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The ROI to NOI field guide

Four moves to prove every marketing dollar’s worth to the P&L, and stop being the first line item cut.
By Gunnar Blakeway-Walen · Published August 28, 2026 · 8 minute read

In This Guide

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This guide draws on Resi’s Marketing Your Marketing webinar with Sarah Greenough, President and Chief Marketing Officer at Princeton Properties, and Sara Graham, Founder and CEO of Six Dots, hosted by Brent Christelli, Director of Sales at Resi. You can watch the full session here.

Multifamily marketing budgets have a strange double life. The budget is a catchall where model furniture, phone systems, and fitness equipment all land. And when it’s time to protect NOI, it’s the first line everyone reaches for.

That happens because leadership doesn’t move on impressions and clicks. They move on leases, occupancy, and NOI. Until marketing reports in that language, it earns the cost center label by default.

This guide covers four moves, in order, that translate marketing ROI into terms a P&L understands. They come from marketing leaders who run this play at real portfolios. Do them in sequence: each one earns the trust the next one spends.

<5% Marketing’s typical share of a property budget. It’s still the first line cut when NOI is under pressure.
Move 1

Diagnose before you defend

Why “we need more traffic” is usually the wrong diagnosis

Every marketer in multifamily has heard it: the property isn’t leasing, so it must need more traffic. Turning on a new ILS package or raising PPC spend is the easy response. It’s also how dollars get thrown into a dumpster, because more volume never fixes a broken step further down the funnel.

Before defending your numbers or buying traffic, run a forensic audit. Pull lead volume, lead-to-tour rate, and tour-to-application rate. Then verify that the plumbing works: call tracking numbers, ILS feeds, listing accuracy.

100s Leads found dead on a single unrouted call tracking number at one property. The number was tied to a decommissioned lease-up phone nobody checked. The property thought it had a traffic problem. It had a plumbing problem.

Check the four Ps first

People

Does the on-site team have the training and tools to convert? Is one agent’s lead-to-tour rate dragging the property down?

Product

Are units actually made ready? How many stale days sit between ready and move-in? Does the tour match the website?

Promotion

Are leads reaching the property at all? Are feeds, tracking numbers, and listings functioning and accurate?

Price

Is pricing right for this market, this week? No amount of traffic outruns a mispriced unit against its comp set.

The forensic audit

Run this before you spend a dollar on new traffic

Promotion

Call every tracking number. Confirm each one routes to a live, answered phone.
Check ILS feeds: photos loading, 3D tours running, pricing and availability current.
Confirm the story matches across website, ILSs, social, and Google Business Profile.

People

Pull lead-to-tour and tour-to-application rates by agent, not just by property.
Run a shopping report and use it for coaching, not blame.
Ask whether the team matches the property. Some agents close better at certain asset styles.

Product

Count stale days between unit-ready and move-in.
Walk the tour path. Does what a prospect sees match what they saw online?
Verify availability shown online matches what leasing can actually show.

Price

Compare pricing and concessions against the current comp set, not last quarter’s.
Before upgrading an ILS package, make the rep show regional data against your exact comps.

“You could be using a bullhorn from a roof and no one’s listening.”

Sarah Greenough, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Princeton Properties, on buying bigger ILS packages without comp-set data
Move 2

Make clean data everyone’s job

Your diagnosis is only as good as the data under it. Budget decisions, renewals, and source cuts all ride on what site teams enter into the PMS and CRM every day. Garbage in, garbage out.

Most teams can’t rip out their PMS. What they can do is find where the data falls apart. Feeds and dynamic number insertion hard-code most source attribution, but walk-ins and manual entries still depend on a person choosing the right source code, and closing notes only help if they say something more useful than “archived.”

Give site teams the why, not a policy memo

Teams code leads accurately when they understand what the data decides. Accurate closing notes let marketing change ad copy when the property is heavy on one-bedrooms. Accurate source coding decides which ad spend gets renewed. And in most companies, leases in the system are what site teams get bonused on. If it’s not entered right, they’re not getting credit.

One test worth running: pull the share of your closed leads coded to word of mouth or a generic catchall. If it’s the biggest source in your CRM, that’s not popularity. That’s a coding habit hiding your real source performance.

Move 3

Report before they ask

Clean numbers nobody sees earn nothing. The fire drill usually starts when occupancy dips and leadership asks what marketing is doing. Proactive reporting flips that: you set the narrative before anyone asks for it.

The monthly one-pager

One page, same leaders, same day every month. It does two jobs: it shows leadership you’re on it, and it opens the door for dialogue instead of interrogation.

What goes on it
Top 5 sources by applicationswhere demand starts
Top 5 sources by signed leaseswhere revenue lands
Month-over-month movement▲ and ▼ at a glance
One short narrativewhy the two lists differ

“Always report up, even if they’re not asking.”

Sarah Greenough, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Princeton Properties

The annual plan framework

Once the monthly rhythm exists, the annual plan becomes your budget instrument. Reuse the same three-part frame every year, and asks for budget or headcount stop being pitches and start being line items in an established strategy.

1

What we said we’d do

Last year’s plan, restated plainly.

2

What actually happened

Results against the plan, including misses. Honesty here funds the next ask.

3

What we propose next, and why

The strategy, the resources it needs, and how you’ll measure it.

And report out, not just up. Regionals and site teams sit in weekly owner meetings. Arm them with baseline performance data so they can answer marketing questions with confidence, and marketing stops being the department that gets talked about and starts being the one that gets quoted.

Move 4

Be honest about what you can’t prove

Not everything in marketing is measurable, and pretending otherwise burns the trust the first three moves built. Attribution is imperfect. Brand work, reputation, and SEO rarely thread one-to-one into a signed lease.

Say so. Being upfront about what the data can and cannot show is what makes the rest of your reporting believable. Marketers who claim to measure everything get audited. Marketers who separate the provable from the plausible get funded.

Winning budget for the hard-to-prove asks

A website refresh, new photography, a brand campaign: real dollars, no clean attribution. The case that wins isn’t “it looks dated.” It’s functionality: page speed against competitors, comp benchmarks, and how the site scores for SEO, GEO, and AEO now that AI search reads your website and social presence before a prospect ever tours. When the game changes, say so with evidence.

“The end goal of this is not just trust, but autonomy.”

Sara Graham, Founder and CEO, Six Dots

That’s the payoff of the whole sequence. Diagnose honestly, keep the data clean, report before anyone asks, and admit what you can’t prove. Each move compounds into the thing marketing budgets actually run on: leadership that says yes faster, with fewer questions, because you’ve never given them a reason to doubt the numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is marketing the first budget line to get cut in multifamily?

Marketing budgets are often a catchall bucket with little accuracy in what’s actually being spent, so marketing earns the cost center label by default. When leadership can’t see the line from spend to leases, occupancy, and NOI, cutting it looks free. Proving that line is how the label changes.

What metrics should multifamily marketers report to leadership?

Report in the language leadership moves on: leases, occupancy, and NOI. Impressions and clicks matter as leading indicators, but translate them into lead-to-tour rate, tour-to-application rate, cost per lease by source, and occupancy impact before they go up the chain.

What should a monthly marketing one-pager include?

Top five sources by applications, top five by signed leases, month-over-month movement with clear up and down indicators, and a short narrative explaining any gap between the two lists. Same leaders, same day, every month.

How do you justify marketing spend you can’t directly measure?

Be upfront about what you can and can’t prove. Consistent reporting on the measurable earns the trust that funds the rest. For asks like a website refresh, argue functionality: page speed, comp benchmarks, and how the site scores for SEO, GEO, and AEO.

Watch the full conversation

This guide comes from Marketing Your Marketing Part 2, a panel with Sarah Greenough and Sara Graham on proving marketing’s worth from ROI to NOI.
Watch the webinar
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