Accessibility Tools
A Resi
Case Study
Ascent – Westminster, CO
Sherman Associates, Inc
Incentives
Websites
Digital Ads
We’ve always had our doubts about the effectiveness of dollars spent with the ILS’. We know they work, but how well and at what cost?
Before we get into the data, we want to give you a quick breakdown of the sources of traffic, the tracking methods, and the conversion points. It’s also worth mentioning that Ascent is a new property in its first year of lease-up based in Westminster, CO which is a Northwest suburb of Denver. The population is just above 112,000.
Ascent is using three of our products, incentive management, website management, and digital ads. They also advertise with the big 3 ILS’ including Costar, RentPath, and Zillow. In addition to those, they pay for a few smaller ILS’ and maintain profiles at many others.
First let’s talk about the website.
The sources of traffic to the website come in three flavors: organic search results (ie Google, Bing, Yahoo), direct traffic, and pay per click advertising.
Once a visitor lands on the website from one of those three methods, we’ll try to convert them into a lead. We use our incentive management software as one method. We’ll track any interactions with the incentives to start understanding the desires of this visitor. We’ve also integrated pricing and availability with their Property Management Software (PMS), in this case that data is coming from RealPage. This keeps the visitor on the site longer and builds more trust in a way that hiding pricing and availability won’t. Trust is a major factor in converting leads and we also build it with faster loading times, better usability, higher quality images and video, and consistent, accurate data.
At this point we’re waiting for a conversion, either in the form of an email or a call. Emails and calls automatically flow into Ascent’s customer relationship management (CRM) tool along with any tour request and/or incentive data. We use a unique and trackable phone number to make sure calls are being attributed correctly.
Finally tours are scheduled and leases are signed.
Each ILS has a similar flow: search for an apartment, schedule a tour, sign a lease.
In order for us to get to the bottom of this, we needed to track dollars, leads, tours, and leases signed.
We’ve measured the data from the property website vs the top ILS’ including: Apartments.com, Apartment Guide, Zillow, Rent.com, HotPads, etc…
Leads / Tours / Leases
587 Leads
60 Tours
25 Leases
471 Leads
24 Tours
13 Leases
The website generated about 20% more leads than all ILS’ combined.
The website generated 2.5x the number of tours as the ILS’ and 2x the number of leases.
The website has a lead to tour rate double that of the ILS’. An indicator of the quality of the leads provided.
The tour to lease rate for both the website and the ILS’ was about the same. An indicator of leasing and product quality.
So how much was spent to acquire these leads, schedule these tours and sign these leases? We’ll break it down by lead, tour, and lease. We need to keep the exact spends confidential, but we can share percentage figures.
on ILS Advertising
on Website + Ads
ILS Cost Per Lead
ILS Cost Per Tour
ILS Cost Per Lease
these numbers include the cost of Resi to manage the website and the ads
Generated from the website
Generated from the website
Generated from the website
Generated from the website
Well, the ILS’ do provide leads, tours, and signed leases. The problem is they cost A LOT! We certainly are not recommending removing your property from them, but rather that it might be a good time to rethink your advertising spend.
If you can dial down the spend in the ILS and increase the spend with direct PPC ads, you’ll be getting better results for the money (at least when you are using one of our websites).
With that in mind, if your website can’t convert a visitor to a lead, then you’ve got to fix that first. Schedule a demo because we can help!
We’ll follow up to walk you through our pricing and how Resi adds value to thousands of apartments!
We’ll follow up to walk you through our pricing and how Resi adds value to thousands of apartments!
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Or Call Us at (800) 963-4641.
We’ll follow up to walk you through our pricing and how Resi adds value to thousands of apartments!
We’ll follow up to walk you through our pricing and how Resi adds value to thousands of apartments!
"*" indicates required fields
Or Call Us at (800) 963-4641.
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