Understand how marketing activities impact traffic, leads and sales. Marketing analytics lets you understand the entire sales and marketing funnel -- from prospects to leads to renters -- to define which marketing activities drive traffic, and, more importantly, leads and sales. Slicing and dicing this source of data across varied campaigns and timeframes lets you report marketing ROI to direct investment in the marketing tactics that help you manage your marketing more effectively.
1. Refine ROI with Actionable Marketing Analytics
Understand how marketing activities impact traffic, leads
and sales. Marketing analytics lets you understand the
entire sales and marketing funnel -- from prospects to leads
to renters -- to define which marketing activities drive traffic,
and, more importantly, leads and sales. Slicing and dicing
this source of data across varied campaigns and timeframes
lets you report marketing ROI to direct investment in the
marketing tactics that help you manage your marketing
more effectively.
“And that’s with massaging the numbers?”
2. “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the
trouble is I don’t know which half”
“I don’t know what I should be measuring so give me
everything and then I’ll sort out what is important”
3. Marketing has become synonymous with measurement and analytics. We've moved on from the days
when marketing was resource intensive and not measurable. Today, the art of marketing has been
transformed into not just a hard science but into something altogether new. We are juggling an
ever increasing constellation of tactics - from whitepaper downloads to SEO to viral video campaigns
- while working to reconcile our activities with our relatively run-of-the-mill lead funnels. We will
look at what is critical to measure and what's just interesting noise. Here are some best practices
for measurement and tactics in pursuing value-added insights while avoiding the trap of analytic
paralysis.
4. Refine ROI with Actionable Marketing Analytics
Steven Everett CLP, COS
Director of Marketing | Regional Director
Thies & Talle Management
5. 1.How to Use Marketing Analytics to Understand
the Entire Sales Cycle
9. 2. How to Understand & Measure Your
Marketing Activities
[You’ll need this for the ROI portion]
10. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
ILS Site Visit #
Print Distribution #
Key Words
Banner Impressions (CPM)
ACTION ITEMS
Page Views
Video Views
Code Scans
Printed Brochure
Driving Directions
Links to Company Website
Ad Words (CPC)
Banner Clicks (Click thru ratio)
Hits to Unique URL
CONTACT POINTS
Call Tracking
E-mail Tracking
Chat Conversations
Appointments Set
SALES
Guest Cards
Lead Touch Points
FOLLOW UP
Closing Ratios
Follow Up Touch Points
DEAL
Leases
Applications
Measuring Tools
11. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
• Site Visit #
– IMPACT
• Visitors to a site equal leads. No visitors, no leads.
– Ranking can be deceiving as not all visits are created equal
» Does the site have a landing page with multiple channels
» Understand unique visitors to total visitors
» Bounce rate can have a huge impact on quality of traffic
» Seasonal numbers need to be taken into account
» National search numbers are not as important as local search numbers
for your particular property
• Use yearly trend to understand an ILS ad spend
– Help you predict lead numbers from the source
– MEASURE
• Free Site Visit Tool
– Compete.com
• For you company website make sure you are using Google Analytics
(free tool)
– Google.com/analytics
13. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
• Print Distribution #
– IMPACT
• Eyes on pages are needed to create leads.
– Number of locations
» Location DOES matter
» Replenishment rate matters
• Daily, Weekly, Biweekly, monthly
– MEASURE
– Number printed does not mean number picked up
» Printed
» Distributed
• Racked
• Non-prospect deliveries
» Replenished
» Returned
14. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
• Keywords (Search)
– IMPACT
• Keywords Drive Traffic to either your site or your ILS
– If no one is searching a specific keyword than having it does you
no good
• ILS’s buy keywords to drive site traffic
– Typically they focus on Macro not Micro keywords
– Use long tail keywords for your buy
– ILS’s are catching on to long tail searches
– MEASURE
• Google.com/insights/search
– Embed chart on your iGoogle page
• Test by doing a search using the keyword(s) or phrase
16. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
• Banner Impressions (CPM)
– IMPACT
• Fulfilling your contracted CPM shows that the site is delivering
enough visitors
– Not fulfilling the contracted amount means you over bought
– Capping out before the months end means you bough too little to be
effective
– MEASURE
• Use impression report provided by ILS
• Know your percentage buy of overall impression for a given month
– 20,000 impressions = 10% exposure or 1 in 10 ratio
• When and where will the banner appear
– Skyscraper, Top Banner, Rolling Skyscraper, floating
– Main Search Page, Results Page, Property Page
• Know the sites average click through rate so you can benchmark
• Understand the monthly distribution model
– All at once or evenly distributed over the 30 days
17. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
ILS Site Visit #
Print Distribution #
Key Words
Banner Impressions (CPM)
ACTION ITEMS
Page Views
Video Views
Code Scans
Printed Brochure
Driving Directions
Links to Company Website
Ad Words (CPC)
Banner Clicks (Click thru ratio)
Hits to Unique URL
CONTACT POINTS
Call Tracking
E-mail Tracking
Chat Conversations
Appointments Set
SALES
Guest Cards
Lead Touch Points
FOLLOW UP
Closing Ratios
Follow Up Touch Points
DEAL
Leases
Applications
Measuring Tools
18. Action Items
• Page Views
– IMPACT
• Page views allows you to judge how effective your listing tag and photos are
• You can also tie this to your contact points to see if people are looking at your
ad but not contacting the site
• A low ratio between views and contacts could be poor photos, high prices or
lack of amenities
– MEASURE
• 1 to 5 ratio should be your benchmark
– 500 search page results should equal 100 page views
– Rural areas will yield a higher ratio: 1 to 2
19. Action Items
• Video Views, Code Scans, Printed Brochure,
Driving Directions, Links to Company Website
– IMPACT
• Metric allows you to verify that your pricing and design
created interest
• Does not guarantee contact point or qualified lead
– MEASURE
• Use ILS report – Views, printed, driving, links to site
• Use Bit.ly link - scans
• Use Google analytics – links to company website
20.
21. Action Item
• Ad Words (SEM)
– IMPACT
• Can be use for an immediate traffic drive of qualified
search traffic
• Instant “on” and instant “off” with 100% controllable
cost
– MEASURE
• Use Google Campaign Management Dashboard
• Monitor both with CPC and Click Thru Rates
• Monitor closely with changes to description and
keyword bids
22.
23. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
ILS Site Visit #
Print Distribution #
Key Words
Banner Impressions (CPM)
ACTION ITEMS
Page Views
Video Views
Code Scans
Printed Brochure
Driving Directions
Links to Company Website
Ad Words (CPC)
Banner Clicks (Click thru ratio)
Hits to Unique URL
CONTACT POINTS
Call Tracking
E-mail Tracking
Chat Conversations
Appointments Set
SALES
Guest Cards
Lead Touch Points
FOLLOW UP
Closing Ratios
Follow Up Touch Points
DEAL
Leases
Applications
Measuring Tools
24. Contact Points
• Calls
– IMPACT
• Depending on source, calls can represent 50-75% of total leads
generated by source
• Number of calls is a direct relation to search results and page views
stats
• Primary driver of appointments
• Depending on source, calls could be a cost to property on a Pay Per
Lead model
– MEASURE
• Use call tracking reports from either ad source or from call tracking
phone numbers
• Need to remove duplicate numbers and short calls (under 8 sec)
• Need to use same metric reporting for all sources if you use for source
to source comparisons
• Use lead tracking software (Lead2Lease, Lead Tracking Solutions)
• Need to know your Answered to Unanswered call ratio
25. Contact Points
• E-mail Lead
– IMPACT
• Depending on source, e-mails can represent 25-50% of
total leads generated by source
• Over the last couple of years, leads from this source
have improved their lead quality
– MEASURE
• Use ad source reporting
• Use lead tracking software (Lead2Lease, Lead Tracking
Solutions)
• Need to know your response time
26. Contact Points
• Appointments Set
– IMPACT
• The ratio between leads to appointments is a metric for 2 main
items
– Quality of leads
– Skill set of person answering the phone (on-site or call center)
• Dramatic changes (+/-) can indicate issue with price or special
– MEASURE
• Difficult to measure unless you are using a call center for 100%
appointment setting
• Pure measurement is hard because it requires human interaction
• PMS typically under report and mis-report
27. Garbage In = Garbage Out
• Analysis by Level One found the following variances
– Only 32% of manually entered sources in Property Management
Software (PMS) matched the digitally recorded source of Level
One
– Of 13 ad sources tracked, 11 created more leases than they
were credited with
– Over-reported sources include:
• Craig’s List (40% more credit)
• Internet (1300% more credit)
• Drive-by (22.3% of leases incorrectly attributed)
– Of actual appointments that turn into leases, 64.5% of the
sources were incorrectly attributed in the PMS even though the
source was provide on the guest card by Level One.
28. Contact Points
• Lead Touch Points (number of times we touch a lead)
– IMPACT
• This metric allows you to monitor how well you are doing with
lead follow up
• 100 leads does you no good if you are not acting on any of them
• You are not doing as well as you think you are
– MEASURE
• Pure measurement is hard because it requires human interaction
• Start with using your PMS – CRM tool
• There are tools available to help (Lead2Lease, Lead Tracking
Solutions)
• Set goals for sites – 5 per lead
– Develop a step process for them to follow
» Phone, e-mail, mailer, phone, e-mail
29. IMPRESSION INDICATORS
ILS Site Visit #
Print Distribution #
Key Words
Banner Impressions (CPM)
ACTION ITEMS
Page Views
Video Views
Code Scans
Printed Brochure
Driving Directions
Links to Company Website
Ad Words (CPC)
Banner Clicks (Click thru ratio)
Hits to Unique URL
CONTACT POINTS
Call Tracking
E-mail Tracking
Chat Conversations
Appointments Set
SALES
Guest Cards
Lead Touch Points
FOLLOW UP
Closing Ratios
Follow Up Touch Points
DEAL
Leases
Applications
Measuring Tools
30. Deal
• Leases / Applications
– IMPACT
• Final goal of all sales processes
– Should not be the end all choice for marketing decisions
• Best Use: monthly leases can provide trend analysis for occupancy
projections
– MEASURE
• Pure measurement is hard because it requires human interaction
• People are using multiple sources for research
• Need to decide how you determine credit source
– First contact vs. Last contact
– Split between sources
– Predetermined ratios based on generated traffic from source
» 100 leads should equal 5 leases or 5% close ratio
» Removes human error in recording or sales ability
33. Return On Investment
Marketing campaigns are investments. And like any smart investment,
they need to be measured, monitored and compared to other
investments to ensure you’re spending your money wisely.
Return on investment (ROI) is a measure of the profit earned from
each investment. Like the “return” you earn on your portfolio or
bank account, it’s calculated as a percentage. In simple terms, the
calculation is
(Profit – Investment)
Investment
ROI calculations for marketing campaigns can be complex — you may
have many variables on both the profit side and the investment
(cost) side. But understanding the formula is essential if you need to
produce the best possible results with your marketing investments.
= ROI
34. Return On Marketing Investment
Lead Based
• Lead ROI
– If the main goal of a marketing campaign is to drive
leads and exposure to your property than this is the
best way to judge the success of the campaign.
– Lead ROI is not Cost Per Lead
– Typically you would use this when you know your
closing percentages and value exposure
– Know you product value and sales ratios
• Rental Value
• Lead Value
• Closing Ratios
• Conversions Ratios
35. Lead ROI Example
• What are your marketing assumptions
– I know that 5% of leads close deals
– I know that additional exposure rents apartments on average 1-month
faster than without
– My average rent is $700 per month
– 20 leads are worth $700
• Example Stats
– Monthly Cost: $300 | $900
– Monthly Leads: 50 | 10
• Formula
(50/20 x 700) - $300
$300
= +4.83 Every dollar spent you made $4.83 in return (483% Return)
(10/20 x 700) - $900
$900
= -0.61 Every dollar spent you lost $0.61 (61% Loss)
36. • Marketing Assumptions
– I know that 5% of leads close deals
– I know that additional exposure rents apartments on average 1-month faster
than without
– My average rent is $700 per month
– 20 leads are worth $700
(11,518/20 x 700) - $188,895
$188,895
= +1.13
Lead ROI Example - ILS
37. • Key Data
– I know that 5% of leads close deals
– I know that additional exposure rents apartments on average 1-month faster
than without
– My average rent is $700 per month
– 20 leads are worth $700
(50/20 x 700) - $1,000
$1,000
= +0.75
Lead ROI Example – Outreach Mailer
• 9000 pieces
• Call tracking number in place
• Unique URL
• QR Code tied to Bit.ly
• Distribution Cost: $1000
• Calls: 50
• Site visits: 100
• Code Scans: 75
38. Return On Marketing Investment
Rental Based
• Rental ROI
– More difficult to be accurate as data is not perfect due
to human interaction
– Rental ROI is not Cost Per Lease
– Need to be done using a long period of time due to
the length of rental sales cycle
– Need to subscribe to a value rate (what a rental is
worth)
• 1-month rent (due to quicker occupancy)
• 2-month rent (estimated vacancy lost)
• Total Lease Value (used with non-traditional marketing)
• Incremental Rentals above last year or base line
39. Rental ROI Example
• Marketing Assumptions
– Due to average vacancy time period, new leases are
valued at 1-months rent
• Example Stats
– Annual Cost: $3,600 | $10,800
– Annual Rentals: 24 | 12
• Formula
(24 x 700) - $3,600
$3,600
= +3.66
(12 x 700) - $10,800
$10,800
= -0.22
40. Incremental Rental ROI Example
• Marketing Assumptions
– We increased ad spend with a marketing source so each rental above
our benchmark is additional revenue from the source. These
additional rentals allowed us to rent our apartments 1-month sooner
than without.
• 1-month average lease value: $700
• Example Stats
– Base Annual Cost: $6,000
– New Annual Cost: $12,000
– Increase Ad Spend: $6,000
– Incremental Rentals Gained: 15
• Formula
(15 x $700) - $6,000
$6,000
= +0.75
41. Other Key Points to Keep in Mind
• Analysis needs to be quick & visual enough to
allow train of thought process
• Consumer controlled data (limited control)
• Flexible enough to build on for future changes
and growth
• Use complexity only when needed
• Stay “business” focused. Analysis must have
bottom-line impact
• Marketing needs to have analytics behind it