2025 AIM Conference Review

Last month, I was fortunate enough to attend the AIM Conference in the heavenly Huntington Beach with two members of my marketing team. This was my first time at AIM as I attended NAA the year before. The difference was night and day. Here's a brief recap of my experience.

Perfect Sized Conference

NAA is a zoo. There are thousands and thousands of people, from maintenance directors and regional managers to operators and marketers. The main event is held in a massive ballroom and you feel like a number.

The AIM conference is the opposite. I think, based on a "lottery" they publicly announced there was 850 people. NAA must have had at least 10X that. Because the event has less than 1,000 people, you'll see the same faces over and over. You'll run into people you know. It's fun.

Perfect for Multifamily Marketers

Not only is the size of the conference beneficial for meeting people, but because the conference is specific to multifamily marketing, it's our kind of people and icebreakers are easy as these are people doing the exact same thing as you are on a daily basis. That also leads to...

Perfect Content for Sessions

While NAA touches nearly every topic related to property management, AIM is able to go into the weeds of marketing in this industry. I was both proud of the initiatives our team is rolling on, and also humbled by the couple of things that we can do better to improve our marketing.

Also, because it's marketing you get people who are generally, fun. There was one session with Justin and Kristen (I forget their last names and the company) that felt like a musical on the industry.

Takeaways from AIM 2025

There were 2-3 MAIN takeaways I had at the AIM Conference.

1. Attribution is a problem for everybody. As I talk about in my course, attribution is absolutely key for making good marketing decisions. However, it will never be 100% on-point. At best, it may be 80%. This is simply one of the hurdles of the industry and it's both art and science to figure out how much stake to put into your attribution data.

2. Utilizing AI for marketing campaigns. I briefly touched on how AI will impact our industry, specifically the ILSs a few months back. But I underestimated how much you can use AI to build out campaigns and strategy for marketing your properties. This is where prompt engineering can make a major impact on the speed and quality at which you build marketing plans. If you've also given the AI some of your strategies, it can tailor it's results to specific properties, neighborhoods, floor plans etc.,

3. The future is Resident Experience. One of the biggest emphasis for startups is retention. Your ability to retain customer and maximize the lifetime value (LTV) determines, in some ways, how much money you can fundraise and the value of your business. Well, with the impact of AI on leasing and the rise of centralizing, there was a lot of talk about how property managers can move from rent collectors, to Resident Experience ambassadors. This is a smart move as we see that the national average age of a first-time home buyer is 38 years old. That's way up over the last decade and indicative of a future where people rent for longer. Maximizing retention reduces turnover costs and ultimately drives forward a sense of community the longer people live in the same spot.

Overall, I give the AIM Conference a 10/10. I may be a bit bias because of the time I spent living in Los Angeles, but there's few things better than being blocks from the beach and waking up early to grab coffee and dip your toes in the Pacific Ocean.

Funny enough, I kept running into the same vendor on my morning coffee runs. We developed a good relationship and it is reflective of how good this conference is - it's not vendors hounding you and cat-calling you to visit their booth as much as people trying to find like-minded people and talk shop without forcing shop.