tune with your customers. And I really sense that, I've observed that in working with you guys over the years and, you know, knowing a lot of your customers and being here at the show. I mean, you've got a huge number of team members, technical team members, product team members.

Absolutely.

Here on the trade show floor speaking with your customers, my peers. And that can't be an accident. It's obviously very intentional. Where did that, 'cause, and I also don't think that's common, unfortunately. So where does that come from? Has that just been baked into the DNA of AppFolio from day one, or was there a leader who stepped in, yourself or somebody else, at some point who was like, hey, we need to stay really close to our customers?

Yeah, I think, I think it's just fundamental. I really do. I think technology providers are, are actually in business to solve those problems. And if you can't understand the problem well enough or the goal of your customer, I, I think you're just at too far of a distance to know that you're actually helping and creating real solutions. And so, I just think that that's been at the core of our company culture since day one.

Yeah. Well, it's, it, I think it's been very instrumental in the success that your team has had, your company and, and their products. And whenever I speak with other vendors, I'm like, hey, have you ever been to a property manager's office?

Yeah.

You should hang out there. Yeah. Because it's, it, there, there's a lot that you can't pick up just by sitting in a boardroom and doodling on a whiteboard.

I agree with that. You know, and you, you just like us, you know, we, we have a lot of technology ourselves as marketers. We want the same thing.

Yep.

We want the same type of relationship.

Yep.

I'm curious, when you're operating at the scale of a publicly traded company in the marketing side, I imagine it takes a while to spin up a new campaign and to get all of the messaging and all of the materials and the ad buys and the media.

How—

so in some ways you almost have to be fortune tellers and, and sort of visualize what are the problems my customers are going to be having 3 months from now? Yes. When this campaign is live.

That's right.

How do you think about forecasting the future of your customers' problems or wants or desires or needs? In other words, like how do you stay in tune with where the puck is going?

That's right.

Because if you build a marketing campaign today, you know, let's, you're gonna be, I'm sure after this show, the team is instantly gonna be planning next year's future conference.

That's right.

So you, a little bit of forecasting there. I'd love to hear how you think about that.

Well, it's, You know, we, we have to understand where, where we think the innovation is going, right? So where, where do we think the innovation is going? What are we bringing to market? And therefore, what's the relevance for the customer? And so we do have to think ahead because we have to build things in marketing, right? It's not like an instant thing. Yep. So we, we actually do, we think, ahead. We look out there. We make sure that we believe that the innovation matches what the customer cares about. And it gives us a chance then to have time to build this type of scenario. Like, this doesn't happen overnight. Like, you have to really be thinking ahead, to your point. And we spend a lot of time on that, you know, the strategy piece and the execution piece. They go hand in hand. And we have to put a bow on that strategy before we can start executing.

To your point, I want to ask you about sort of customer avatars or ICPs. So in, in my world, we have a few different types of customers that we have to speak to and serve, and that's owner investors who go out and deliberately buy investment properties and then search for a property manager.

Yep.

And we also have what we call accidental landlords who Tried to sell their house, couldn't get the price they wanted, so they decided to rent it out, but they never thought they would be an investor. In fact, they don't even think of themselves as an investor. And I find it challenging to market to both of those groups with our resources or with one singular company or product. And you have the same challenge. You know, there's many different types of customers here. There's customers like me, there's huge institutional customers, there's owner operators. I'm fascinated by the challenge of building a marketing engine that speaks to all those different avatars, and yet at the heart of it, the product is AppFolio.

That's right.

I'd love to hear you talk about how you tackle that and really, you know, and really come up as relevant in the mind of a prospect for their specific challenges.

Well, I think there are universal things, and I think To your point, you know, we spend time making sure we understand what these universal things are for the market, let's say, or for the broad swath of customers in this industry. And then from there, what's unique and singular in, in these types of businesses. So affordable housing, right? And student housing. They're dealing with totally different things, right? And so we have to find a way to understand that and then speak one tier down to them very specifically. And we think about that, like, what's universal versus what's very specific? And if you atomize too small though, you're in trouble because you don't have the capacity, you don't have the amount of people, you could never get that atomized. So you just have to say, what's my, how many differences are there and what's gonna actually move the needle and make a difference for that customer and storytelling?

What I make up is that there's a real intuition or an art to that decision matrix of this is what they have in common that's gonna speak to them. And this is what this group is specific to their problems and how we can How we can use language that's relevant for them.

That's right.

Feels a little bit like a dark art or a, a more art than science in some ways.

Well, and that's why you have to, you have to have a mentality of experimentation and you have to have like a hypothesis that you believe is true and it either will or won't be true as you begin to execute. You know, just like any marketing is, and you have to be willing to have a belief and a strategy, and then watch how it does. Like, is it resonating? Do people engage? Do— is it getting at the heart of what we think that people care about? And, uh, it— when it does, great. When it doesn't, we revisit it and say, okay, this just does— this isn't working. We're doing something wrong here. Get back to the drawing board.

Today's episode is sponsored by propertymanagement.com. If you haven't heard my podcast episode with their founder, Matt Spear, it's worth a listen. We dug into how they're using this domain to build what I'd call the trust layer for the property management industry. Because if you run a property management company, you've probably had some kind of a run-in with Google Reviews, Yelp, BBB complaints, or Reddit threads.

It's messy.

And more often than not, these platforms can be gamed or they're pay-to-play or just completely miss what actually matters to clients. PropertyManagement.com is trying to fix that. They built a system called the True Match Score, and it's not just fluff. It factors in things like your occupancy and maintenance performance, experience, trust signals, and the actual value you deliver to owners. This is in theory. The folks behind PropertyManagement.com are former PM operators, and it shows in the tools that they're shipping. Here's why property managers are getting excited. Your verified profile becomes clean, credible landing page for prospective owners. They've got built-in surveys and data that drives your True Match score, adding real social proof. And because your profiles live on a high-quality domain with structured data, it shows up clearly in both web and AI search results.

That's the part I'm excited about, is the AI search results.

Right now, owners are poking around everywhere before they decide to work with you. This gives you something credible to show them in your sales pitch, email campaigns, even on your website.

Here's the big news.

PropertyManagement.com is compiling a top 100 property managers list based on TrueMatch scores. Anyone can get a verified profile for free, but you've got to get verified by November 30th to be eligible. If you make the list, that's marketing fuel you can use all through 2026. Thanks again to PropertyManagement.com for sponsoring the show and head over to PropertyManagement.com to get verified. And grab your true match score.

And how do you know if it's working or not working? What are the signs that you look at or the feedback that tells you whether, hey, this is hitting or this is, this is not landing?

Well, you know, you have the top of funnel to the bottom funnel type of metrics and you have to watch all of those metrics. You know, you wanna look at the top of the funnel and you wanna make sure that you're getting the type of engagement that you want. And you know, most marketers have a pretty good sense now with the type of technology that we have to know when something's working and when it's not.

Sure. That willingness to experiment, play a little bit, take risks, form a hypothesis, build a campaign and watch what happens. That's something that I think at the scale of my business is a little daunting.

Yeah.

Cause I, I feel that, you know, I'm very focused on efficiency as a property manager.

Absolutely.

And so marketing has always been, I think, a challenge because I'm always looking for like, what's the return on my dollar?

Understood.

And so I'm, I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the mindset of how I should be thinking about marketing campaigns and marketing spend, because I, what I've learned is that you can't bring the same discipline that you bring to other areas of the P&L. Yeah. You have to be willing to take risks and try new things. Oh, yeah. And see what works.

Well, yeah, I, I think that that's really true. You, you have to have belief about what you're doing, and you want that aligned across your company. You know, you, you all need to believe that that's what you think is the right approach. And I, and I think when you have constraints, Then, you know, you have to define what the constraints are. You don't wanna put yourself in a position that you're always overwhelmed and you're, you can't even tell if you're making progress. That, that's a bad place to put yourself. And that means, I think your strategy is too complex for what you're doing. So it's like you have to understand what your constraints are. I think that's really important. And then what's your highest outcome? What is your highest outcome and prioritize from there? Sure. But it's very easy in marketing to think you have to do every tactic on the wheel. That's very easy to do.

Yeah.

And you have to be careful of that. I think as marketers, you can't take on everything all the time.

I'm curious a little bit about your growth as a leader. In reviewing, um, preparing to speak with you, I saw that you you move from an individual contributor to obviously a leader, and that's a journey that a lot of, a lot of people aspire to, of course. And it's a journey that a lot of property management business owners have gone through themselves.

Yes.

When they started their business, they were essentially an in, an individual contributor.

That's right.

But now they're trying to lead a team of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100. And love to hear you share how you made that journey. What were your challenges? What were your successes? Some resources.

We talk about this with our own teams, and some people really want to be in leadership and management, and other people do not want to take on that task. I think you have to have a growth path for both types of folks in your company. If your only growth path is management, then you're kind of having a block on some of this individual contributor group. So you have to meet people where they are too on what they want in their careers. But for the people that actually want to get into management and leadership, it can be a very big jump and it can be an arduous task to be a manager for the first time, you know? You're used to being an individual contributor where you're executing your own outcomes, and then you take on the outcomes of other people or capabilities, not just your own. And so I do think it takes mentorship. It takes training, it takes coaching. And so I think you have to invest in that to bring your people up or yourself. You've gotta study a little bit to make sure you understand what it takes to lead people. And I would, I think the early career people think that's more glamorous than it is. Like, it's a big task and responsibility to lead people, and you have to invest in studying up for that and really preparing yourself. And if you're an individual contributor and you want to make that jump, like, start studying now and really be thinking about what it takes to be a manager of people, you know, or a leader of something much bigger.

Yeah, that's great. Do you ever find, or do you ever grapple with the desire to get back into individual contributor mode in some specific marketing campaign where you're like, oh, I love, you know, maybe you really like doing the design of the, I don't know, marketing stuff. But yes, I, I just imagine that there's certain little things that you really wanna see a certain way. Do you have to resist that temptation to kind of jump down 3 levels and, and get involved again?

If my team was sitting here, like Daniel, who, you know, Laura, Stephanie, et cetera. Stephanie's probably right around here somewhere. They would tell you that I absolutely struggle with that. Yeah, absolutely. And I often say, do you want any help? And the answer is like, sometimes it's absolutely yes. Like, let's work on this, let's workshop it, et cetera. Oftentimes the answer is no, we have it. I'm like, okay, all right. So you have to have trust, but you I absolutely, it's very hard, very hard for me.

There's a real tension between, I wanna see things done a certain way, and I believe this is important for the company, versus I need to let my team learn and grow and maybe even make some mistakes and learn from them.

That's right.

Yeah. That, that is challenging.

Well, and I think you, you, you build a team of people and you, you have to trust those people just like they trust you. You have to trust them. And I think the way to get at that is to just focus on the outcomes. Like, don't focus so much on the execution. Say, like, what are we all trying to achieve here? Get to the higher order outcome and not worry so much about the differences in how people execute to get to the outcome. And, and really just kind of go above that., and that's helped me. Yeah. And that's helped our team.

The ability to communicate those outcomes is something that I find I can never work hard enough at. Yeah. The vision to me, it's clear in my mind, right? Whoever planned this show had a really clear vision of how this, they wanted this to go, for example. Yes. But how to get that image into the minds of everyone who's involved in the project Whether you're explaining to them, you're writing a memo, you're sketching, I find that to be an interesting challenge because to me, and I'm sure this is how it is with everyone, you're like, isn't it obvious? Like, yeah.

Shouldn't it?

Yeah.

Don't you get it?

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. But then that, of course, that's not appropriate. You need to be much more clear and concise. So how do you, how do you approach that? Like, what have you found to be a really effective way when you have the outcome clear in your mind?

Yeah.

To communicate that to everybody involved? Like, do you have a standard memo format that you use? Do you have a kickoff meeting? I'm curious about that.

Oh yeah, we have, you know, we have pretty rigorous operational cadences. We deeply articulate the strategy, you know, and then we use those cadences to communicate that strategy many times, you know, it's, it's, it's, there's not a one and done thing.

In a sense, you're marketing to your team first.

That's exactly right.

And then they have to go out and market to every, to your customers.

It takes a lot of effort to do that. And you, you have to invest in that. That's just part of keeping everybody aligned and on the same page. You, you really have to make that investment. And so that the rigor around the cadences really helps that.

To, to take a specific example, the new performers that were announced on stage yesterday, the AI performers, what were some of the outcomes? Speaking of outcomes, what are the outcomes that you wanted your customers to be clear on, you know, at the conclusion of the keynote or at the conclusion of a specific marketing campaign? I feel like that's a really present example that we could talk about.

Well, we know that The innovation that we're working on and the performers specifically are a game-changing capability for our customers. So I think it's multi-layered, right? They have to understand that it exists. That's just a binary thing, right? That's one piece of it. So we have to invest to make sure that people can hear that this capability exists. And then down from there, if you look behind you, all of those people standing there where you could actually put your hands on the keyboard and use it. Like, that is like just the most fundamental ground level of getting the pull-through. Because when you put your fingers on the keyboard of this new technology or you talk to the new technology, it's almost mind-bending for a little time until you recognize Okay, I can see the vision of how this is gonna work. And we know that some of the new technology is such a paradigm shift that we have to invest to get people to stand and, and talk to the technology and communicate with the technology to really open their minds to what's possible. Sure. And so I think it's multilayered.

Whenever I think about marketing something new, My mind just immediately shortcuts to, it's so awesome, go check it out.

Like, yeah, right.

That's not sufficient. You have to sort of craft a narrative and it's, and come up with visuals and themes. And it's amazing. A well-run marketing campaign is, is a thing of beauty. It's, it's very impressive.

It's, and it's a lot of fun. I think marketing is a lot of fun because it is challenging and Again, like you can get lost in the weeds of marketing. There's so many things you could possibly do.

Yeah.

What commitment are you gonna make that you actually can do and can achieve? And those brackets are really important.

Yeah. I wanna ask you about branding. I perceive the brand of AppFolio to be light and fun and innovative, very customer-oriented. And I imagine that's not a mistake. I'm curious, what are some lessons that property management business owners could take back around this concept of branding? Yeah. Because I think when a lot of people hear brand, they're like, oh, that's your logo, right?

Yeah.

It's like, well, there's a lot more to it and it feels a little bit just beyond our grasp.

Yeah.

As operators, business owners. Love if you could share any insights there.

I don't know if you saw my interview with Edward Norton yesterday. One of the things you have to think about is, who is my customer and what do they care about? But who am I and what do I care about? And I think if you can, if you can get to that kernel of who am I and what do I care about and marry those two things, that's a helpful exercise. And if you, if you think of brand outside of yourself as a company, I think you can get in trouble, right? And so start with who am I and what do I care about? And that is a very helpful exercise. We've done a few brand strategy workshops with some of our customers to just kind of facilitate that process a little bit. And it's a helpful process. But look, look inside at your, who you are, your beliefs, your philosophy, your values, and Really start there. And I think that's a helpful exercise.

I love that. Uh, and I think for, for small business owners, that's a scary idea. The idea of who am I and what do I care about? Because almost implicit in that exercise is I don't care about everyone, or I'm not gonna be a fit for everyone.

And that's fine. That's, that's like a very healthy exercise. Mm-hmm. Very healthy.

Yeah. I, I, I agree with you. I, it just feels scary. The idea of, hey, I'm already struggling to grow. Yep. And now you're telling me, well, plant a, plant a flag and say, this is what I'm all about. It feels like, well, now I'm cutting off half my potential customers.

Yeah. Well, you gotta take that into your thinking too. Like, it can't just be this instant of your customer. It has to be your, you know, a little bit expansive timeline, right? 'Cause it takes you a while to build those things. So think out a little ways, you know, think out a little ways. Who am I today and who am— what's my next step of where I wanna be? Work that into the strategy session. And, but putting a few brackets around things and understanding your constraints as a company and a marketing capability, especially in this area of brand strategy, it can be very helpful, right? Like what you're saying no to or what you're not focused on is just as helpful sometimes as what's on the top of your list.

Yeah.

I find that when you find, when you do find the courage to, to plant a flag and say, hey, this is who we're for, I, I have found it makes the marketing much easier. Yeah. Because now you can craft your messaging specifically for those people. If you just say, hey, we're a property manager, we'll manage anything. Yep. That's not very compelling.

Yep.

But if you say we specialize in duplexes, in this neighborhood above $1,000 a month in rent. Yep. If I owned one of those and I got a, you know, postcard. Yes. Suddenly I, you have my attention. Yes.

Yeah.

So there, there's something there.

Yeah. I like it. Yeah. And, and it takes work, you know, you, you don't build a brand in a minute. Like it's, it's a multi-year thing that you're doing.

Hey, Peter here. I wanna share with you guys a new tool that we're using at my management company for for leasing. It's called RentEngine. You may have heard of them. They're a newer product in the marketplace and they facilitate self-showings and agent showings at all the properties that we manage. We typically have anywhere from 25 to 40 rental listings live at any given time. And since making the switch to RentEngine in, I think it was springtime of this year, our leasing timelines have dropped significantly. Not only that, but we're actually saving a bunch of money compared to the solution we were using beforehand. My team absolutely raves about RentEngine. We've used a couple other solutions, but ever since we made the switch, my team just can't shut up about how much they love using RentEngine. I've been recommending them a lot recently to other property managers. Heard nothing but good things. Basically, this is a sort of AI-first leasing platform. It's kind of the first of a new generation of software that's just coming available for property managers. You can actually go into the software and see the AI responding to all the tenant inquiries, both over text message and email as well as voice calls. So I've been really impressed with what they're doing, and the proof is in the numbers. Our leasing timelines are better than ever. Our days on market is lower, and our owners are really happy because frankly, we're just getting their properties leased out really fast. The team also has talked about how much they really like their lockboxes. They're incredibly tough, they're basically unbreakable. And with the company we were using before, we were having a lot of problems with battery life and people breaking them open or having trouble getting them open even when they were trying to legitimately use them. So I encourage you to check them out. I'll drop a link in the description where you can book a demo with their team.

I'm curious about, and I don't know if this is your area, but back to AI for a minute. We're really seeing websites and SEO heavily impacted by AI. Folks are searching using AI tools. They're searching for property managers.

Yes.

I imagine they're searching for property management software. Yes. And as a leader of a company who I'm sure is at the forefront of all this, I'd love anything you can share about how we should be thinking about this new era of AI search results and the impact on SEO and websites and, and those things?

Well, I think it's absolutely true. The digital world is evolving just like the, the technology itself. And, and digital is a big piece of what marketers do. And so having a grasp on your current performance, I think is super important. Right? Like, so what's my state of being? And then watching to see in a world where we don't know a lot right now. You know what I mean? Like, many of us, maybe not you, Peter, but many of us have lived through, you know, mobile, social, location-based, all of these things. And now we're at this AI paradigm shift. And it's not only the products that we use, but it is the digital landscape. You listen to every single thing that Google's talking about all day long. It's a changing time. And I think it's a time to be aware and educating yourself. But I don't think there's any silver bullet answers right now. I really don't. And so, it's actually a fun time if you look at it that way. Like, can you understand the potential business impact or what's gonna change here?

And, you know, study up. I love, I love that you're relating to it that way. It's a fun time. I think a lot of business owners feel scared and they feel like, hey, I invested all this money in this website and in Google reviews and all these other things. That's what they told me to be doing. And so that's what I did. And now this AI thing, and when I search AI, my competitor is showing up. I'm, I'm really interested in this idea of sort of how we relate to the new challenge. Marketing, as you mentioned, has gone through all of these evolutions of mobile and social and that's right. It feels like AppFolio's really kept at the forefront of that. So how do we, how can we engage with these challenges in, in a way that feels fun and new and exciting and not, all right, here's just another thing we gotta figure out, you know?

Well, did you hear what Matthew Baird said on stage yesterday? I don't know the exact quote, but it was something like the, the, the learn, the learners will be in a space where they can anticipate, right? And experiment. The learned know things from the world that's behind us. And so I think, I think in marketing, you just have to have an experimentation mindset. You really do. And you have to figure out for your company, like, how you create capacity and space for that.

That's a big challenge for, for business owners. A lot of that ends up falling on the business owner. I'm lucky enough to have a marketing team member in-house, but a lot of folks don't. How do we carve out some time? Or like, let me frame the question this way. Where do you go to learn about the latest with AI and marketing? Because I think a lot of business owners would love to be reading the same things that you're reading. Yep. With the time that they do have to invest here, whether it's podcasts or—

I mean, the, the list is very long and I do think in these shifts, these paradigm shifts, you do have to educate yourself. You have to create the space, and sometimes that encroaches on your total life. You know what I mean? There are times when that happens where you have a surge in— A season. —needing to kind of read up. And I think this is one of those times. And so you just have to make the space that's relevant for what you are dealing with, right? It's like you could, right now you could be reading 24 hours a day and listening 24 hours a day and using AI capabilities to help you do that. Mm-hmm. Right? But if you can just parse it down to what's most impactful to you and your business, that's helpful because, I mean, we could all not sleep now for a little while, but I think you need to just kind of get a handle on that and block out some time and know exactly what's specific to what you wanna know and dig in there.

It definitely feels like there's seasons of taking in information and studying and learning, and then there's seasons of implementing and going out and practicing and experimenting. And it definitely feels like a learning, taking in information season right now.

I think so. I really do. And I mean, you see that here on the floor of Explore. Here at Future. Like, these people, our customers, have taken time out of their very busy schedules to have a learning moment. Like, they're standing here trying to understand and learn for this next set of things that they're going to do. And it's our job to partner with our customers to help them facilitate that process of learning. True. Right? And we, and we view ourselves as very responsible and accountable there.

Yeah. What are some of the common marketing myths that you hear thrown around? You just, you read so much about marketing, you hear so much, everyone with a pen or a keyboard has something to say about marketing. And as a leader in the space, I'd love to hear just sort of what are some things that you've heard? You're just like, no, that's not true.

I mean, that's so hard for me because, you You know, if you were doing B2C marketing, it would be totally different from B2B marketing in some ways, right? And so there are myths about, you know, B2B marketing for B2C marketers. You know what I mean? So it just depends on what you're dealing with in your space. So what's your— Yeah. Who's your customer? How does your customer learn? You know, I, I think the biggest myth from my perspective is starting with tactics, where that's where you see a lot of people like coming in the door of, okay, here's my 20 tactics that I'm gonna do. And I, I'm, I'm, I'm, how do I make a Google ad? I'm like, well, why would you be doing that? And so there's one greater tier there that, that people should be thinking about, right? And it, and the, the myth is, is that I have to do every tactic. You know, and that is just, you could never get that done as a small business. You can't. And so those choices about the marketing activities and tactics you're gonna do is critical.

So rather than starting with tactics, what should we be doing?

I think, who's your customer? You know, who's your customer and what are they doing? Where are they? Like answering those questions is critical. To deciding what your tactic mix is.

And then what, once you, once you're clear on that, who my customer is, where are they, what are the challenges that they're facing, what are some of the steps that you would go through or questions that you would ask to determine the strategy?

Well, where, where is that customer? What are they doing? We, we know our customer is going to come to events, right? It's a very location in-the-world thing. So events have to be on the mix for us, right? We have to do an event like this. We don't have a choice. We have to be in the real world with our customers. So things like that. Yeah. You know, like what are these things that we know need to happen and have we prioritized those things first?

Sure. On the list. You mentioned B2B and B2C. One of the challenges I've noticed in marketing to our customers is that they're kind of in between because they're, they do actually own a business. A rental property is a business. No doubt. It's accounted for like a business. It's treated like a business for tax purposes, but they don't really think of it that way. And they don't put duplex owner on their LinkedIn profile. Yep. They typically are doing something else for their business or for their career. So it's, I find it really challenging to, reach and speak to these customers because you have to sort of market to them like B2C, but we, when they onboard with us, we really treat them like B2B. I'd love anything you can share there because it's just something I've frankly struggled with is how do we reach these people? How do we speak to them? Because the challenges that they're facing, they, they just don't think about their rental properties all that much. They don't really want to. Yeah. And it's just, it's kind of a unique type of a customer profile.

You know, I, I think of a property manager having these core constituents as your customers, right? You obviously have the resident, which is a totally distinct customer than your owner client or your investor client, right? What's different about these two things? And you have to have a bifurcated plan as property managers to deal with those facts., right? That's just the basics. And so how do you allocate your time and resources to those two customers, I think is really important. That's like a perfect annual planning thing to do. Like, what am I doing here with these two very distinct customers that I'm serving and how much time and investment am I making on either side of this? And I think, and I don't know, do you think about that when you go every year?

Absolutely. That's where you start. Yeah. So the, you know, marketing to residents is a totally separate part of the business. Different people, different strategy. What we find honestly is if you have great products, meaning great homes, that's right. And great apartments, they tend to sort of market themselves. If you get the information about those properties with good photos out into the world. That's right. Through the listing services. Property owners is much, much more challenging. Yeah. And I spend 98% of my marketing brainpower on how do I reach new prospective property owner clients? Yep. What are the problems that they're facing? What's the language I need to be using with them? Okay. Where do they show up online?

It's, it's a big challenge. Well, and especially if they're very small businesses too. Yeah. You know, The, the bigger business your customer is, the more there is to know about that customer. The smaller your customer is, the less there is to actually know. So just finding a way to articulate what is that important ICP or what would you say avatar of that customer and how precise can you be about who's the right customer for you, I think is super important. Yeah. Right? Like, what, what's my highest priority customer? And like, how am I the most relevant with my product and services and offerings for that specific piece of that potential customer more broadly? Yeah. And I think that's a very helpful thing to do is be super precise about, you know, why that customer should care about you and why they're the most important, you know, specific customer for you. And that's a helpful exercise.

In terms of reaching your customers, I sort of bifurcate that world into inbound and outbound. Yeah. I don't know if that's the right way to think of it, but one of the challenges we have with our property owner customers is that, you know, your customers have, an office and a phone number. That's right. And an email address and a website. Yep. Our customers don't, there's no office phone line that I can just look up and call to reach a prospective owner. So we tend to rely pretty heavily on inbound leads. Yep. People searching for us, intent-based searches. I'm really curious for you how you think about that, the difference between an outbound campaign of, hey, let's Let's send some direct mail. Let's make some phone calls. Let's send some emails versus just letting them search in Google.

Yeah. I mean, again, we get to this question of like, how much investment do I have and what are my resources? I think about like, what's my highest goal? What's my big outcome there? And you know, how much of that goal can we reach with inbound versus what's the requirement of outbound, right? Like, so what, what is, what's that mix? And, and for you, I think when I think about your customer, when I think about knowing your very, very successful customers and learning from them is critical for you. So who are your most successful customers? Who's getting a tremendous amount of value from you, and what can you learn from them, right, to think about their peers. And I would say if businesses who aren't thinking about their current most successful customers, it's a fabulous place to start. It's like you're gonna hear everything you need to know from that group.

That's fascinating. I have to confess that our biggest customers at my company, I'm so preoccupied with fulfillment operations, leasing up their units and doing their financials that it almost never occurs to me like, hey, let me just go sit down with this person and talk to them not about the latest leasing update, but about what's it like to work with us? You know, why did you select us? How's your experience been? Yes. Is that kind of what you're—

Absolutely. And like, if you, if you sit at this whole conference of future, one of the things you should be taking away is what am I gonna do with my time when I put agentic capabilities to work in my business? If you are not putting agentic capabilities to work in your business right now, You're already behind. You're already behind. And so the people that are putting agentic capabilities to work in their business are gonna be spending their time thinking about that higher order stuff. And so that is the whole thing of this paradigm shift. That's what we're trying to talk about is, you know, this old world of sitting in property management software in front of the pane of glass and typing all day. That's not the world we live in. It's a new world. Real estate performance management is you being able to take your time and do what humans do best. And how are you gonna allocate your time when you get help from technology? Sure. Right? And, and it is real. It is not in the future. This is the real deal. And so start planning that. Like, what am I gonna do in my business to get help from technology? And what are these next 5 things I'm actually gonna spend my time on now? All of us, that, and that's why I think it's exciting because that's what we're doing, right? Yeah.

As a team. I have to imagine that nothing gets a marketer more excited than great new products to talk about. That's right. So I, I imagine that the new performers and, and the performance platform has gotta be just really exciting for you and your team to talk about. So how do you go about, like, when, when AppFolio product is like, hey guys, check this out, right? They're showing you the new thing and you're like, oh, this is awesome. Like, our customers are gonna love this. What's kind of your framework for, okay, this is cool. Now we have to go to work and figure out how do we communicate something like the value of Agentic? Performance in a property manager's day-to-day life.

Yeah. It's, it's like, what's the percentage of airtime, right? And how does it fit into the total storytelling? Mm-hmm. And you know, it, you have to think foundationally when you're going through a paradigm shift like this too. Like, huh, well, we're solving the problems in totally different ways. It, it is a bigger shift than just, you know, some smaller feature. This is a bigger shift, different language. And so it has to, it requires different things. And so like the magnitude of the impact to the customer is what drives that.

In property management, we don't have the luxury of new products, so to speak, as a service business. You know, we, there's some products that are vendors and, and solution providers like Appfolio. Some of those new things we can talk about to our customers because they're, they're customer-facing, like the portal or, or some of the other things like that. So as, as somebody who's thinking about marketing my property management business, if I don't have a cadence of new product releases to, to center my campaigns around, what should I be thinking about in terms of what's going to get my customer's attention and get them excited?

Well, like, again, like start with the, start with the outcomes. What are, what are the, what are the macro outcomes for each of my constituents. Like when I look at the resident onboarding and onboarding lift innovation that we're bringing to market, right? That's a game changer for both of your customers. And that, like, if you, if you can have game-changing innovation or capabilities that relate to both of your customers, well, then that has to be at the top of the priority, right? You're gonna transform the resident experience. These people want convenience. Like, what are we doing all day long? We have the convenience of mobile, just consumer-grade experiences that make certain things so easy to get done in our lives that we use in our consumer life. We want that in the consumer life of a resident. Like, it's the most foundational thing housing. Like we heard that from Edward yesterday. So how can you transform the experience there and make sure you have new offerings? Like you, we all have to innovate there, right? Like how can we help you do that? And what's the relationship of that to your other constituent customer? And I think when we, when you can find things that are in the wheelhouse of solving for both of your customers, like the, those are easy to prioritize and that's how we think about that too. Mm-hmm. Right? Like what's the most fundamental and foundational versus what's specific? I like that lens, you know, and I think, have, when's the last time you actually rented a property?

I rented an apartment last in 2012.

I just rented an apartment for my daughter who's in college. I know that ages me, Fine. It's, it's not great. There's a lot of work to do. I had to go to a bank. I had to go to a bank and get 4 checks. Oh my God. In a giant city where I like— there's a lot of work to do. And that work that transforms the resident's life transforms your relationship with your owner. And so, like, there's some really great things that are happening in this industry right now. And so I'm excited because I care deeply about the resident experience, and that's your customer. So how do we help you facilitate that? It's one of our highest priorities for you. So we need to understand what that is. We need to know what you want to get done and how you transform your value to the resident and partner with you to get that done through technology as your technology partner. Sounds great. So I mean, I think there's some, there's some good things.

When I think about marketing, I'm so focused on bringing in leads. Like, that's what my mind goes to when I think about marketing my business. Yeah. And it's clear to me that the, the marketing function needs to extend beyond signing up a new customer. It's clear that a lot of the marketing effort that's gone into this event is to your current customers. Yeah. And we basically never market to our current customers. How should I think about that? Because it, it, it seems like I'm missing an opportunity to really deepen that relationship. I mean, even sharing, like we were just talking about, sharing some of the new innovations. Yes. With my owner customers and my resident customers. My brain just doesn't naturally go there. I'm so focused on the top of funnel and bringing in new customers.

Yeah. No, I understand. And it's a hard thing as a business owner and with constraints. But I do think your connection to your customer has so much information there about them and who they are and your ability to make sure that you're bringing them along with the value that you're creating for them. I think it's important. And We can help you there, and we need to actually help more there as your technology partner. We have to do that. And so, that's absolutely an area where we will increase focus because that is your core, one of your core constituents. And, you know, your marketing mix and your engagement strategy is going to be very different from those two constituents. Thinking about that and putting some energy there, I think is important.

Wonderful. Well, this has been fantastic, Lisa. Thank you for taking some time with me today, and I really enjoyed talking with you.

Peter, thank you so much. It's just such a pleasure to sit here with you, and let's keep the conversation going.

Sounds great. Thank you.

Thank you. If you like the show and want to get connected to the community, you can follow me on Twitter @PSLohmann and subscribe to my email newsletter on my website, peterlohmann.com. I try to share as much valuable property management content as I can on a regular basis. Thanks again for listening and have a great week.