Simply Put: Apartment Guide Garners Quality Leads for Landmark

The Problem | Too Many Options, Not Enough Quality LeadsWhen it comes to digital marketing today, there are dozens of tactics that can be employed to promote an apartment community. From mobile listings to live chat to high definition photos and videos to video tours, the options from Internet listing services (ILSs) seem almost endless.

Some ILSs have product offerings much like the menu at the Cheesecake Factory,” Perez says. “It’s great to have those options, but nobody wants to look through 79 pages of a menu. It’s very confusing. Some of these ILSs tend to offer this buffet of all these different choices.

Unfortunately, even after spending a significant amount of time selecting the right options, apartment companies have no guarantee they will receive any leads from ILS sources, let alone quality leads that result in traffic and leases.

I’ve found that some ILSs offer empty or duplicate leads,” Perez says. “If you have five leads and none of them convert to traffic or leases, the dollars for that month were wasted because we didn’t have a net gain.

Without quality leads, the process of culling through dozens of options to list an apartment community is a waste of time and money.

Landmark Apartment Trust (LAT) is a multifamily real estate

company that is a publicly registered, non-traded real

estate investment trust (REIT) specializing in ownership, acquisition, management and

disposition of multifamily apartment communities in geographically diverse, high-growth

markets. Currently, Landmark Apartment Trust owns and operates more than 33,000

apartment units across the United States in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina,

South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Landmark and the firm’s Vice President

of Marketing, Ryan Perez are long-time Apartment Guide clients.

The Solution | Innovation Meets SimplicityLandmark has allocated more marketing spend to ILSs that produce high quality leads and offer simplified packages. Apartment Guide has been the beneficiary of a lot of those dollars.

“Really, when it comes down to it, you really only need a handful of packaged options for a community listing,” Perez says. “From those packages, you can choose what will work for any asset in any specific submarket with the target demographic you’re trying to reach. Apartment Guide has successfully accomplished that. Their package level offerings are sufficient and their products are easy to understand.”

Apartment Guide offers four packages – Diamond, Platinum, Gold and Silver – that bundle together the options that are offered a la carte at other ILSs. The Silver package offers the basic options and the other packages add features to it until all features are available in the Diamond package.

“By being able to offer different products as part of their overall platform, they make it easy for their customers,” Perez says. “I feel like they’re always staying at the forefront of what’s happening, what’s coming up. I know I can look to them for what we can expect in the future. They really come up with some innovative and sleek products. If you have a community on a specific package that produces quality results, but need a boost, they offer mobile deals and add-ons and accents to garner even more quality traffic.”

One example of how Apartment Guide stays at the forefront and helps Landmark further increase exposure and leads is through search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). SEO plays a key role in driving exposure, traffic and leads for Landmark.

“How Apartment Guide’s resources are spent on SEO and SEM equates to higher search rankings and our positions on organic searches,” Perez says. “It puts us right where we want to be — on page 1 of Google. We’re not missable to our customers.

The way Apartment Guide wisely focuses on SEO and SEM means that we will be visible, and we will get traffic.”

Even with a solid SEO strategy, Landmark communities sometimes need a leads or exposure boost. When those situations arise, Landmark wants to take action quickly and adjust its marketing tactics. Apartment Guide’s responsive service makes that possible for Landmark.

“Some people say that there are no marketing emergencies, and they’re right most of the time,” says Perez, who also used Apartment Guide as a marketing professional at Cortland Partners and Wesley Apartment Homes, in addition to Landmark. “But some things can be time-sensitive, and Apartment Guide has always been responsive to assist in remedying the matter as quickly as possible. No matter where I’ve worked, I’ve always felt like a priority to Apartment Guide.”

The Results | Fewer Options, Better LeadsThe commitment to innovation, search engine optimization and responsive service is paying off for Landmark– in quality leads. According to Perez, Apartment Guide delivers high quality leads and the strong lead conversion to Landmark.

Apartment Guide in my opinion brings to us qualified prospective renters who ultimately end up leasing,” Perez says. “When they’re bringing quality leads and converting leads to walk-in traffic, leases and move-ins, at the end of the day, they’re moving the needle for us, because ultimately what moves that needle is physical and economic occupancy resulting in positive NOI.

In the Stone Mountain submarket in Atlanta, for example, Landmark garnered 25 net leases from Apartment Guide in the second quarter of 2014 alone. That equated to 8 net leases a month on a Platinum Package, which was just $187 per lease. The number of leases garnered was second only to the community’s website.

Regardless of where she’s worked, Perez has experienced similar success with Apartment Guide. And she attributes that success to Apartment Guide’s simplified package offerings with innovations like Room Planner, its commitment to search engine optimization and its responsive service that empowers her to adapt quickly and boost leads when it’s necessary. Landmark is no exception.