February 6, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode of The POMCAST, Claire Shaug, COO of Premier Online Marketing, joins the conversation to share expert insights on apartment SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) strategies. With years of experience in multifamily digital marketing, Claire breaks down how apartment communities can optimize paid search campaigns to generate high-quality leads, maximize ad spend, and drive more leases.
Claire discusses what truly defines a high-quality lead in the apartment industry and how different lead types—phone calls, form submissions, chat interactions, and completed applications—impact conversion rates. She emphasizes the importance of tracking renter behavior, understanding the apartment search journey, and leveraging first-party data to refine targeting and improve lead-to-lease conversion.
The conversation also dives into Google’s advertising restrictions on housing, including limitations on demographic and zip code targeting, and how multifamily marketers can navigate these challenges using audience segmentation, behavioral retargeting, and cross-platform strategies with YouTube, Gmail, and Display ads.
Additional key topics include:
- How to measure SEM success beyond clicks, focusing on lead engagement and lease conversions.
- Seasonality in apartment marketing and how to strategically adjust ad spend throughout the year.
- Aligning SEM and SEO strategies to improve search visibility, reduce CPCs, and maximize ROI.
- Why brand bidding is critical to prevent competitors and ILS platforms from poaching high-intent prospects.
Claire’s insights provide a practical, data-driven approach to apartment marketing, helping property managers, marketing directors, and agencies fine-tune their digital advertising efforts to reduce wasted spend and drive more qualified renters into leases.
If you’re looking to elevate your multifamily SEM strategy, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways that will help you optimize your campaigns and stay ahead in a competitive market.
Tune in now to hear Claire Shaug’s expert advice on apartment PPC and SEM success!
Premier Online Marketing helps businesses grow through smart SEO, content, and search strategies. Learn more at www.premieronlinemarketing.com
Subscribe for more insights on SEO, PPC, and digital marketing.
Follow Us:
www.LinkedIn.com/company/itspremieronlinemarketing/
www.instagram.com/itspremieronlinemarketing/
Podcast Directed and Produced by: www.hiredgunsagency.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome back to the podcast.
That's right.
This is your primary source,your favorite source.
It's a digital marketingpodcast that's focused on you
know it local lead generationinsights and strategies.
So if you've been searching fora current digital marketing
tips and tactics resource, well,that search has led you to the
(00:22):
right place.
So thanks again for tuning in.
Now I want to get to it.
We've got somebody new on thePalmcast today.
It's Claire Schaug.
Claire is the Chief OperatingOfficer at Premier Online
Marketing and she's joining thisepisode so that we can talk
about best practices, strategies, tips around apartment SEM and
PPC.
You might know it asmultifamily.
(00:43):
It's the same thing.
Claire, welcome to the Palmcast.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks for having me.
Sean Excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Good, good, I'm glad you're here too.
I want to jump right into itaround.
Well, pre-podcast recording youhad talked about, the goal is
usually leads.
For people, there are othergoals, but on the subject of the
goal being leads, how would youdefine a high quality lead in
the apartment industry and maybewhat strategies would be used
(01:15):
in campaigns to make sure thatyou're getting the right
prospects?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Awesome.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Well, ultimately, at the end ofthe day, the goal is leases.
You can get as many leads asyou want, but at the end of the
day, if it's not actuallyconverting into residents
renting apartments or singlefamily homes we work with a lot
of single family homecommunities then it's not really
going to be a qualified lead.
So we have to really look atthe data to ensure that the
(01:41):
leads that we are driving aregoing to be high quality, and
that could mean different thingsfor different communities.
We have a lot of communitiesthat have a very limited staff.
They don't have the means andthe staff to be answering the
phone a lot of the time.
So we have to really haveconversations and see hey, do
you want a lot of phone calls ordo you prefer contact form
(02:02):
submissions?
Do you want chat leads?
What's going to work the bestfor your community and the goals
of the community?
But I would say, as far as, like, the typical high quality lead
that we like to look at is goingto be in the form of a call.
You know that actually callingthe leasing office.
It's going to be a contact formsubmission on the contact page
(02:22):
or some sort of chat lead.
The highest quality of leadpotentially could be an actual
application where the user isguided to the leasing portal and
it can actually submit anapplication and submit all of
their information there.
Then the leasing agent has alot to work with.
As far as they already knowwhere their income is, they've
uploaded all their documentationand that's probably where you
(02:45):
can get the truest attribution.
Source of like a lead to leaseratio is through that kind of
lead.
So yeah, long, long answer.
But we're looking for calls,we're looking for forms, we're
looking for chat fills andapplications and ultimately we
want those to turn into leasesat the property.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, no, that's.
That's great insight.
I don't think that a lot ofpeople are always thinking about
the value of each of thosesources.
It's one thing to love having aform filled out, but it's a
completely different thing whenyou have an immediate one-to-one
dialogue through a phone call.
And that's the case inmultifamily and many other
(03:26):
verticals, and sometimes,whether it's the marketing team
or the business ownersthemselves, they don't
understand that.
It may not be that you wantmore of the form fills.
Not that that's a bad thingSometimes it's really great but
oftentimes that one-to-onecommunication has a completely
different conversion ratio,depending on how you guys have
(03:47):
put your marketing planstogether as a business.
So, in this same subject, Iwant to get your thoughts on
what do you think the maybe mosteffective ways are to measure
success of paid search campaignswhen you're trying to, you know
, generate positive outcomes forapartment communities?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Totally.
Yeah, measuring success isreally.
I would say it's kind oftwofold.
Of course.
You have your analyticsreporting.
You have the data that you'regetting in and the feedback
you're getting in from the adaccounts and that's going to be,
you know, traffic to thewebsite.
Of course that's the very highlevel, initial signal of success
(04:26):
that your campaigns are working.
As you're getting that trafficthey're coming in and then
you're going to want to startlooking at, kind of you know,
what actions are they taking onthe website.
You know what are they doingafterwards.
Most of the time we'll actuallynot necessarily see a user
convert that first time theycome to the website, so we have
to kind of monitor that journey.
A user convert that first timethey come to the website, so we
have to kind of monitor thatjourney and kind of what the
(04:47):
data has shown us is that for atraditional apartment searcher,
they start off looking andgetting to the website and then
they ultimately fill out thatlead form, maybe two, even three
weeks down the road.
If I'm planning to movesomewhere, you know I might be
looking, you know, to move for ajob and that's going to be in a
couple months starting or amonth, so I'm not really ready
(05:07):
to make that decision yet.
So you kind of have to followthat user journey.
So of course, initially westart checking traffic, we look
and see that engagement on thewebsite and then ultimately, at
the very end of the day, we kindof follow that user and see at
(05:28):
the end, do they actually submita phone call, or do they make a
phone call or submit a formlead or a chat on the website?
After that, then that's reallykind of what comes into play is
the communication with theonsite teams and to actually see
where did that lease go afteror where did that lead go after.
Did they actually end upfilling out an application?
And if they did, did they getaccepted?
Because a lot of people willfill out an application.
And if they did, did they getaccepted?
Because a lot of people willfill out an application.
But if they get rejected, thenwe don't want to find other
(05:50):
users that are like that.
We want to find users that areactually going to get approved
and be able to move into thebuilding.
So that first party data andgetting that feedback back from
the CRM and from the communityitself to educate us and to
educate Google's algorithm onthis is the type of user we're
looking for.
At the end of the day is reallygoing to be what the most
(06:11):
impact is.
So traffic leads, leases, itkind of is going to follow that
sort of that full user funnel.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
That makes a lot of sense.
I want to take you now into acouple of questions around
audience segmentation, because Iknow a lot world, and perhaps a
bit on why it's important totailor messaging to what would
(06:49):
be considered a different renterdemographic.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Totally, yeah, 100%.
So I guess sort of kind of PPC.
In the past, you know, when Ifirst started search marketing,
it was very much, you know, Ibid on specific keywords and
Mike and you have discussed thisextensively in other episodes
of the podcast, which I love butit used to be a lot more
straightforward.
And but now, with the differentrestrictions, especially in
(07:16):
multifamily, that we have asadvertisers, it is really
important to monitor closelythose user journeys.
So in multifamily you havelimitations.
You can't target based oncertain income demographics, you
can't target based on gender,on age, on zip codes, certain
location targeting is not able.
(07:36):
So what can we do then?
So we want to look at differentaudience segments based on
their kind of overall userbehavior.
Fortunately enough, we're stillliving in a cookie world, so we
do have the ability to kind oftrack, of course, if the user
accepts cookies when they getonto the website.
We have the ability to be ableto see those different user
flows like how quickly do theyget to the contact page, how far
(07:59):
along that journey do they getand do they actually submit the
lead?
Well, if they don't submit thelead and they're still in those
early sort of discovery phases,we can actually create different
audiences based on that path.
So you know, if someone gets toyour landing page and then they
bounce immediately, that mightnot be a user that I want to
like try to hit with another ad.
(08:20):
I might actually want toexclude that entire audience
altogether if they go to thewebsite and then just bounce.
However, if they've done alittle bit of research, they've
been to three or more pages,they've been to your contact
page, they started thatapplication.
Maybe they didn't finish it.
Well then, now they're nowinside an audience bucket that
we can then strategically eitherretarget them or tell Google
(08:43):
that we want to find otheraudiences that are similar to
this one.
You know, meta you know thelookalike audiences of Facebook
marketing of the past would be asimilar comparison to kind of
these different segments that welike to build out and kind of
put them into different bucketsand then target users based on
(09:03):
their actual behavior and whatsearches that they do.
Yeah, another really fun onethat we like to do, especially
with YouTube marketingspecifically, is custom segment
audiences where a lot of times,especially in the apartment
industry it's very In theapartment industry it's really,
(09:23):
really competitive.
So you will notice that we'rebidding on keywords, but all of
your competitors are going to bebidding on the exact same
keywords.
They're trying to get the users.
You know they're all bidding onapartments for rent, apartments
in Austin, apartments in LosAngeles.
So we might not win that bid.
We might only win the bid oneout of 10 times if that.
(10:06):
So we need to figure outdifferent ways to get to this
user.
If we're not going to be at thetop of the page and with some
communities they just don't havethe bid in Google search we can
still retarget to them throughdifferent um Google uh platforms
.
So either that's YouTube, thatcan be Gmail, um, that can be
display, um, that can bediscovery, um.
So Google offers like a lot ofdifferent ways of doing it more,
uh, that are different thanjust the traditional search
winning that search bid.
You can win the bid in a lot ofother places too, so that's
(10:28):
something pretty cool.
So say, for example, I create acustom audience that is
specific to users that arelooking for two-bedroom
apartments.
Even if I don't show up on topof page for the Google search
result or the search, I canactually show them an in-feed
video on YouTube while they'rebrowsing or they're just
(10:49):
scrolling.
And this could be an entirelyother topic of a podcast, but
talking about in-stream ads onYouTube, those tons of
capabilities there, and it'sreally kind of cool to see the
different um ways that we cantarget that are a little bit
more untraditional, at least toum kind of more traditional paid
(11:11):
search marketers.
So it's pretty, it's, it's anexciting, it's an exciting time,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Well, it's really helpful.
I think it's really smart, allall of what you just.
It just made me think of a lotof different scenarios that are
really, I think, critical forespecially in the multifamily
world.
But when you start talkingabout segmentation and all the
things that you're learning fromthese different demographics
and then retailoring and goingback around messaging and
different creative and evendifferent channels you know you
(11:39):
mentioned how you can utilizeYouTube and part of this
ecosystem of what you're doingfrom a digital marketing
perspective I think a lot ofpeople get very myopic around.
Well, what's the paid searchstuff doing specifically?
And you just did a brilliantjob of helping people understand
a much bigger picture aroundall of that, which I think is
really critical.
I think that's what separatespeople who are having good
results and chasing downoutcomes that are really
(12:02):
positive versus maybe beingstuck in some of the repetitive
things that are the way they'vebeen doing it forever.
If you've always done, do whatyou've always done, you'll
always be where you've alwaysbeen, so, really, really good.
Also, one more thing onaudience segmentation Is there a
role for data to play here,perhaps in both identifying and
maybe targeting specific renterprofiles?
(12:24):
Love to know your thoughts onthere.
Is there a data play orsomething around segmentation
that the audience should beknowing about?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Oh, a hundred percent .
This is where, kind of as far asin the, in the role that that
having good data, having cleandata and how it plays into
building out these audiences isis is really having that
integration set up for yourfirst party data.
So your first party data couldbe anything from the data that's
coming into your CRM, all ofthe leads that you have
(12:53):
currently have in your CRM,prospects that you have been
nurturing, and then also yourGA4 data, so we can actually
create these audience bucketsand these segmentations based on
the actions that the user takeson the website and through your
Google Analytics data.
That's your first party dataand so you can leverage it, and
so it's super, super importantto ensure that that's plugged in
(13:15):
and that you're monitoring itwith the housing.
Well, just on Google in general, to be able to use certain
pieces of data, like what actionto use or takes, google needs
enough data points to in orderto anonymize the data.
(13:35):
So if I only have 10 users thatare coming to my website,
google's not going to be able togive us anything that is of any
statistical significance.
We can't take any action basedon those 10 users, because
Google can't anonymize it and wecan't use it.
So we need a lot of data.
We need a lot of data quickly,which is kind of something that
we see is we like to at leastgive a campaign at least 30 to
(14:00):
60 days of just gathering.
We're just learning about theuser, we're learning about their
behavior, we're learning whatactions they take on the website
and we're categorizing them andwe're putting them into these
different buckets and into thesedifferent segments.
And then that's really when thekind of the fun part of
marketing comes in is you'reactually able to make specific
(14:20):
bid adjustments, you're able toactually target based on these
user behaviors when you haveenough data.
So a lot of times we'll hear,with paid search campaign, it's
like, ok, well, we have athousand dollars to spend or two
thousand dollars to spend.
You know how quickly can I getanswers that that the truth is
that's going to take some time?
Can I get answers that that thetruth is that's going to take
(14:42):
some time?
You're, you're looking at, youknow, a relatively small budget
to gain a lot of super helpfuldata and the faster you spend,
the faster you spend, the fasteryou're actually going to be
able to gather that data and andand make meaningful you know,
strategic decisions based onthat.
So yeah, data is everything Ialways say.
(15:05):
As marketers, we like to besuper creative and think that
our ad performs so well or wethink our ad is going to perform
so well and really resonatewith users, and of course that's
all nice.
But the truth is is that I'vemade ads and the data comes back
and it shows that it didn'tresonate with the users.
They didn't like it and so kindof hits the pride a little bit.
But you know that's.
I definitely like makingdecisions based on statistical
(15:29):
significance as opposed to justa hunch, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I say this a lot, so I totally agree with everything
that you're saying.
But I often tell people, whenit comes to marketing and this
this is and this is a truestatement for both B2B and B2C,
business to business andbusiness to consumer marketing
(15:57):
it's usually almost always it'sso much more important to index
on who you're marketing toversus how many people.
Not everyone's going to goviral with your different
marketing campaigns, but ifyou're not spending the time to
actually know who exactly youwant to be consuming this, you
might be ecstatic that 100people because those 100 people
were all the type of people youwant to be interacting with it
versus trying to do what I callhit a grand slam every time you
(16:18):
step into the batter's box.
Oftentimes doing that is reallyexpensive because you're trying
to do things that are very,very time intensive and resource
specifically your walletintensive and not knowing
whether or not you're actuallygoing to hit it out of the
ballpark versus these thingskind of like.
What you're talking about Atleast, that's what it made me
(16:39):
think about is you have to bevery strategic in the way that
you put these things togetherwith points of data.
Obviously, it allows you to getvery specific on how you're
going to target and how you'regoing to identify the best
opportunities, and sometimesthat's by making sure that your
scope is realistic, and sooftentimes I end up telling
people hey, it's the who farmore important than the how many
(17:02):
in most cases.
Totally.
So, really, really good stuff.
Well, okay, claire, I want totake you a little bit into the
user journey and I guess whatpeople you know.
It's a marketing funnel.
We still talk about funnels andmarketing a lot about funnels
and marketing a lot.
I was wondering if you wouldmind kind of maybe walking the
(17:22):
audience through the typical,semi-typical but the typical
renter's journey, from they do asearch to they're signing a
lease, and maybe how the SEMcampaigns, the paid search
campaigns, can be optimized atthose stages of that journey
optimized at those stages ofthat journey Totally A hundred
(17:42):
percent.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, I, I, I it's.
I mean, I think everyone, youknow every marketer, or you know
, if you go to school formarketing, it's like marketing
one oh one.
They always tell you to kind ofstart with that sort of user
funnel.
But it is, it is true and itdoes, it does.
It does apply here tomultifamily as well.
So you know, if you're lookingat, say, a building, you have
375 units and you're at a leaseup, the building is going to
come online and people can movein within, you know, a couple of
(18:05):
months.
You're really going to start atthe very beginning from that
awareness phase, that awarenessand consideration and the way
that you're going to get them tofirst know about.
You know that you even have abuilding.
It's brand spanking new.
You have no kind of brandawareness at this moment.
Nobody really knows who you are.
(18:26):
So at first you have to buildthat awareness and you can do
that by many different channels.
Of course, Google PPC is agreat way to do that.
Of course you also have, youknow, social media Hulu, tiktok,
youtube.
There's a lot of differentavenues.
But staying specifically just toPPC and to Google search.
You want to start building thatawareness by starting by
(18:48):
bidding on very high funnelsearch queries that users
typically start when they arestarting to look for an
apartment.
And you can find this verysimply by using, like Google
Keyword keyword researcher andseeing what is the search volume
around, something likeapartments in Denver, apartments
in downtown Denver, sometimeseven more hyperlocal geo
(19:10):
keywords you know, apartments inlow, high or something like
that.
You want to be as specific asyou can and get the users to
just kind of discover you.
Then at that point, usuallythen the user is now kind of
they sort of understand okay,you are an apartment community
and it's within this generalarea that I'm looking for, or
(19:33):
you have two bedroomavailability, okay, awesome.
Then what you're going to wantto do is start bidding on lower
funnel keywords so to kind ofnurture them down and kind of
keep showing up and staying topof mind for them so they might
conduct a different, you know,type of search queries.
You know like pet friendlythree bedroom apartment,
something like that.
They're a little bit morespecific about what you know,
what they're looking for.
Well, then you can show them anad there too and be like, hey,
(20:02):
we have the solution to yourproblem and we can solve, give
you a solve to your problem here.
At that point.
A really interesting thing thatwe like to do is then we can
layer in things like remarketingWhile they're still in that
sort of evaluation phase.
They're looking at yourcompetitors as well.
They're going to be looking atILSs, they're going to be
looking at apartmentscom, zillow, they're looking all over the
place.
But you are going to be able,cause they came to your website
before you're going to be ableto retarget them.
(20:22):
That's when I love to layer inthings like display remarketing
or YouTube remarketing, youtubevideo or like oh, I'm blanking
on the word here, it'll comeback, it'll come back to me.
But basically you can usedifferent layers of remarketing
(20:45):
when they're still in thatevaluation phase and just kind
of staying top of mind.
Now, through all of thesedifferent phases, I'm not
expecting the user to schedule atour or make a decision at that
point at all, and so sometimesI get this like oh, these
certain you know buckets orthese certain campaigns are not
necessarily converting, you knowright away, that's okay, we
(21:07):
just want to get them to yourwebsite, we want to stay top of
mind for them for as low of acost as possible and through
that whole process we'reeliminating people that seem
like they're not interested.
So if they bounce off thewebsite in less than 15 seconds,
you know we're we're going toexclude them.
We're also layering and thingslike pricing into our ads so
that way, if they, if it'soutside of their price point,
(21:27):
you know they're not going to.
You know, continue and and andclick through on our ad.
At the end of the day, the verybottom of the funnel, you are
going to see that userstypically are going to convert
eight times out of 10 on yourbrand term.
And what does that mean?
So, say, if there's anapartment community called you
know, you know, groves Groves inAustin, that's what the user is
(21:54):
going to search for, becauseyou stay top of mind throughout
their entire journey.
And then at the end of the day,they're like okay, we've looked
at these competitors, we'velooked at this, I'm ready to
make a decision.
I'm going to go and do a searchfor the actual brand name, the
community name, and chances arethen they'll either convert on
your Google business profilepage If you've had that set up
(22:14):
correctly, which I hope.
I hope you did, but if that'sset up, nine times out of 10,
they're going to go and convertthere on either the Google
business results page, one ofyour organic listings, or.
What we always like to do isallocate a certain percentage of
your budget to your brandedterms, so that way you dominate
the search engine results page,because you'll notice that who
(22:36):
else is going to be bidding onthose terms?
Your competitors, ilss, andthey're all trying to get higher
and higher on the searchresults page.
So you're going to want to makesure that you have your organic
listing, you have an ad, youhave your Google business
profile completely decked out,and so they really have no
option but to okay, yes, I waslooking for them, I'm going to
find them.
They're not going to get easilydistracted by like, ooh, what
(22:57):
are, where are the ILS?
Was Zillow offering?
Or Ooh, can I get a deal atthis other community instead.
So you really want to dominatethe SERP with that final brand
search.
That that's the search that'sgoing to happen.
Um, uh, that that's wherethey're going to actually
convert or submit that lead.
Um, and we see a lot of people,especially ownership groups,
and they'll tell us why should Ibid on my brand term and a lot
(23:21):
of PPC marketers.
This is a very controversialthing in paid search marketing.
You have some people in paidsearch that I look up to and
learn from.
They recommend no, you neverwant to bid on your brand term,
you never want to bid on that.
And no, you never want to bidon your brand term, you never
want to bid on that.
But I feel like there is apercentage small percentage,
(23:45):
just about 5% to 10% of yourbudget that should be spent on
securing, because you alreadyworked so hard, you paid tons of
money to get them down thatfunnel.
And it would be a shame ifsomeone just snagged it out from
underneath you at the lastpossible moment because you
didn't want to allocate 250bucks to just ensure that your
brand is dominating the searchengine results page.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, back in the day , we used to kind of refer to
this quite a bit as playingoffense and defense.
You know, strategically youhave to think that way.
I think, for American footballfans, a lot of what you were
just sharing, if you were acoach, you'd be telling them
that you need to be strong inall three phases of the game,
which is offensive, defensiveand special teams.
And you know, maybe there's nota lot of football fans that
(24:32):
will appreciate that analogy.
I think some of them will.
But that's essentially one wayto break it down with a metaphor
, and that is you can't thinkabout it in one singular way of
like let's just throw the adsout there and let's just see
(24:53):
what happens, especially, evenas you charted around the
journey of what's happening withthe renter, there's actually a
really smart, wise business caseto be made, for knowing that
your plays on both sides of theball, as well as your special
teams, are that's how you getsuccessful and that's really
actually how you separateyourself from everyone that
you're competing against and,like you said, that's direct
competitors, that's, you know,uh, ilss.
(25:16):
There's a lot of competition outthere, and so all the things
that you're sharing are really,really smart for people to be
thinking how do we get an edge,how do we get competitively
ahead of people?
Well, you're going to have todo a little bit more than maybe
just mailing it in.
So, on this user journeysubject, one other question I
want to know if you havethoughts on are there?
(25:38):
I don't know, you will know arethere common gaps that you see
on how multifamily marketersalign their SEM efforts with
this user journey?
And if there are some gapsthere, how would you address
them?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, I would say probably as far as like when I
kind of audit a pay-per-clickaccount and I'm looking at all
of the potential gaps that arein that, I would say neglecting
or not spending on specifickeyword segments or different
(26:20):
places in that user journeybecause they aren't seeing the
immediate conversion comethrough that source.
So, for example, as I mentioned,searching for those high funnel
keywords like two bedroomapartments, that's probably one
of the first if I need a twobedroom apartment, that's what
I'm going to search for andthat's going to be one of the
first searches that I do, andbut I might not see conversions
(26:46):
coming through that.
But if I know I need to movetwo bedroom units and you know
my B units are really reallystruggling, they're maybe a
little bit overpriced comparedto your competition You'd be
shooting yourself in the foot ifyou aren't actually allocating
a considerable amount of yourbudget towards those high funnel
terms.
Um then, uh, on the other side,on the flip side, I do see a
(27:06):
lot of search marketers who willpotentially not close that loop
and not leverage remarketing inthe way that they should to
actually get that user to comeback, because it is kind of is
such a it's a longerconsideration phase, so to speak
, just because making a move anddeciding on where you're going
to live is a big decision.
People are researching, youknow, school districts.
They're searching you knowwhat's going to be the commute
(27:27):
to my work?
Or even in this post COVIDworld that we live in, there's a
lot of people working from home, like what's your conference
room you know like, and do youoffer co working spaces and call
booths, and those are.
These are amenity packages thatare becoming more and more
common with new builds.
So you definitely want to oneconsider all phases of that user
(27:51):
journey and making sure you'reallocating budget to like to
each of those phases and gettingthem all the way to the bottom
of the funnel.
And then also, I would sayanother thing is that I
sometimes see is people leaningtoo heavily on things that maybe
worked really well in the past.
Like in a post-pandemic world.
Housing is looking a lotdifferent and we have to kind of
(28:11):
be up to date on what users aresearching for for things like
apartment with co-working spaceor apartment with office or
things like that is becoming.
The volume has gone upexponentially, even just in the
last year.
So we have to identify thoseopportunities and then build
some campaigns around that andtest it out.
(28:33):
I'm not saying that a specifickeyword type will work for every
single community, but it wouldbe a shame to not at least test
it out, because there could be areally big opportunity there,
depending on the market you'rein.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I appreciate you not saying Sean you kind of already
answered this question by usingyour football analogy because it
kind of is that's like have agame plan right, totally that
you're going to have a lot ofgaps if there is no game plan.
And the game plan means thatyou have to think about all the
plays you're running, bothoffensive defense and special
(29:10):
teams.
Very interesting, okay, great.
Taking you into a couple morecategories, I hope you don't
mind.
The next one I want to ask you alittle bit about would be and
I'm always careful when I'mtalking to you guys on the
podcast because when we talkabout Google right it's I don't
(29:31):
want to say it's kind of thispush, pull a little bit
relationship there can betension there.
They're such a huge company,they're so important.
You know, when Mike and I areon episodes, oftentimes we, you
know he will say you know,because of market share, it's
going to be the place whereyou're going to probably spend
most, and that makes sense.
(29:51):
So when I talk about Google inthis segment, limitations within
this particular vertical, it'snot because I want to
necessarily say bad things aboutGoogle, but I think it's really
.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Oh, feel free.
Feel free, this is a safe space.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, definitely, I think it's really important for
and here on the Palmcast youguys do a really good job of
speaking.
Maybe it's aggressive to saytruth to power, but Google is a
very big, important, necessarybusiness, but there aren't
enough people that oftentimesare really candid in the advice
(30:31):
that they provide, and I thinkthat's really important.
So this question is really kindof around those potential
Google limitations in thisvertical.
Question one From yourperspective, what would be or
what are the biggest challenges,maybe restrictions that Google
(30:52):
I don't know if imposes but thatGoogle has relative to SEM
campaigns in this verticalaround apartments, multifamily,
and maybe your thoughts on howyou would navigate them?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Totally.
I mean, so this is going to beactually be something that is
going to impact every singlehousing policies and that we
aren't.
You know that we're not beingexclusive of certain audiences
and we want to make sure that weare giving that we're abiding
by.
All of you know the US housingregulations and so, when it
comes to Google specifically,there are regulations that come
around housing.
So I am not as a digitalmarketer.
(31:53):
I'm not able to target based oncertain income demographics.
I can't target based on yourgender, your age, your race or
your actual, your zip code, yourspecific physical location.
Physical location.
That used to be something thatwe were able to leverage, where
we could actually excludecertain zip codes.
(32:13):
Say, for example, we were doinga lease up for a class A, luxury
, high rise, and if our clienttold us, hey, that there's
specific zip codes that are inless affluent neighborhoods, we
don't want to target peoplethere, we could actually exclude
that, and so now that thosekind of capabilities have been
taken away, for better or forworse, I think that definitely
(32:34):
it's, you know, it's ways tokind of work around it.
There's also another limitationis that we tend to see there are
more limited based on your,your ads potentially could go
(33:03):
through a longer review cyclewith Google.
So you always just kind of wantto make sure that you keep that
in mind when you're launching anew campaign, that you give
yourself a couple of days tomake sure you submit your ads.
If they get disapproved, makesure you have a really good
relationship with your Googlereps so you can get that
appealed and that you can get itlive as quickly as possible.
(33:23):
Yeah, those I would think Iwould say are the biggest kind
of limitations as far as, as faras Google goes, and that that
doesn't only just apply tohousing.
Um, automotive actuallyexperiences this is a lot too,
because most people aren't justbuying cash, uh, a car in cash.
They're using some sort offinancing and credit, and credit
is another one of those specialad categories that Google flags
(33:46):
and puts a lot of limitationson.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, Personally this is just me speaking I do not
like the fact that you knowGoogle would have a restriction
or impose a limitation, forexample, zip code based, when
you're in the multifamily world,when you're in the apartments
world and the housing world,especially, though, I think, in
(34:12):
multifamily, when you consider,you know, luxury, high rise, you
know, or you know more affluentrents $5,000 a month, $10,000 a
month some of these are veryexpensive properties, but there
are people that you know thatspend that kind of money.
But when you are not allowed tospecifically target and then you
(34:36):
know that that means thatyou're going to waste some
amount of your budget on peoplewho they they can't afford those
rents.
Why would we be wanting toshare these ads with people that
have no interest in them in thefirst place?
But I could literally take youguys into an entire episode on
(34:56):
my pet peeves of all of thesuper tech juggernauts that do
really silly things that I thinkultimately, I think it hurts
themselves.
I don't think it's just animposition to the businesses
that basically make all thismoney for Google.
Um, I I think it's notnecessarily good for them, but
(35:17):
everybody down the line, I thinkeverybody loses.
So very interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
And I also.
At the end of the day it'sactually going to it's it's
going to be bad for the end user, you know, of course it's, you
know, bad for the, for thebusinesses of the day it's
actually going to.
It's going to be bad for theend user, you know, of course
it's bad for the, for thebusinesses, if they waste money
in certain areas and Mike talksa lot about this, about
mitigating waste, that's that'slike I think that's probably one
of the most important thingsthat we could do as paid search
marketers is like we're justtrying to save you money
(35:45):
everywhere we can and really,you know, be as precise with our
targeting as we possibly can,but the end user experience is
going to be less positive.
If you know, with all theselimitations, you know if I'm
looking for, you know if I'musing a very generic search
keyword and I'm looking forapartments for rent and suddenly
I get, you know, advertisementsfrom every single class A, B, C
(36:09):
every single type of community,I could just be like no, I was,
I was looking for this, and youknow, sometimes the advertisers
have better, you know, havebetter capabilities.
When given better capabilitiesto target more precisely, we can
actually help the user identifywhat they need, and then, of
course, on the flip side as well, us as advertisers maybe don't
(36:32):
know everything, so I think itis kind of a balance, but
definitely yeah, we definitelysubmit our pet peeves to Google
and their support and also theirengineers.
They take feedback fromadvertisers and advertising
agencies to make improvements totheir products.
(36:53):
So we are very active on thoseforums to get certain things
pushed through if we feel likeit's going to be in the best
interest of the businesses thatwe represent.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, I think that's really important, really
important.
Okay, I'm going to move you nowinto seasonality.
This is, I mean, not everyvertical has to deal with this
quite as much as, say,multifamily does.
You mentioned automotive.
Automotive certainly has.
They actually have very similarseasons as to when everything
changes up and down.
(37:22):
But seasonality and multifamilyand apartments and really kind
of how it's changed in recentyears.
You've mentioned on the episodealready a little bit about pre
and post pandemic um in thatparticular era.
So how has seasonality in thisindustry evolved in recent years
?
What are maybe some trends thatyou guys have seen and how
(37:44):
renters um for housingthroughout the year?
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I think that it is going to be.
It is very it's ever evolving.
The last four years havedefinitely been different than
anything that we ever kind ofsaw in the past Before.
It was very kind of predictable.
We knew when to start rampingup ad spend.
(38:10):
We knew that in the summermonths that's when you're going
to see a lot of movement, you'regoing to see a lot of action,
typically from the months of Mayuntil about August September,
and then you're going to startto see things kind of like slow
down a little bit but stillremain steady until probably
about end of November.
December is really when you seethings get quiet.
Nobody wants to kind of move.
I mean, we're coming up on theholidays now.
(38:31):
That's actually what we'reexperiencing now and we're
trying to navigate it.
And this year I would say I amseeing a little bit more of a
typical seasonal downturn aroundthe holidays, and so that's to
be expected.
But what we didn't reallyexpect to see is the summer was
a lot shorter than what we haveseen in years past.
(38:52):
So typically, like I said, itruns from about May to about
August September before itstarts slowing down.
It was a slower ramp up thisyear and a faster turndown.
By July we were already seeingtraffic to start decreasing, and
not just traffic in anindividual campaign, the search
volume overall.
So you can actually look intoGoogle search volume and Google
(39:13):
trends to see how many users youknow in a given area in a month
are searching for apartments,are searching for these types of
keywords.
Well, that went down by 30% fromJuly to August, which typically
August, july, august.
You're still seeing some prettystrong performance.
But when you see that kind ofnosedive, then that was a little
bit surprising, especially incertain like large DMAs, like
(39:36):
you're looking at Los Angelesmarket, new York.
It was very, very surprising.
And so I guess, like one thingthat I would say is we do have
to be a lot more strategic withour ad spend.
One thing that I would say iswe do have to be a lot more
strategic with our ad spend.
The days where we could kind ofjust have a static ad spend.
(39:57):
You can cut that out, I hope.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
I make a marker on all of those, so don't worry
about it.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Amazing.
I was saying, yeah, that sortof the days of where we could
just kind of have a staticbudget, static monthly budget
every single month throughoutthe whole year, are kind of
behind us.
We really do want to bestrategic in how and when we're
spending our money.
We want the wind at our sails.
So what I typically recommendto marketing managers and
(40:23):
clients of ours is I recommendlooking at the seasonal trends
from the year past and mappingyour budget based on what you
saw.
So, for example, if you saw wegot a lot of traffic and we got
a lot of leases and a lot ofleads in just between May and
June, and in July it started toslow down, you're going to want
(40:47):
to ramp up your budget in Mayand June and that seems a little
counterintuitive, but you'rebasically going to be spending
more money and not getting asmuch results.
And so the goal is you want tofill your building before
October.
You want to be at 97% 98% leastby October, so that way you can
maintain and maintain yourbrand awareness and be getting
(41:08):
some leads in to make up for anysort of renewals or any
evictions that you might have inNovember, december.
But you want to kind of be ableto be at a maintenance phase
there.
Otherwise, if you, if you don'tfill up before November,
december, you're going to be inprobably a sticky situation
(41:30):
until about January.
And so that's really important,and I would also say for lease
ups as well.
We have a lot of communitiesthat are opening during this
time of year and I have to justkind of set expectations and say
, hey, it's going to be slow forthe next month, don't panic,
let's ramp up ad spend in thenew year, let's get those leads
(41:51):
coming in and let's get kind ofmore on a trajectory to follow
those seasonal patterns.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
That's great advice.
I mean, obviously, being a guythat's been spent most of my
professional years in theautomotive industry, it's very
seasonal, and the adjacentindustries to automotive being
power sports and RV industry,it's very seasonal, and the
adjacent industries toautomotive being power sports
and RV also very, very seasonaland they're a bit different
actually from automotive.
But seasonality is somethingthat is, if it impacts your
(42:23):
vertical, it has to be accountedfor when you're thinking about
what you should be doing andwhen you should be doing.
And I really love all theinsights that you're sharing
there, because I think that alot of people oftentimes will go
into what they're going to dofrom a digital marketing
perspective, In this case, yourpaid search and mainly your
search efforts in multifamily,and there's probably way too
(42:45):
many that think about this in30-day cycles, maybe quarterly,
but it really is Go into it,thinking about the entire year
based on the season of whathappens, and I think that's
really good advice that youshare for people to be thinking
about things before they get tothe point where you can't do
anything about it.
If you're not planning, ifyou're not trying to accommodate
(43:07):
these seasonality adjustments,there is a point during each
season where it's kind of toolate to do anything other than,
perhaps, information that peoplecan make better decisions going
forward or know what'simportant and what maybe isn't
as important.
Last segment that I want totake you into is really around
(43:40):
how the paid side and theorganic side kind of hold hands.
It is important for SEM and SEO, the paid side of the house and
the organic side of the houseto have some alignment.
But I'm curious to know, I'dlike to hear your thoughts on
why it's important for SEM andSEO strategies to be working
hand in hand in this verticaland maybe also what are some of
(44:05):
the risks of leaving them inseparate silos.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Totally.
Yeah, definitely.
I think this is something thatwe're seeing not just in
multifamily, but just kind ofcross all in marketing.
Just in general, you used tohave the paid search guys were
out on the floor and giving highfives for all of the great
campaigns that they ran and allthe leads that they got and
(44:31):
everything like that, and thenyou had the SEOs kind of in the
broom closet, hiding away andactually doing some of the most
meaningful work, but they neverreally get like the credit where
credit is due.
And this is coming from a paidsearch gal.
So I will say that is extremelyimportant for SEM and SEO teams
to work together, specificallybecause of relevance.
(44:54):
Google is looking at not just anSEO in order to rank a website
and websites.
Relevance, but also in how muchyou spend on your paid search
campaigns, is going to bedetermined a lot by how relevant
the information is on yourwebsite and who controls that.
That's going to be your SEOs.
So if I'm bidding on a certainkeyword set, if I am bidding on
some highly competitive keywords, I want to make sure that my
(45:17):
SEO team is in alignment withthose keywords and that they are
optimizing for those keywordson the SEO side as well.
If you aren't talking to eachother, they could see oh, I
couldn't possibly rank for thiskeyword, so I'm monitoring it,
but I'm not even reallyoptimizing on-site content,
optimizing their metas, theirH1s towards that.
But if I do tell them hey,these keywords are valuable,
(45:41):
they're super expensive, if youcan optimize a landing page
towards them, then I can directtraffic there and what Google
will see is kind of thisconsistency and this kind of
this seamless experience for theuser, from the keyword that
we're bidding on to the ad thatwe're writing, to the landing
page experience for the user.
And if all of that isconsistent, that is going to
(46:03):
greatly impact your qualityscore, your overall quality and
your ad relevance and at the endof the day, it'll help you in
the auction to outbid yourcompetitors and, depending on
the keyword, you could possiblyeven be saving some money and
paying less for those clicksthan if you were sending the
user to a landing page that wascompletely not optimized towards
(46:25):
the keyword that you're biddingon.
So, being in alignment withyour SEO team and letting them
know what clicks are the mostvaluable for you on the paid
search side, where you'regetting the most conversions,
and which ones are the mostexpensive for you.
We've seen CPCs when we've runA-B split tests directing users
to a landing page with veryspecific keywords that we're
(46:48):
bidding on, versus just a statichomepage.
We've seen incredible resultsand decreases overall by up to
60% in overall CPC of what youwould spend.
So that's huge and yeah, sovery, very important to be
aligned.
And another thing that I wouldsay on the SEO and SEM kind of
(47:11):
working together is also whenyou kind of look at the
short-term and long-termstrategy.
So say, for example, you have anapartment community that is
just it's in a lease-up phase,so they expect, you know, 12 to
18 months.
They're just trying to fillthat building.
At that time, when the websiteand the community has no
relevance and no ranking onGoogle, it's a brand spanking
(47:33):
new site.
You're going to lean heavily onyour paid search efforts and
your PPC efforts because youjust need to get people to that
site and you have to pay to playto do that because you're not
ranking organically for anykeywords.
So you're paying, you're goingout there, you're getting the
users to the websites, you'reputting ad dollars behind it.
Eventually, I think every ownerwould agree that they don't
(47:57):
want to be spending all thatmoney forever.
They're kind of hoping thatthey'll fill the building and
that word of mouth and thatpeople will renew and they'll be
able to gain some organictraction to then not have to
spend so much on their marketingefforts.
And that's our goal for anylease up as well, and so what we
always encourage is listen,take this opportunity where
(48:19):
we're spending heavily on ourPPC and get your website
optimized from an SEO standpoint.
Get yourself ranking on Googlemap packs organically, and then
we can start eventually beingable to scale back on ads and
you're going to see those SEOefforts just kind of take over
from there.
So you know that I might beshooting myself in the foot here
(48:41):
, and if any of our clients hearthis, I'm not saying you should
cut budgets, but I'm saying youshould invest in your SEO so
that way, eventually you willnot be as reliant on your paid
search efforts and your websitewill rank organically.
And that's free traffic andthat's what we want.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
You're, in some ways, saying something that I've said
for years, which is search isthe tip of the spear, and that's
both paid and organic, but youhave to have enough wisdom and
experience and work with theright people that can help you
navigate that.
Um, I guess a subdivision ofhow much time and effort and
(49:22):
cause it's time and money to bereally good at what you're doing
with marketing, and thealignment of both paid and
organic, sem and SEO is criticalin, I think, every business
vertical, most certainly inmultifamily.
Claire, you have absolutelyscored touchdown after touchdown
to stay with my footballexample earlier in the episode
(49:43):
as your first time on thepodcast.
So what a fantastic.
I don't know if you have anyclosing thoughts.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Before we shut it down, I'll give you the floor if
there's anything else that youwanted to mention that you
didn't get a chance to would say, you know, from a practical
standpoint for marketingdirectors, is is to get in front
of your 2025 budgets Now, um,start taking a look at that
(50:12):
seasonality, taking a look atyour user journey, taking a look
at what your 60 to 90 day um,uh, uh availability is for your
communities.
Um, and making strategicdecisions Now, um, looking ahead
into that, as opposed to, oh no, we just had a whole bunch of
people move out.
We need people to move in todaybecause it is a process and the
(50:34):
traffic that you get today isgoing to turn into leads a month
from now, two months from now.
So, be proactive, get ahead ofthose budgets and yeah, that's
pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Look at that audience .
We found, once again, a perfectplace to park this episode and,
of course, you know weappreciate your comments and
questions.
Please feel free to share.
Your feedback is what helps usdeliver relevant episodes just
like this one.
If you are not following ClaireShogg on LinkedIn, well, you
(51:06):
need to do yourself a favor andgo do that While you're there.
Go over there and followPremier Online Marketing and
their business page as well, andthen just go to all the socials
, in fact, go topremieronlinemarketingcom to
learn more about what Claire andMike and the whole team does
for their clients.
It's absolutely worth your timeand, of course, thanks for
(51:28):
tuning in again.
We'll see you really soon righthere back on the podcast.
Thanks, claire.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Thanks.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast.
That's right.
This is your primary source,your favorite source.
It's a digital marketingpodcast that's focused on you
know it local lead generationinsights and strategies.
So if you've been searching fora current digital marketing
tips and tactics resource, well,that search has led you to the
(00:22):
right place.
So thanks again for tuning in.
Now I want to get to it.
We've got somebody new on thePalmcast today.
It's Claire Schaug.
Claire is the Chief OperatingOfficer at Premier Online
Marketing and she's joining thisepisode so that we can talk
about best practices, strategies, tips around apartment SEM and
PPC.
You might know it asmultifamily.
(00:43):
It's the same thing.
Claire, welcome to the Palmcast.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks for having me.
Sean Excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Good, good, I'm glad you're here too.
I want to jump right into itaround.
Well, pre-podcast recording youhad talked about, the goal is
usually leads.
For people, there are othergoals, but on the subject of the
goal being leads, how would youdefine a high quality lead in
the apartment industry and maybewhat strategies would be used
(01:15):
in campaigns to make sure thatyou're getting the right
prospects?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Awesome.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Well, ultimately, at the end ofthe day, the goal is leases.
You can get as many leads asyou want, but at the end of the
day, if it's not actuallyconverting into residents
renting apartments or singlefamily homes we work with a lot
of single family homecommunities then it's not really
going to be a qualified lead.
So we have to really look atthe data to ensure that the
(01:41):
leads that we are driving aregoing to be high quality, and
that could mean different thingsfor different communities.
We have a lot of communitiesthat have a very limited staff.
They don't have the means andthe staff to be answering the
phone a lot of the time.
So we have to really haveconversations and see hey, do
you want a lot of phone calls ordo you prefer contact form
(02:02):
submissions?
Do you want chat leads?
What's going to work the bestfor your community and the goals
of the community?
But I would say, as far as, like, the typical high quality lead
that we like to look at is goingto be in the form of a call.
You know that actually callingthe leasing office.
It's going to be a contact formsubmission on the contact page
(02:22):
or some sort of chat lead.
The highest quality of leadpotentially could be an actual
application where the user isguided to the leasing portal and
it can actually submit anapplication and submit all of
their information there.
Then the leasing agent has alot to work with.
As far as they already knowwhere their income is, they've
uploaded all their documentationand that's probably where you
(02:45):
can get the truest attribution.
Source of like a lead to leaseratio is through that kind of
lead.
So yeah, long, long answer.
But we're looking for calls,we're looking for forms, we're
looking for chat fills andapplications and ultimately we
want those to turn into leasesat the property.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, no, that's.
That's great insight.
I don't think that a lot ofpeople are always thinking about
the value of each of thosesources.
It's one thing to love having aform filled out, but it's a
completely different thing whenyou have an immediate one-to-one
dialogue through a phone call.
And that's the case inmultifamily and many other
(03:26):
verticals, and sometimes,whether it's the marketing team
or the business ownersthemselves, they don't
understand that.
It may not be that you wantmore of the form fills.
Not that that's a bad thingSometimes it's really great but
oftentimes that one-to-onecommunication has a completely
different conversion ratio,depending on how you guys have
(03:47):
put your marketing planstogether as a business.
So, in this same subject, Iwant to get your thoughts on
what do you think the maybe mosteffective ways are to measure
success of paid search campaignswhen you're trying to, you know
, generate positive outcomes forapartment communities?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Totally.
Yeah, measuring success isreally.
I would say it's kind oftwofold.
Of course.
You have your analyticsreporting.
You have the data that you'regetting in and the feedback
you're getting in from the adaccounts and that's going to be,
you know, traffic to thewebsite.
Of course that's the very highlevel, initial signal of success
(04:26):
that your campaigns are working.
As you're getting that trafficthey're coming in and then
you're going to want to startlooking at, kind of you know,
what actions are they taking onthe website.
You know what are they doingafterwards.
Most of the time we'll actuallynot necessarily see a user
convert that first time theycome to the website, so we have
to kind of monitor that journey.
A user convert that first timethey come to the website, so we
have to kind of monitor thatjourney and kind of what the
(04:47):
data has shown us is that for atraditional apartment searcher,
they start off looking andgetting to the website and then
they ultimately fill out thatlead form, maybe two, even three
weeks down the road.
If I'm planning to movesomewhere, you know I might be
looking, you know, to move for ajob and that's going to be in a
couple months starting or amonth, so I'm not really ready
(05:07):
to make that decision yet.
So you kind of have to followthat user journey.
So of course, initially westart checking traffic, we look
and see that engagement on thewebsite and then ultimately, at
the very end of the day, we kindof follow that user and see at
(05:28):
the end, do they actually submita phone call, or do they make a
phone call or submit a formlead or a chat on the website?
After that, then that's reallykind of what comes into play is
the communication with theonsite teams and to actually see
where did that lease go afteror where did that lead go after.
Did they actually end upfilling out an application?
And if they did, did they getaccepted?
Because a lot of people willfill out an application.
And if they did, did they getaccepted?
Because a lot of people willfill out an application.
But if they get rejected, thenwe don't want to find other
(05:50):
users that are like that.
We want to find users that areactually going to get approved
and be able to move into thebuilding.
So that first party data andgetting that feedback back from
the CRM and from the communityitself to educate us and to
educate Google's algorithm onthis is the type of user we're
looking for.
At the end of the day is reallygoing to be what the most
(06:11):
impact is.
So traffic leads, leases, itkind of is going to follow that
sort of that full user funnel.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
That makes a lot of sense.
I want to take you now into acouple of questions around
audience segmentation, because Iknow a lot world, and perhaps a
bit on why it's important totailor messaging to what would
(06:49):
be considered a different renterdemographic.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Totally, yeah, 100%.
So I guess sort of kind of PPC.
In the past, you know, when Ifirst started search marketing,
it was very much, you know, Ibid on specific keywords and
Mike and you have discussed thisextensively in other episodes
of the podcast, which I love butit used to be a lot more
straightforward.
And but now, with the differentrestrictions, especially in
(07:16):
multifamily, that we have asadvertisers, it is really
important to monitor closelythose user journeys.
So in multifamily you havelimitations.
You can't target based oncertain income demographics, you
can't target based on gender,on age, on zip codes, certain
location targeting is not able.
(07:36):
So what can we do then?
So we want to look at differentaudience segments based on
their kind of overall userbehavior.
Fortunately enough, we're stillliving in a cookie world, so we
do have the ability to kind oftrack, of course, if the user
accepts cookies when they getonto the website.
We have the ability to be ableto see those different user
flows like how quickly do theyget to the contact page, how far
(07:59):
along that journey do they getand do they actually submit the
lead?
Well, if they don't submit thelead and they're still in those
early sort of discovery phases,we can actually create different
audiences based on that path.
So you know, if someone gets toyour landing page and then they
bounce immediately, that mightnot be a user that I want to
like try to hit with another ad.
(08:20):
I might actually want toexclude that entire audience
altogether if they go to thewebsite and then just bounce.
However, if they've done alittle bit of research, they've
been to three or more pages,they've been to your contact
page, they started thatapplication.
Maybe they didn't finish it.
Well then, now they're nowinside an audience bucket that
we can then strategically eitherretarget them or tell Google
(08:43):
that we want to find otheraudiences that are similar to
this one.
You know, meta you know thelookalike audiences of Facebook
marketing of the past would be asimilar comparison to kind of
these different segments that welike to build out and kind of
put them into different bucketsand then target users based on
(09:03):
their actual behavior and whatsearches that they do.
Yeah, another really fun onethat we like to do, especially
with YouTube marketingspecifically, is custom segment
audiences where a lot of times,especially in the apartment
industry it's very In theapartment industry it's really,
(09:23):
really competitive.
So you will notice that we'rebidding on keywords, but all of
your competitors are going to bebidding on the exact same
keywords.
They're trying to get the users.
You know they're all bidding onapartments for rent, apartments
in Austin, apartments in LosAngeles.
So we might not win that bid.
We might only win the bid oneout of 10 times if that.
(10:06):
So we need to figure outdifferent ways to get to this
user.
If we're not going to be at thetop of the page and with some
communities they just don't havethe bid in Google search we can
still retarget to them throughdifferent um Google uh platforms
.
So either that's YouTube, thatcan be Gmail, um, that can be
display, um, that can bediscovery, um.
So Google offers like a lot ofdifferent ways of doing it more,
uh, that are different thanjust the traditional search
winning that search bid.
You can win the bid in a lot ofother places too, so that's
(10:28):
something pretty cool.
So say, for example, I create acustom audience that is
specific to users that arelooking for two-bedroom
apartments.
Even if I don't show up on topof page for the Google search
result or the search, I canactually show them an in-feed
video on YouTube while they'rebrowsing or they're just
(10:49):
scrolling.
And this could be an entirelyother topic of a podcast, but
talking about in-stream ads onYouTube, those tons of
capabilities there, and it'sreally kind of cool to see the
different um ways that we cantarget that are a little bit
more untraditional, at least toum kind of more traditional paid
(11:11):
search marketers.
So it's pretty, it's, it's anexciting, it's an exciting time,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Well, it's really helpful.
I think it's really smart, allall of what you just.
It just made me think of a lotof different scenarios that are
really, I think, critical forespecially in the multifamily
world.
But when you start talkingabout segmentation and all the
things that you're learning fromthese different demographics
and then retailoring and goingback around messaging and
different creative and evendifferent channels you know you
(11:39):
mentioned how you can utilizeYouTube and part of this
ecosystem of what you're doingfrom a digital marketing
perspective I think a lot ofpeople get very myopic around.
Well, what's the paid searchstuff doing specifically?
And you just did a brilliantjob of helping people understand
a much bigger picture aroundall of that, which I think is
really critical.
I think that's what separatespeople who are having good
results and chasing downoutcomes that are really
(12:02):
positive versus maybe beingstuck in some of the repetitive
things that are the way they'vebeen doing it forever.
If you've always done, do whatyou've always done, you'll
always be where you've alwaysbeen, so, really, really good.
Also, one more thing onaudience segmentation Is there a
role for data to play here,perhaps in both identifying and
maybe targeting specific renterprofiles?
(12:24):
Love to know your thoughts onthere.
Is there a data play orsomething around segmentation
that the audience should beknowing about?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Oh, a hundred percent .
This is where, kind of as far asin the, in the role that that
having good data, having cleandata and how it plays into
building out these audiences isis is really having that
integration set up for yourfirst party data.
So your first party data couldbe anything from the data that's
coming into your CRM, all ofthe leads that you have
(12:53):
currently have in your CRM,prospects that you have been
nurturing, and then also yourGA4 data, so we can actually
create these audience bucketsand these segmentations based on
the actions that the user takeson the website and through your
Google Analytics data.
That's your first party dataand so you can leverage it, and
so it's super, super importantto ensure that that's plugged in
(13:15):
and that you're monitoring itwith the housing.
Well, just on Google in general, to be able to use certain
pieces of data, like what actionto use or takes, google needs
enough data points to in orderto anonymize the data.
(13:35):
So if I only have 10 users thatare coming to my website,
google's not going to be able togive us anything that is of any
statistical significance.
We can't take any action basedon those 10 users, because
Google can't anonymize it and wecan't use it.
So we need a lot of data.
We need a lot of data quickly,which is kind of something that
we see is we like to at leastgive a campaign at least 30 to
(14:00):
60 days of just gathering.
We're just learning about theuser, we're learning about their
behavior, we're learning whatactions they take on the website
and we're categorizing them andwe're putting them into these
different buckets and into thesedifferent segments.
And then that's really when thekind of the fun part of
marketing comes in is you'reactually able to make specific
(14:20):
bid adjustments, you're able toactually target based on these
user behaviors when you haveenough data.
So a lot of times we'll hear,with paid search campaign, it's
like, ok, well, we have athousand dollars to spend or two
thousand dollars to spend.
You know how quickly can I getanswers that that the truth is
that's going to take some time?
Can I get answers that that thetruth is that's going to take
(14:42):
some time?
You're, you're looking at, youknow, a relatively small budget
to gain a lot of super helpfuldata and the faster you spend,
the faster you spend, the fasteryou're actually going to be
able to gather that data and andand make meaningful you know,
strategic decisions based onthat.
So yeah, data is everything Ialways say.
(15:05):
As marketers, we like to besuper creative and think that
our ad performs so well or wethink our ad is going to perform
so well and really resonatewith users, and of course that's
all nice.
But the truth is is that I'vemade ads and the data comes back
and it shows that it didn'tresonate with the users.
They didn't like it and so kindof hits the pride a little bit.
But you know that's.
I definitely like makingdecisions based on statistical
(15:29):
significance as opposed to justa hunch, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I say this a lot, so I totally agree with everything
that you're saying.
But I often tell people, whenit comes to marketing and this
this is and this is a truestatement for both B2B and B2C,
business to business andbusiness to consumer marketing
(15:57):
it's usually almost always it'sso much more important to index
on who you're marketing toversus how many people.
Not everyone's going to goviral with your different
marketing campaigns, but ifyou're not spending the time to
actually know who exactly youwant to be consuming this, you
might be ecstatic that 100people because those 100 people
were all the type of people youwant to be interacting with it
versus trying to do what I callhit a grand slam every time you
(16:18):
step into the batter's box.
Oftentimes doing that is reallyexpensive because you're trying
to do things that are very,very time intensive and resource
specifically your walletintensive and not knowing
whether or not you're actuallygoing to hit it out of the
ballpark versus these thingskind of like.
What you're talking about Atleast, that's what it made me
(16:39):
think about is you have to bevery strategic in the way that
you put these things togetherwith points of data.
Obviously, it allows you to getvery specific on how you're
going to target and how you'regoing to identify the best
opportunities, and sometimesthat's by making sure that your
scope is realistic, and sooftentimes I end up telling
people hey, it's the who farmore important than the how many
(17:02):
in most cases.
Totally.
So, really, really good stuff.
Well, okay, claire, I want totake you a little bit into the
user journey and I guess whatpeople you know.
It's a marketing funnel.
We still talk about funnels andmarketing a lot about funnels
and marketing a lot.
I was wondering if you wouldmind kind of maybe walking the
(17:22):
audience through the typical,semi-typical but the typical
renter's journey, from they do asearch to they're signing a
lease, and maybe how the SEMcampaigns, the paid search
campaigns, can be optimized atthose stages of that journey
optimized at those stages ofthat journey Totally A hundred
(17:42):
percent.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, I, I, I it's.
I mean, I think everyone, youknow every marketer, or you know
, if you go to school formarketing, it's like marketing
one oh one.
They always tell you to kind ofstart with that sort of user
funnel.
But it is, it is true and itdoes, it does.
It does apply here tomultifamily as well.
So you know, if you're lookingat, say, a building, you have
375 units and you're at a leaseup, the building is going to
come online and people can movein within, you know, a couple of
(18:05):
months.
You're really going to start atthe very beginning from that
awareness phase, that awarenessand consideration and the way
that you're going to get them tofirst know about.
You know that you even have abuilding.
It's brand spanking new.
You have no kind of brandawareness at this moment.
Nobody really knows who you are.
(18:26):
So at first you have to buildthat awareness and you can do
that by many different channels.
Of course, Google PPC is agreat way to do that.
Of course you also have, youknow, social media Hulu, tiktok,
youtube.
There's a lot of differentavenues.
But staying specifically just toPPC and to Google search.
You want to start building thatawareness by starting by
(18:48):
bidding on very high funnelsearch queries that users
typically start when they arestarting to look for an
apartment.
And you can find this verysimply by using, like Google
Keyword keyword researcher andseeing what is the search volume
around, something likeapartments in Denver, apartments
in downtown Denver, sometimeseven more hyperlocal geo
(19:10):
keywords you know, apartments inlow, high or something like
that.
You want to be as specific asyou can and get the users to
just kind of discover you.
Then at that point, usuallythen the user is now kind of
they sort of understand okay,you are an apartment community
and it's within this generalarea that I'm looking for, or
(19:33):
you have two bedroomavailability, okay, awesome.
Then what you're going to wantto do is start bidding on lower
funnel keywords so to kind ofnurture them down and kind of
keep showing up and staying topof mind for them so they might
conduct a different, you know,type of search queries.
You know like pet friendlythree bedroom apartment,
something like that.
They're a little bit morespecific about what you know,
what they're looking for.
Well, then you can show them anad there too and be like, hey,
(20:02):
we have the solution to yourproblem and we can solve, give
you a solve to your problem here.
At that point.
A really interesting thing thatwe like to do is then we can
layer in things like remarketingWhile they're still in that
sort of evaluation phase.
They're looking at yourcompetitors as well.
They're going to be looking atILSs, they're going to be
looking at apartmentscom, zillow, they're looking all over the
place.
But you are going to be able,cause they came to your website
before you're going to be ableto retarget them.
(20:22):
That's when I love to layer inthings like display remarketing
or YouTube remarketing, youtubevideo or like oh, I'm blanking
on the word here, it'll comeback, it'll come back to me.
But basically you can usedifferent layers of remarketing
(20:45):
when they're still in thatevaluation phase and just kind
of staying top of mind.
Now, through all of thesedifferent phases, I'm not
expecting the user to schedule atour or make a decision at that
point at all, and so sometimesI get this like oh, these
certain you know buckets orthese certain campaigns are not
necessarily converting, you knowright away, that's okay, we
(21:07):
just want to get them to yourwebsite, we want to stay top of
mind for them for as low of acost as possible and through
that whole process we'reeliminating people that seem
like they're not interested.
So if they bounce off thewebsite in less than 15 seconds,
you know we're we're going toexclude them.
We're also layering and thingslike pricing into our ads so
that way, if they, if it'soutside of their price point,
(21:27):
you know they're not going to.
You know, continue and and andclick through on our ad.
At the end of the day, the verybottom of the funnel, you are
going to see that userstypically are going to convert
eight times out of 10 on yourbrand term.
And what does that mean?
So, say, if there's anapartment community called you
know, you know, groves Groves inAustin, that's what the user is
(21:54):
going to search for, becauseyou stay top of mind throughout
their entire journey.
And then at the end of the day,they're like okay, we've looked
at these competitors, we'velooked at this, I'm ready to
make a decision.
I'm going to go and do a searchfor the actual brand name, the
community name, and chances arethen they'll either convert on
your Google business profilepage If you've had that set up
(22:14):
correctly, which I hope.
I hope you did, but if that'sset up, nine times out of 10,
they're going to go and convertthere on either the Google
business results page, one ofyour organic listings, or.
What we always like to do isallocate a certain percentage of
your budget to your brandedterms, so that way you dominate
the search engine results page,because you'll notice that who
(22:36):
else is going to be bidding onthose terms?
Your competitors, ilss, andthey're all trying to get higher
and higher on the searchresults page.
So you're going to want to makesure that you have your organic
listing, you have an ad, youhave your Google business
profile completely decked out,and so they really have no
option but to okay, yes, I waslooking for them, I'm going to
find them.
They're not going to get easilydistracted by like, ooh, what
(22:57):
are, where are the ILS?
Was Zillow offering?
Or Ooh, can I get a deal atthis other community instead.
So you really want to dominatethe SERP with that final brand
search.
That that's the search that'sgoing to happen.
Um, uh, that that's wherethey're going to actually
convert or submit that lead.
Um, and we see a lot of people,especially ownership groups,
and they'll tell us why should Ibid on my brand term and a lot
(23:21):
of PPC marketers.
This is a very controversialthing in paid search marketing.
You have some people in paidsearch that I look up to and
learn from.
They recommend no, you neverwant to bid on your brand term,
you never want to bid on that.
And no, you never want to bidon your brand term, you never
want to bid on that.
But I feel like there is apercentage small percentage,
(23:45):
just about 5% to 10% of yourbudget that should be spent on
securing, because you alreadyworked so hard, you paid tons of
money to get them down thatfunnel.
And it would be a shame ifsomeone just snagged it out from
underneath you at the lastpossible moment because you
didn't want to allocate 250bucks to just ensure that your
brand is dominating the searchengine results page.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, back in the day , we used to kind of refer to
this quite a bit as playingoffense and defense.
You know, strategically youhave to think that way.
I think, for American footballfans, a lot of what you were
just sharing, if you were acoach, you'd be telling them
that you need to be strong inall three phases of the game,
which is offensive, defensiveand special teams.
And you know, maybe there's nota lot of football fans that
(24:32):
will appreciate that analogy.
I think some of them will.
But that's essentially one wayto break it down with a metaphor
, and that is you can't thinkabout it in one singular way of
like let's just throw the adsout there and let's just see
(24:53):
what happens, especially, evenas you charted around the
journey of what's happening withthe renter, there's actually a
really smart, wise business caseto be made, for knowing that
your plays on both sides of theball, as well as your special
teams, are that's how you getsuccessful and that's really
actually how you separateyourself from everyone that
you're competing against and,like you said, that's direct
competitors, that's, you know,uh, ilss.
(25:16):
There's a lot of competition outthere, and so all the things
that you're sharing are really,really smart for people to be
thinking how do we get an edge,how do we get competitively
ahead of people?
Well, you're going to have todo a little bit more than maybe
just mailing it in.
So, on this user journeysubject, one other question I
want to know if you havethoughts on are there?
(25:38):
I don't know, you will know arethere common gaps that you see
on how multifamily marketersalign their SEM efforts with
this user journey?
And if there are some gapsthere, how would you address
them?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, I would say probably as far as like when I
kind of audit a pay-per-clickaccount and I'm looking at all
of the potential gaps that arein that, I would say neglecting
or not spending on specifickeyword segments or different
(26:20):
places in that user journeybecause they aren't seeing the
immediate conversion comethrough that source.
So, for example, as I mentioned,searching for those high funnel
keywords like two bedroomapartments, that's probably one
of the first if I need a twobedroom apartment, that's what
I'm going to search for andthat's going to be one of the
first searches that I do, andbut I might not see conversions
(26:46):
coming through that.
But if I know I need to movetwo bedroom units and you know
my B units are really reallystruggling, they're maybe a
little bit overpriced comparedto your competition You'd be
shooting yourself in the foot ifyou aren't actually allocating
a considerable amount of yourbudget towards those high funnel
terms.
Um then, uh, on the other side,on the flip side, I do see a
(27:06):
lot of search marketers who willpotentially not close that loop
and not leverage remarketing inthe way that they should to
actually get that user to comeback, because it is kind of is
such a it's a longerconsideration phase, so to speak
, just because making a move anddeciding on where you're going
to live is a big decision.
People are researching, youknow, school districts.
They're searching you knowwhat's going to be the commute
(27:27):
to my work?
Or even in this post COVIDworld that we live in, there's a
lot of people working from home, like what's your conference
room you know like, and do youoffer co working spaces and call
booths, and those are.
These are amenity packages thatare becoming more and more
common with new builds.
So you definitely want to oneconsider all phases of that user
(27:51):
journey and making sure you'reallocating budget to like to
each of those phases and gettingthem all the way to the bottom
of the funnel.
And then also, I would sayanother thing is that I
sometimes see is people leaningtoo heavily on things that maybe
worked really well in the past.
Like in a post-pandemic world.
Housing is looking a lotdifferent and we have to kind of
(28:11):
be up to date on what users aresearching for for things like
apartment with co-working spaceor apartment with office or
things like that is becoming.
The volume has gone upexponentially, even just in the
last year.
So we have to identify thoseopportunities and then build
some campaigns around that andtest it out.
(28:33):
I'm not saying that a specifickeyword type will work for every
single community, but it wouldbe a shame to not at least test
it out, because there could be areally big opportunity there,
depending on the market you'rein.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I appreciate you not saying Sean you kind of already
answered this question by usingyour football analogy because it
kind of is that's like have agame plan right, totally that
you're going to have a lot ofgaps if there is no game plan.
And the game plan means thatyou have to think about all the
plays you're running, bothoffensive defense and special
(29:10):
teams.
Very interesting, okay, great.
Taking you into a couple morecategories, I hope you don't
mind.
The next one I want to ask you alittle bit about would be and
I'm always careful when I'mtalking to you guys on the
podcast because when we talkabout Google right it's I don't
(29:31):
want to say it's kind of thispush, pull a little bit
relationship there can betension there.
They're such a huge company,they're so important.
You know, when Mike and I areon episodes, oftentimes we, you
know he will say you know,because of market share, it's
going to be the place whereyou're going to probably spend
most, and that makes sense.
(29:51):
So when I talk about Google inthis segment, limitations within
this particular vertical, it'snot because I want to
necessarily say bad things aboutGoogle, but I think it's really
.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Oh, feel free.
Feel free, this is a safe space.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, definitely, I think it's really important for
and here on the Palmcast youguys do a really good job of
speaking.
Maybe it's aggressive to saytruth to power, but Google is a
very big, important, necessarybusiness, but there aren't
enough people that oftentimesare really candid in the advice
(30:31):
that they provide, and I thinkthat's really important.
So this question is really kindof around those potential
Google limitations in thisvertical.
Question one From yourperspective, what would be or
what are the biggest challenges,maybe restrictions that Google
(30:52):
I don't know if imposes but thatGoogle has relative to SEM
campaigns in this verticalaround apartments, multifamily,
and maybe your thoughts on howyou would navigate them?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Totally.
I mean, so this is going to beactually be something that is
going to impact every singlehousing policies and that we
aren't.
You know that we're not beingexclusive of certain audiences
and we want to make sure that weare giving that we're abiding
by.
All of you know the US housingregulations and so, when it
comes to Google specifically,there are regulations that come
around housing.
So I am not as a digitalmarketer.
(31:53):
I'm not able to target based oncertain income demographics.
I can't target based on yourgender, your age, your race or
your actual, your zip code, yourspecific physical location.
Physical location.
That used to be something thatwe were able to leverage, where
we could actually excludecertain zip codes.
(32:13):
Say, for example, we were doinga lease up for a class A, luxury
, high rise, and if our clienttold us, hey, that there's
specific zip codes that are inless affluent neighborhoods, we
don't want to target peoplethere, we could actually exclude
that, and so now that thosekind of capabilities have been
taken away, for better or forworse, I think that definitely
(32:34):
it's, you know, it's ways tokind of work around it.
There's also another limitationis that we tend to see there are
more limited based on your,your ads potentially could go
(33:03):
through a longer review cyclewith Google.
So you always just kind of wantto make sure that you keep that
in mind when you're launching anew campaign, that you give
yourself a couple of days tomake sure you submit your ads.
If they get disapproved, makesure you have a really good
relationship with your Googlereps so you can get that
appealed and that you can get itlive as quickly as possible.
(33:23):
Yeah, those I would think Iwould say are the biggest kind
of limitations as far as, as faras Google goes, and that that
doesn't only just apply tohousing.
Um, automotive actuallyexperiences this is a lot too,
because most people aren't justbuying cash, uh, a car in cash.
They're using some sort offinancing and credit, and credit
is another one of those specialad categories that Google flags
(33:46):
and puts a lot of limitationson.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, Personally this is just me speaking I do not
like the fact that you knowGoogle would have a restriction
or impose a limitation, forexample, zip code based, when
you're in the multifamily world,when you're in the apartments
world and the housing world,especially, though, I think, in
(34:12):
multifamily, when you consider,you know, luxury, high rise, you
know, or you know more affluentrents $5,000 a month, $10,000 a
month some of these are veryexpensive properties, but there
are people that you know thatspend that kind of money.
But when you are not allowed tospecifically target and then you
(34:36):
know that that means thatyou're going to waste some
amount of your budget on peoplewho they they can't afford those
rents.
Why would we be wanting toshare these ads with people that
have no interest in them in thefirst place?
But I could literally take youguys into an entire episode on
(34:56):
my pet peeves of all of thesuper tech juggernauts that do
really silly things that I thinkultimately, I think it hurts
themselves.
I don't think it's just animposition to the businesses
that basically make all thismoney for Google.
Um, I I think it's notnecessarily good for them, but
(35:17):
everybody down the line, I thinkeverybody loses.
So very interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
And I also.
At the end of the day it'sactually going to it's it's
going to be bad for the end user, you know, of course it's, you
know, bad for the, for thebusinesses of the day it's
actually going to.
It's going to be bad for theend user, you know, of course
it's bad for the, for thebusinesses, if they waste money
in certain areas and Mike talksa lot about this, about
mitigating waste, that's that'slike I think that's probably one
of the most important thingsthat we could do as paid search
marketers is like we're justtrying to save you money
(35:45):
everywhere we can and really,you know, be as precise with our
targeting as we possibly can,but the end user experience is
going to be less positive.
If you know, with all theselimitations, you know if I'm
looking for, you know if I'musing a very generic search
keyword and I'm looking forapartments for rent and suddenly
I get, you know, advertisementsfrom every single class A, B, C
(36:09):
every single type of community,I could just be like no, I was,
I was looking for this, and youknow, sometimes the advertisers
have better, you know, havebetter capabilities.
When given better capabilitiesto target more precisely, we can
actually help the user identifywhat they need, and then, of
course, on the flip side as well, us as advertisers maybe don't
(36:32):
know everything, so I think itis kind of a balance, but
definitely yeah, we definitelysubmit our pet peeves to Google
and their support and also theirengineers.
They take feedback fromadvertisers and advertising
agencies to make improvements totheir products.
(36:53):
So we are very active on thoseforums to get certain things
pushed through if we feel likeit's going to be in the best
interest of the businesses thatwe represent.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, I think that's really important, really
important.
Okay, I'm going to move you nowinto seasonality.
This is, I mean, not everyvertical has to deal with this
quite as much as, say,multifamily does.
You mentioned automotive.
Automotive certainly has.
They actually have very similarseasons as to when everything
changes up and down.
(37:22):
But seasonality and multifamilyand apartments and really kind
of how it's changed in recentyears.
You've mentioned on the episodealready a little bit about pre
and post pandemic um in thatparticular era.
So how has seasonality in thisindustry evolved in recent years
?
What are maybe some trends thatyou guys have seen and how
(37:44):
renters um for housingthroughout the year?
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I think that it is going to be.
It is very it's ever evolving.
The last four years havedefinitely been different than
anything that we ever kind ofsaw in the past Before.
It was very kind of predictable.
We knew when to start rampingup ad spend.
(38:10):
We knew that in the summermonths that's when you're going
to see a lot of movement, you'regoing to see a lot of action,
typically from the months of Mayuntil about August September,
and then you're going to startto see things kind of like slow
down a little bit but stillremain steady until probably
about end of November.
December is really when you seethings get quiet.
Nobody wants to kind of move.
I mean, we're coming up on theholidays now.
(38:31):
That's actually what we'reexperiencing now and we're
trying to navigate it.
And this year I would say I amseeing a little bit more of a
typical seasonal downturn aroundthe holidays, and so that's to
be expected.
But what we didn't reallyexpect to see is the summer was
a lot shorter than what we haveseen in years past.
(38:52):
So typically, like I said, itruns from about May to about
August September before itstarts slowing down.
It was a slower ramp up thisyear and a faster turndown.
By July we were already seeingtraffic to start decreasing, and
not just traffic in anindividual campaign, the search
volume overall.
So you can actually look intoGoogle search volume and Google
(39:13):
trends to see how many users youknow in a given area in a month
are searching for apartments,are searching for these types of
keywords.
Well, that went down by 30% fromJuly to August, which typically
August, july, august.
You're still seeing some prettystrong performance.
But when you see that kind ofnosedive, then that was a little
bit surprising, especially incertain like large DMAs, like
(39:36):
you're looking at Los Angelesmarket, new York.
It was very, very surprising.
And so I guess, like one thingthat I would say is we do have
to be a lot more strategic withour ad spend.
One thing that I would say iswe do have to be a lot more
strategic with our ad spend.
The days where we could kind ofjust have a static ad spend.
(39:57):
You can cut that out, I hope.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
I make a marker on all of those, so don't worry
about it.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Amazing.
I was saying, yeah, that sortof the days of where we could
just kind of have a staticbudget, static monthly budget
every single month throughoutthe whole year, are kind of
behind us.
We really do want to bestrategic in how and when we're
spending our money.
We want the wind at our sails.
So what I typically recommendto marketing managers and
(40:23):
clients of ours is I recommendlooking at the seasonal trends
from the year past and mappingyour budget based on what you
saw.
So, for example, if you saw wegot a lot of traffic and we got
a lot of leases and a lot ofleads in just between May and
June, and in July it started toslow down, you're going to want
(40:47):
to ramp up your budget in Mayand June and that seems a little
counterintuitive, but you'rebasically going to be spending
more money and not getting asmuch results.
And so the goal is you want tofill your building before
October.
You want to be at 97% 98% leastby October, so that way you can
maintain and maintain yourbrand awareness and be getting
(41:08):
some leads in to make up for anysort of renewals or any
evictions that you might have inNovember, december.
But you want to kind of be ableto be at a maintenance phase
there.
Otherwise, if you, if you don'tfill up before November,
december, you're going to be inprobably a sticky situation
(41:30):
until about January.
And so that's really important,and I would also say for lease
ups as well.
We have a lot of communitiesthat are opening during this
time of year and I have to justkind of set expectations and say
, hey, it's going to be slow forthe next month, don't panic,
let's ramp up ad spend in thenew year, let's get those leads
(41:51):
coming in and let's get kind ofmore on a trajectory to follow
those seasonal patterns.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
That's great advice.
I mean, obviously, being a guythat's been spent most of my
professional years in theautomotive industry, it's very
seasonal, and the adjacentindustries to automotive being
power sports and RV industry,it's very seasonal, and the
adjacent industries toautomotive being power sports
and RV also very, very seasonaland they're a bit different
actually from automotive.
But seasonality is somethingthat is, if it impacts your
(42:23):
vertical, it has to be accountedfor when you're thinking about
what you should be doing andwhen you should be doing.
And I really love all theinsights that you're sharing
there, because I think that alot of people oftentimes will go
into what they're going to dofrom a digital marketing
perspective, In this case, yourpaid search and mainly your
search efforts in multifamily,and there's probably way too
(42:45):
many that think about this in30-day cycles, maybe quarterly,
but it really is Go into it,thinking about the entire year
based on the season of whathappens, and I think that's
really good advice that youshare for people to be thinking
about things before they get tothe point where you can't do
anything about it.
If you're not planning, ifyou're not trying to accommodate
(43:07):
these seasonality adjustments,there is a point during each
season where it's kind of toolate to do anything other than,
perhaps, information that peoplecan make better decisions going
forward or know what'simportant and what maybe isn't
as important.
Last segment that I want totake you into is really around
(43:40):
how the paid side and theorganic side kind of hold hands.
It is important for SEM and SEO, the paid side of the house and
the organic side of the houseto have some alignment.
But I'm curious to know, I'dlike to hear your thoughts on
why it's important for SEM andSEO strategies to be working
hand in hand in this verticaland maybe also what are some of
(44:05):
the risks of leaving them inseparate silos.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Totally.
Yeah, definitely.
I think this is something thatwe're seeing not just in
multifamily, but just kind ofcross all in marketing.
Just in general, you used tohave the paid search guys were
out on the floor and giving highfives for all of the great
campaigns that they ran and allthe leads that they got and
(44:31):
everything like that, and thenyou had the SEOs kind of in the
broom closet, hiding away andactually doing some of the most
meaningful work, but they neverreally get like the credit where
credit is due.
And this is coming from a paidsearch gal.
So I will say that is extremelyimportant for SEM and SEO teams
to work together, specificallybecause of relevance.
(44:54):
Google is looking at not just anSEO in order to rank a website
and websites.
Relevance, but also in how muchyou spend on your paid search
campaigns, is going to bedetermined a lot by how relevant
the information is on yourwebsite and who controls that.
That's going to be your SEOs.
So if I'm bidding on a certainkeyword set, if I am bidding on
some highly competitive keywords, I want to make sure that my
(45:17):
SEO team is in alignment withthose keywords and that they are
optimizing for those keywordson the SEO side as well.
If you aren't talking to eachother, they could see oh, I
couldn't possibly rank for thiskeyword, so I'm monitoring it,
but I'm not even reallyoptimizing on-site content,
optimizing their metas, theirH1s towards that.
But if I do tell them hey,these keywords are valuable,
(45:41):
they're super expensive, if youcan optimize a landing page
towards them, then I can directtraffic there and what Google
will see is kind of thisconsistency and this kind of
this seamless experience for theuser, from the keyword that
we're bidding on to the ad thatwe're writing, to the landing
page experience for the user.
And if all of that isconsistent, that is going to
(46:03):
greatly impact your qualityscore, your overall quality and
your ad relevance and at the endof the day, it'll help you in
the auction to outbid yourcompetitors and, depending on
the keyword, you could possiblyeven be saving some money and
paying less for those clicksthan if you were sending the
user to a landing page that wascompletely not optimized towards
(46:25):
the keyword that you're biddingon.
So, being in alignment withyour SEO team and letting them
know what clicks are the mostvaluable for you on the paid
search side, where you'regetting the most conversions,
and which ones are the mostexpensive for you.
We've seen CPCs when we've runA-B split tests directing users
to a landing page with veryspecific keywords that we're
(46:48):
bidding on, versus just a statichomepage.
We've seen incredible resultsand decreases overall by up to
60% in overall CPC of what youwould spend.
So that's huge and yeah, sovery, very important to be
aligned.
And another thing that I wouldsay on the SEO and SEM kind of
(47:11):
working together is also whenyou kind of look at the
short-term and long-termstrategy.
So say, for example, you have anapartment community that is
just it's in a lease-up phase,so they expect, you know, 12 to
18 months.
They're just trying to fillthat building.
At that time, when the websiteand the community has no
relevance and no ranking onGoogle, it's a brand spanking
(47:33):
new site.
You're going to lean heavily onyour paid search efforts and
your PPC efforts because youjust need to get people to that
site and you have to pay to playto do that because you're not
ranking organically for anykeywords.
So you're paying, you're goingout there, you're getting the
users to the websites, you'reputting ad dollars behind it.
Eventually, I think every ownerwould agree that they don't
(47:57):
want to be spending all thatmoney forever.
They're kind of hoping thatthey'll fill the building and
that word of mouth and thatpeople will renew and they'll be
able to gain some organictraction to then not have to
spend so much on their marketingefforts.
And that's our goal for anylease up as well, and so what we
always encourage is listen,take this opportunity where
(48:19):
we're spending heavily on ourPPC and get your website
optimized from an SEO standpoint.
Get yourself ranking on Googlemap packs organically, and then
we can start eventually beingable to scale back on ads and
you're going to see those SEOefforts just kind of take over
from there.
So you know that I might beshooting myself in the foot here
(48:41):
, and if any of our clients hearthis, I'm not saying you should
cut budgets, but I'm saying youshould invest in your SEO so
that way, eventually you willnot be as reliant on your paid
search efforts and your websitewill rank organically.
And that's free traffic andthat's what we want.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
You're, in some ways, saying something that I've said
for years, which is search isthe tip of the spear, and that's
both paid and organic, but youhave to have enough wisdom and
experience and work with theright people that can help you
navigate that.
Um, I guess a subdivision ofhow much time and effort and
(49:22):
cause it's time and money to bereally good at what you're doing
with marketing, and thealignment of both paid and
organic, sem and SEO is criticalin, I think, every business
vertical, most certainly inmultifamily.
Claire, you have absolutelyscored touchdown after touchdown
to stay with my footballexample earlier in the episode
(49:43):
as your first time on thepodcast.
So what a fantastic.
I don't know if you have anyclosing thoughts.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Before we shut it down, I'll give you the floor if
there's anything else that youwanted to mention that you
didn't get a chance to would say, you know, from a practical
standpoint for marketingdirectors, is is to get in front
of your 2025 budgets Now, um,start taking a look at that
(50:12):
seasonality, taking a look atyour user journey, taking a look
at what your 60 to 90 day um,uh, uh availability is for your
communities.
Um, and making strategicdecisions Now, um, looking ahead
into that, as opposed to, oh no, we just had a whole bunch of
people move out.
We need people to move in todaybecause it is a process and the
(50:34):
traffic that you get today isgoing to turn into leads a month
from now, two months from now.
So, be proactive, get ahead ofthose budgets and yeah, that's
pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Look at that audience .
We found, once again, a perfectplace to park this episode and,
of course, you know weappreciate your comments and
questions.
Please feel free to share.
Your feedback is what helps usdeliver relevant episodes just
like this one.
If you are not following ClaireShogg on LinkedIn, well, you
(51:06):
need to do yourself a favor andgo do that While you're there.
Go over there and followPremier Online Marketing and
their business page as well, andthen just go to all the socials
, in fact, go topremieronlinemarketingcom to
learn more about what Claire andMike and the whole team does
for their clients.
It's absolutely worth your timeand, of course, thanks for
(51:28):
tuning in again.
We'll see you really soon righthere back on the podcast.
Thanks, claire.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Thanks.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.