The POMCAST
A digital marketing podcast focused on local lead generation strategies and insights. Your search for in depth discussions, tips and tactics has led you to the right place.
The POMCAST
Multifamily Marketing: Boosting Apartment SEM and PPC Efficiency
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
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast. That's right. This is your primary source, your favorite source. It's a digital marketing podcast that's focused on you know it local lead generation insights and strategies. So if you've been searching for a current digital marketing tips and tactics resource, well, that search has led you to the right place. So thanks again for tuning in. Now I want to get to it. We've got somebody new on the Palmcast today. It's Claire Schaug. Claire is the Chief Operating Officer at Premier Online Marketing and she's joining this episode so that we can talk about best practices, strategies, tips around apartment SEM and PPC. You might know it as multifamily. It's the same thing. Claire, welcome to the Palmcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. Sean Excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Good, good, I'm glad you're here too. I want to jump right into it around. Well, pre-podcast recording you had talked about, the goal is usually leads. For people, there are other goals, but on the subject of the goal being leads, how would you define a high quality lead in the apartment industry and maybe what strategies would be used in campaigns to make sure that you're getting the right prospects?
Speaker 2:Awesome. Yeah, that's a great question. Well, ultimately, at the end of the day, the goal is leases. You can get as many leads as you want, but at the end of the day, if it's not actually converting into residents renting apartments or single family homes we work with a lot of single family home communities then it's not really going to be a qualified lead. So we have to really look at the data to ensure that the leads that we are driving are going to be high quality, and that could mean different things for different communities.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of communities that have a very limited staff. They don't have the means and the staff to be answering the phone a lot of the time. So we have to really have conversations and see hey, do you want a lot of phone calls or do you prefer contact form submissions? Do you want chat leads? What's going to work the best for your community and the goals of the community?
Speaker 2:But I would say, as far as, like, the typical high quality lead that we like to look at is going to be in the form of a call. You know that actually calling the leasing office. It's going to be a contact form submission on the contact page or some sort of chat lead. The highest quality of lead potentially could be an actual application where the user is guided to the leasing portal and it can actually submit an application and submit all of their information there. Then the leasing agent has a lot to work with. As far as they already know where their income is, they've uploaded all their documentation and that's probably where you can get the truest attribution. Source of like a lead to lease ratio 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 and applications and ultimately we want those to turn into leases at the property.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's. That's great insight. I don't think that a lot of people are always thinking about the value of each of those sources. It's one thing to love having a form filled out, but it's a completely different thing when you have an immediate one-to-one dialogue through a phone call. And that's the case in multifamily and many other verticals, and sometimes, whether it's the marketing team or the business owners themselves, they don't understand that. It may not be that you want more of the form fills. Not that that's a bad thing Sometimes it's really great but oftentimes that one-to-one communication has a completely different conversion ratio, depending on how you guys have put your marketing plans together as a business. So, in this same subject, I want to get your thoughts on what do you think the maybe most effective ways are to measure success of paid search campaigns when you're trying to, you know, generate positive outcomes for apartment communities?
Speaker 2:Totally. Yeah, measuring success is really. I would say it's kind of twofold. Of course. You have your analytics reporting. You have the data that you're getting in and the feedback you're getting in from the ad accounts and that's going to be, you know, traffic to the website. Of course that's the very high level, initial signal of success that your campaigns are working. As you're getting that traffic they're coming in and then you're going to want to start looking at, kind of you know, what actions are they taking on the website. You know what are they doing afterwards.
Speaker 2:Most of the time we'll actually not necessarily see a user convert that first time they come to the website, so we have to kind of monitor that journey. A user convert that first time they come to the website, so we have to kind of monitor that journey and kind of what the data has shown us is that for a traditional apartment searcher, they start off looking and getting to the website and then they ultimately fill out that lead form, maybe two, even three weeks down the road. If I'm planning to move somewhere, you know I might be looking, you know, to move for a job and that's going to be in a couple months starting or a month, so I'm not really ready to make that decision yet. So you kind of have to follow that user journey. So of course, initially we start checking traffic, we look and see that engagement on the website and then ultimately, at the very end of the day, we kind of follow that user and see at the end, do they actually submit a phone call, or do they make a phone call or submit a form lead or a chat on the website?
Speaker 2:After that, then that's really kind of what comes into play is the communication with the onsite teams and to actually see where did that lease go after or where did that lead go after. Did they actually end up filling out an application? And if they did, did they get accepted? Because a lot of people will fill out an application. And if they did, did they get accepted? Because a lot of people will fill out an application. But if they get rejected, then we don't want to find other users that are like that. We want to find users that are actually going to get approved and be able to move into the building. So that first party data and getting that feedback back from the CRM and from the community itself to educate us and to educate Google's algorithm on this is the type of user we're looking for. At the end of the day is really going to be what the most impact is. So traffic leads, leases, it kind of is going to follow that sort of that full user funnel.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense. I want to take you now into a couple of questions around audience segmentation, because I know a lot world, and perhaps a bit on why it's important to tailor messaging to what would be considered a different renter demographic.
Speaker 2:Totally, yeah, 100%. So I guess sort of kind of PPC. In the past, you know, when I first started search marketing, it was very much, you know, I bid on specific keywords and Mike and you have discussed this extensively in other episodes of the podcast, which I love but it used to be a lot more straightforward. And but now, with the different restrictions, especially in multifamily, that we have as advertisers, it is really important to monitor closely those user journeys. So in multifamily you have limitations. You can't target based on certain income demographics, you can't target based on gender, on age, on zip codes, certain location targeting is not able. So what can we do then? So we want to look at different audience segments based on their kind of overall user behavior.
Speaker 2:Fortunately enough, we're still living in a cookie world, so we do have the ability to kind of track, of course, if the user accepts cookies when they get onto the website.
Speaker 2:We have the ability to be able to see those different user flows like how quickly do they get to the contact page, how far along that journey do they get and do they actually submit the lead? Well, if they don't submit the lead 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 to your landing page and then they bounce immediately, that might not be a user that I want to like try to hit with another ad. I might actually want to exclude that entire audience altogether if they go to the website and then just bounce. However, if they've done a little bit of research, they've been to three or more pages, they've been to your contact page, they started that application. Maybe they didn't finish it. Well then, now they're now inside an audience bucket that we can then strategically either retarget them or tell Google that we want to find other audiences that are similar to this one.
Speaker 2:You know, meta you know the lookalike audiences of Facebook marketing of the past would be a similar comparison to kind of these different segments that we like to build out and kind of put them into different buckets and then target users based on their actual behavior and what searches that they do. Yeah, another really fun one that we like to do, especially with YouTube marketing specifically, is custom segment audiences where a lot of times, especially in the apartment industry it's very In the apartment industry it's really, really competitive. So you will notice that we're bidding on keywords, but all of your competitors are going to be bidding on the exact same keywords. They're trying to get the users. You know they're all bidding on apartments for rent, apartments in Austin, apartments in Los Angeles. So we might not win that bid. We might only win the bid one out of 10 times if that. So we need to figure out different ways to get to this user.
Speaker 2:If we're not going to be at the top of the page and with some communities they just don't have the bid in Google search we can still retarget to them through different um Google uh platforms.
Speaker 2:So either that's YouTube, that can be Gmail, um, that can be display, um, that can be discovery, um. So Google offers like a lot of different ways of doing it more, uh, that are different than just the traditional search winning that search bid. You can win the bid in a lot of other places too, so that's something pretty cool. So say, for example, I create a custom audience that is specific to users that are looking for two-bedroom apartments. Even if I don't show up on top of page for the Google search result or the search, I can actually show them an in-feed video on YouTube while they're browsing or they're just scrolling. And this could be an entirely other topic of a podcast, but talking about in-stream ads on YouTube, those tons of capabilities there, and it's really kind of cool to see the different um ways that we can target that are a little bit more untraditional, at least to um kind of more traditional paid search marketers. So it's pretty, it's, it's an exciting, it's an exciting time, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, it's really helpful. I think it's really smart, all all of what you just. It just made me think of a lot of different scenarios that are really, I think, critical for especially in the multifamily world. But when you start talking about segmentation and all the things that you're learning from these different demographics and then retailoring and going back around messaging and different creative and even different channels you know you mentioned how you can utilize YouTube and part of this ecosystem of what you're doing from a digital marketing perspective I think a lot of people get very myopic around.
Speaker 1:Well, what's the paid search stuff doing specifically? And you just did a brilliant job of helping people understand a much bigger picture around all of that, which I think is really critical. I think that's what separates people who are having good results and chasing down outcomes that are really positive versus maybe being stuck in some of the repetitive things that are the way they've been doing it forever. If you've always done, do what you've always done, you'll always be where you've always been, so, really, really good. Also, one more thing on audience segmentation Is there a role for data to play here, perhaps in both identifying and maybe targeting specific renter profiles? Love to know your thoughts on there. Is there a data play or something around segmentation that the audience should be knowing about?
Speaker 2:Oh, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:This is where, kind of as far as in the, in the role that that having good data, having clean data and how it plays into building out these audiences is is is really having that integration set up for your first party data.
Speaker 2:So your first party data could be anything from the data that's coming into your CRM, all of the leads that you have currently have in your CRM, prospects that you have been nurturing, and then also your GA4 data, so we can actually create these audience buckets and these segmentations based on the actions that the user takes on the website and through your Google Analytics data. That's your first party data and so you can leverage it, and so it's super, super important to ensure that that's plugged in and that you're monitoring it with the housing. Well, just on Google in general, to be able to use certain pieces of data, like what action to use or takes, google needs enough data points to in order to anonymize the data. So if I only have 10 users that are coming to my website, google's not going to be able to give us anything that is of any statistical significance.
Speaker 2:We can't take any action based on those 10 users, because Google can't anonymize it and we can'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 least give a campaign at least 30 to 60 days of just gathering. We're just learning about the user, we're learning about their behavior, we're learning what actions they take on the website and we're categorizing them and we're putting them into these different buckets and into these different segments. And then that's really when the kind of the fun part of marketing comes in is you're actually able to make specific bid adjustments, you're able to actually target based on these user behaviors when you have enough data.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times we'll hear, with paid search campaign, it's like, ok, well, we have a thousand dollars to spend or two thousand dollars to spend. You know how quickly can I get answers that that the truth is that's going to take some time? Can I get answers that that the truth is that's going to take some time? You're, you're looking at, you know, a relatively small budget to gain a lot of super helpful data and the faster you spend, the faster you spend, the faster you're actually going to be able to gather that data and and and make meaningful you know, strategic decisions based on that. So yeah, data is everything I always say.
Speaker 2:As marketers, we like to be super creative and think that our ad performs so well or we think our ad is going to perform so well and really resonate with users, and of course that's all nice. But the truth is is that I've made ads and the data comes back and it shows that it didn't resonate with the users. They didn't like it and so kind of hits the pride a little bit. But you know that's. I definitely like making decisions based on statistical significance as opposed to just a hunch, you know.
Speaker 1:I say this a lot, so I totally agree with everything that you're saying. But I often tell people, when it comes to marketing and this this is and this is a true statement for both B2B and B2C, business to business and business to consumer marketing it's usually almost always it's so much more important to index on who you're marketing to versus how many people. Not everyone's going to go viral with your different marketing campaigns, but if you're not spending the time to actually know who exactly you want to be consuming this, you might be ecstatic that 100 people because those 100 people were all the type of people you want to be interacting with it versus trying to do what I call hit a grand slam every time you step into the batter's box. Oftentimes doing that is really expensive because you're trying to do things that are very, very time intensive and resource specifically your wallet intensive and not knowing whether or not you're actually going to hit it out of the ballpark versus these things kind of like. What you're talking about At least, that's what it made me think about is you have to be very strategic in the way that you put these things together with points of data.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it allows you to get very specific on how you're going to target and how you're going to identify the best opportunities, and sometimes that's by making sure that your scope is realistic, and so oftentimes I end up telling people hey, it's the who far more important than the how many in most cases. Totally. So, really, really good stuff. Well, okay, claire, I want to take you a little bit into the user journey and I guess what people you know. It's a marketing funnel. We still talk about funnels and marketing a lot about funnels and marketing a lot. I was wondering if you would mind kind of maybe walking the audience through the typical, semi-typical but the typical renter's journey, from they do a search to they're signing a lease, and maybe how the SEM campaigns, the paid search campaigns, can be optimized at those stages of that journey optimized at those stages of that journey Totally A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I, I it's. I mean, I think everyone, you know every marketer, or you know, if you go to school for marketing, it's like marketing one oh one. They always tell you to kind of start with that sort of user funnel. But it is, it is true and it does, it does. It does apply here to multifamily as well. So you know, if you're looking at, say, a building, you have 375 units and you're at a lease up, the building is going to come online and people can move in within, you know, a couple of months.
Speaker 2:You're really going to start at the very beginning from that awareness phase, that awareness and consideration and the way that you're going to get them to first know about. You know that you even have a building. It's brand spanking new. You have no kind of brand awareness at this moment. Nobody really knows who you are. So at first you have to build that awareness and you can do that by many different channels. Of course, Google PPC is a great way to do that. Of course you also have, you know, social media Hulu, tiktok, youtube. There's a lot of different avenues.
Speaker 2:But staying specifically just to PPC and to Google search. You want to start building that awareness by starting by bidding on very high funnel search queries that users typically start when they are starting to look for an apartment. And you can find this very simply by using, like Google Keyword keyword researcher and seeing what is the search volume around, something like apartments in Denver, apartments in downtown Denver, sometimes even more hyperlocal geo keywords you know, apartments in low, high or something like that. You want to be as specific as you can and get the users to just kind of discover you. Then at that point, usually then the user is now kind of they sort of understand okay, you are an apartment community and it's within this general area that I'm looking for, or you have two bedroom availability, okay, awesome. Then what you're going to want to do is start bidding on lower funnel keywords so to kind of nurture them down and kind of keep showing up and staying top of mind for them so they might conduct a different, you know, type of search queries. You know like pet friendly three bedroom apartment, something like that. They're a little bit more specific about what you know, what they're looking for. Well, then you can show them an ad there too and be like, hey, we have the solution to your problem and we can solve, give you a solve to your problem here. At that point.
Speaker 2:A really interesting thing that we like to do is then we can layer in things like remarketing While they're still in that sort of evaluation phase. They're looking at your competitors as well. They're going to be looking at ILSs, 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 able to retarget them. That's when I love to layer in things like display remarketing or YouTube remarketing, youtube video or like oh, I'm blanking on the word here, it'll come back, it'll come back to me. But basically you can use different layers of remarketing when they're still in that evaluation phase and just kind of staying top of mind.
Speaker 2:Now, through all of these different phases, I'm not expecting the user to schedule a tour or make a decision at that point at all, and so sometimes I get this like oh, these certain you know buckets or these certain campaigns are not necessarily converting, you know right away, that's okay, we just want to get them to your website, we want to stay top of mind for them for as low of a cost as possible and through that whole process we're eliminating people that seem like they're not interested. So if they bounce off the website in less than 15 seconds, you know we're we're going to exclude them. We're also layering and things like pricing into our ads so that way, if they, if it's outside of their price point, you know they're not going to. You know, continue and and and click through on our ad. At the end of the day, the very bottom of the funnel, you are going to see that users typically are going to convert eight times out of 10 on your brand term. And what does that mean? So, say, if there's an apartment community called you know, you know, groves Groves in Austin, that's what the user is going to search for, because you stay top of mind throughout their entire journey.
Speaker 2:And then at the end of the day, they're like okay, we've looked at these competitors, we've looked at this, I'm ready to make a decision. I'm going to go and do a search for the actual brand name, the community name, and chances are then they'll either convert on your Google business profile page If you've had that set up correctly, which I hope. I hope you did, but if that's set up, nine times out of 10, they're going to go and convert there on either the Google business results page, one of your organic listings, or. What we always like to do is allocate a certain percentage of your budget to your branded terms, so that way you dominate the search engine results page, because you'll notice that who else is going to be bidding on those terms? Your competitors, ilss, and they're all trying to get higher and higher on the search results page.
Speaker 2:So you're going to want to make sure that you have your organic listing, you have an ad, you have your Google business profile completely decked out, and so they really have no option but to okay, yes, I was looking for them, I'm going to find them. They're not going to get easily distracted by like, ooh, what are, where are the ILS? Was Zillow offering? Or Ooh, can I get a deal at this other community instead. So you really want to dominate the SERP with that final brand search. That that's the search that's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Um, uh, that that's where they'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 I bid on my brand term and a lot of PPC marketers. This is a very controversial thing in paid search marketing. You have some people in paid search that I look up to and learn from. They recommend no, you never want to bid on your brand term, you never want to bid on that. And no, you never want to bid on your brand term, you never want to bid on that. But I feel like there is a percentage small percentage, just about 5% to 10% of your budget that should be spent on securing, because you already worked so hard, you paid tons of money to get them down that funnel.
Speaker 2:And it would be a shame if someone just snagged it out from underneath you at the last possible moment because you didn't want to allocate 250 bucks to just ensure that your brand is dominating the search engine results page.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back in the day, we used to kind of refer to this quite a bit as playing offense and defense. You know, strategically you have to think that way. I think, for American football fans, a lot of what you were just sharing, if you were a coach, you'd be telling them that you need to be strong in all three phases of the game, which is offensive, defensive and special teams. And you know, maybe there's not a lot of football fans that will appreciate that analogy. I think some of them will.
Speaker 1:But that's essentially one way to break it down with a metaphor, and that is you can't think about it in one singular way of like let's just throw the ads out there and let's just see what happens, especially, even as you charted around the journey of what's happening with the renter, there's actually a really smart, wise business case to be made, for knowing that your plays on both sides of the ball, as well as your special teams, are that's how you get successful and that's really actually how you separate yourself from everyone that you're competing against and, like you said, that's direct competitors, that's, you know, uh, ilss.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of competition out there, 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 to do a little bit more than maybe just mailing it in. So, on this user journey subject, one other question I want to know if you have thoughts on are there? I don't know, you will know are there common gaps that you see on how multifamily marketers align their SEM efforts with this user journey? And if there are some gaps there, how would you address them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say probably as far as like when I kind of audit a pay-per-click account and I'm looking at all of the potential gaps that are in that, I would say neglecting or not spending on specific keyword segments or different places in that user journey because they aren't seeing the immediate conversion come through that source.
Speaker 2:So, for example, as I mentioned, searching for those high funnel keywords like two bedroom apartments, that's probably one of the first if I need a two bedroom apartment, that's what I'm going to search for and that's going to be one of the first searches that I do, and but I might not see conversions coming through that. But if I know I need to move two bedroom units and you know my B units are really really struggling, they're maybe a little bit overpriced compared to your competition You'd be shooting yourself in the foot if you aren't actually allocating a considerable amount of your budget towards those high funnel terms. Um then, uh, on the other side, on the flip side, I do see a lot of search marketers who will potentially not close that loop and not leverage remarketing in the way that they should to actually get that user to come back, because it is kind of is such a it's a longer consideration phase, so to speak, just because making a move and deciding on where you're going to live is a big decision. People are researching, you know, school districts. They're searching you know what's going to be the commute to my work? Or even in this post COVID world that we live in, there's a lot of people working from home, like what's your conference room you know like, and do you offer co working spaces and call booths, and those are. These are amenity packages that are becoming more and more common with new builds. So you definitely want to one consider all phases of that user journey and making sure you're allocating budget to like to each of those phases and getting them all the way to the bottom of the funnel.
Speaker 2:And then also, I would say another thing is that I sometimes see is people leaning too heavily on things that maybe worked really well in the past. Like in a post-pandemic world. Housing is looking a lot different and we have to kind of be up to date on what users are searching for for things like apartment with co-working space or apartment with office or things like that is becoming. The volume has gone up exponentially, even just in the last year. So we have to identify those opportunities and then build some campaigns around that and test it out. I'm not saying that a specific keyword type will work for every single community, but it would be a shame to not at least test it out, because there could be a really big opportunity there, depending on the market you're in.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you not saying Sean you kind of already answered this question by using your football analogy because it kind of is that's like have a game plan right, totally that you're going to have a lot of gaps if there is no game plan. And the game plan means that you have to think about all the plays you're running, both offensive defense and special teams. Very interesting, okay, great. Taking you into a couple more categories, I hope you don't mind.
Speaker 1:The next one I want to ask you a little bit about would be and I'm always careful when I'm talking to you guys on the podcast because when we talk about Google right it's I don't want to say it's kind of this push, pull a little bit relationship there can be tension there. They're such a huge company, they're so important. You know, when Mike and I are on episodes, oftentimes we, you know he will say you know, because of market share, it's going to be the place where you're going to probably spend most, and that makes sense. So when I talk about Google in this segment, limitations within this particular vertical, it's not because I want to necessarily say bad things about Google, but I think it's really.
Speaker 2:Oh, feel free. Feel free, this is a safe space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, I think it's really important for and here on the Palmcast you guys do a really good job of speaking. Maybe it's aggressive to say truth to power, but Google is a very big, important, necessary business, but there aren't enough people that oftentimes are really candid in the advice that they provide, and I think that's really important. So this question is really kind of around those potential Google limitations in this vertical. Question one From your perspective, what would be or what are the biggest challenges, maybe restrictions that Google I don't know if imposes but that Google has relative to SEM campaigns in this vertical around apartments, multifamily, and maybe your thoughts on how you would navigate them?
Speaker 2:Totally. I mean, so this is going to be actually be something that is going to impact every single housing policies and that we aren't. You know that we're not being exclusive of certain audiences and we want to make sure that we are giving that we're abiding by. All of you know the US housing regulations and so, when it comes to Google specifically, there are regulations that come around housing. So I am not as a digital marketer. I'm not able to target based on certain income demographics. I can't target based on your gender, your age, your race or your actual, your zip code, your specific physical location. Physical location.
Speaker 2:That used to be something that we were able to leverage, where we could actually exclude certain zip codes.
Speaker 2:Say, for example, we were doing a lease up for a class A, luxury, high rise, and if our client told us, hey, that there's specific zip codes that are in less affluent neighborhoods, we don't want to target people there, we could actually exclude that, and so now that those kind of capabilities have been taken away, for better or for worse, I think that definitely it's, you know, it's ways to kind of work around it.
Speaker 2:There's also another limitation is that we tend to see there are more limited based on your, your ads potentially could go through a longer review cycle with Google. So you always just kind of want to make sure that you keep that in mind when you're launching a new campaign, that you give yourself a couple of days to make sure you submit your ads. If they get disapproved, make sure you have a really good relationship with your Google reps so you can get that appealed and that you can get it live as quickly as possible. Yeah, those I would think I would say are the biggest kind of limitations as far as, as far as Google goes, and that that doesn't only just apply to housing. Um, automotive actually experiences this is a lot too, because most people aren't just buying cash, uh, a car in cash. They're using some sort of financing and credit, and credit is another one of those special ad categories that Google flags and puts a lot of limitations on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Personally this is just me speaking I do not like the fact that you know Google would have a restriction or impose a limitation, for example, 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 multifamily, when you consider, you know, luxury, high rise, you know, or you know more affluent rents $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month some of these are very expensive properties, but there are people that you know that spend that kind of money.
Speaker 1:But when you are not allowed to specifically target and then you know that that means that you're going to waste some amount of your budget on people who they they can't afford those rents. Why would we be wanting to share these ads with people that have no interest in them in the first place? But I could literally take you guys into an entire episode on my pet peeves of all of the super tech juggernauts that do really silly things that I think ultimately, I think it hurts themselves. I don't think it's just an imposition to the businesses that basically make all this money for Google. Um, I I think it's not necessarily good for them, but everybody down the line, I think everybody loses. So very interesting.
Speaker 2:And I also. At the end of the day it's actually 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 the businesses of the day it's actually going to. It's going to be bad for the end user, you know, of course it's bad for the, for the businesses, if they waste money in certain areas and Mike talks a lot about this, about mitigating waste, that's that's like I think that's probably one of the most important things that we could do as paid search marketers is like we're just trying to save you money 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 these limitations, you know if I'm looking for, you know if I'm using a very generic search keyword and I'm looking for apartments for rent and suddenly I get, you know, advertisements from every single class A, B, C every single type of community, I could just be like no, I was, I was looking for this, and you know, sometimes the advertisers have better, you know, have better capabilities.
Speaker 2:When given better capabilities to target more precisely, we can actually help the user identify what they need, and then, of course, on the flip side as well, us as advertisers maybe don't know everything, so I think it is kind of a balance, but definitely yeah, we definitely submit our pet peeves to Google and their support and also their engineers. They take feedback from advertisers and advertising agencies to make improvements to their products. So we are very active on those forums to get certain things pushed through if we feel like it's going to be in the best interest of the businesses that we represent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's really important, really important. Okay, I'm going to move you now into seasonality. This is, I mean, not every vertical has to deal with this quite as much as, say, multifamily does. You mentioned automotive. Automotive certainly has. They actually have very similar seasons as to when everything changes up and down. But seasonality and multifamily and apartments and really kind of how it's changed in recent years. You've mentioned on the episode already a little bit about pre and post pandemic um in that particular era. So how has seasonality in this industry evolved in recent years? What are maybe some trends that you guys have seen and how renters um for housing throughout the year?
Speaker 2:I think that it is going to be. It is very it's ever evolving. The last four years have definitely been different than anything that we ever kind of saw in the past Before. It was very kind of predictable. We knew when to start ramping up ad spend. We knew that in the summer months that's when you're going to see a lot of movement, you're going to see a lot of action, typically from the months of May until about August September, and then you're going to start to see things kind of like slow down a little bit but still remain steady until probably about end of November. December is really when you see things get quiet. Nobody wants to kind of move. I mean, we're coming up on the holidays now. That's actually what we're experiencing now and we're trying to navigate it.
Speaker 2:And this year I would say I am seeing a little bit more of a typical seasonal downturn around the holidays, and so that's to be expected. But what we didn't really expect to see is the summer was a lot shorter than what we have seen in years past. So typically, like I said, it runs from about May to about August September before it starts slowing down. It was a slower ramp up this year and a faster turndown. By July we were already seeing traffic to start decreasing, and not just traffic in an individual campaign, the search volume overall. So you can actually look into Google search volume and Google trends to see how many users you know in a given area in a month are searching for apartments, are searching for these types of keywords.
Speaker 2:Well, that went down by 30% from July to August, which typically August, july, august. You're still seeing some pretty strong performance. But when you see that kind of nosedive, then that was a little bit surprising, especially in certain like large DMAs, like you're looking at Los Angeles market, new York. It was very, very surprising. And so I guess, like one thing that I would say is we do have to be a lot more strategic with our ad spend. One thing that I would say is we do have to be a lot more strategic with our ad spend. The days where we could kind of just have a static ad spend. You can cut that out, I hope. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I make a marker on all of those, so don't worry about it.
Speaker 2:Amazing. I was saying, yeah, that sort of the days of where we could just kind of have a static budget, static monthly budget every single month throughout the whole year, are kind of behind us. We really do want to be strategic in how and when we're spending our money. We want the wind at our sails. So what I typically recommend to marketing managers and clients of ours is I recommend looking at the seasonal trends from the year past and mapping your budget based on what you saw.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if you saw we got a lot of traffic and we got a lot of leases and a lot of leads in just between May and June, and in July it started to slow down, you're going to want to ramp up your budget in May and June and that seems a little counterintuitive, but you're basically going to be spending more money and not getting as much results.
Speaker 2:And so the goal is you want to fill your building before October. You want to be at 97% 98% least by October, so that way you can maintain and maintain your brand awareness and be getting some leads in to make up for any sort of renewals or any evictions that you might have in November, december. But you want to kind of be able to be at a maintenance phase there. Otherwise, if you, if you don't fill up before November, december, you're going to be in probably a sticky situation until about January. And so that's really important, and I would also say for lease ups as well. We have a lot of communities that are opening during this time of year and I have to just kind of set expectations and say, hey, it's going to be slow for the next month, don't panic, let's ramp up ad spend in the new year, let's get those leads coming in and let's get kind of more on a trajectory to follow those seasonal patterns.
Speaker 1:That's great advice. I mean, obviously, being a guy that's been spent most of my professional years in the automotive industry, it's very seasonal, and the adjacent industries to automotive being power sports and RV industry, it's very seasonal, and the adjacent industries to automotive being power sports and RV also very, very seasonal and they're a bit different actually from automotive. But seasonality is something that is, if it impacts your vertical, it has to be accounted for when you're thinking about what you should be doing and when you should be doing. And I really love all the insights that you're sharing there, because I think that a lot of people oftentimes will go into what they're going to do from a digital marketing perspective, In this case, your paid search and mainly your search efforts in multifamily, and there's probably way too many that think about this in 30-day cycles, maybe quarterly, but it really is Go into it, thinking about the entire year based on the season of what happens, and I think that's really good advice that you share for people to be thinking about things before they get to the point where you can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1:If you're not planning, if you're not trying to accommodate these seasonality adjustments, there is a point during each season where it's kind of too late to do anything other than, perhaps, information that people can make better decisions going forward or know what's important and what maybe isn't as important. Last segment that I want to take you into is really around how the paid side and the organic side kind of hold hands. It is important for SEM and SEO, the paid side of the house and the organic side of the house to have some alignment. But I'm curious to know, I'd like to hear your thoughts on why it's important for SEM and SEO strategies to be working hand in hand in this vertical and maybe also what are some of the risks of leaving them in separate silos.
Speaker 2:Totally. Yeah, definitely. I think this is something that we're seeing not just in multifamily, but just kind of cross all in marketing. Just in general, you used to have the paid search guys were out on the floor and giving high fives for all of the great campaigns that they ran and all the leads that they got and everything like that, and then you had the SEOs kind of in the broom closet, hiding away and actually doing some of the most meaningful work, but they never really get like the credit where credit is due. And this is coming from a paid search gal. So I will say that is extremely important for SEM and SEO teams to work together, specifically because of relevance.
Speaker 2:Google is looking at not just an SEO in order to rank a website and websites. Relevance, but also in how much you spend on your paid search campaigns, is going to be determined a lot by how relevant the information is on your website and who controls that. That's going to be your SEOs. So if I'm bidding on a certain keyword set, if I am bidding on some highly competitive keywords, I want to make sure that my SEO team is in alignment with those keywords and that they are optimizing for those keywords on the SEO side as well. If you aren't talking to each other, they could see oh, I couldn't possibly rank for this keyword, so I'm monitoring it, but I'm not even really optimizing on-site content, optimizing their metas, their H1s towards that. But if I do tell them hey, these keywords are valuable, they're super expensive, if you can optimize a landing page towards them, then I can direct traffic there and what Google will see is kind of this consistency and this kind of this seamless experience for the user, from the keyword that we're bidding on to the ad that we're writing, to the landing page experience for the user. And if all of that is consistent, that is going to greatly impact your quality score, your overall quality and your ad relevance and at the end of the day, it'll help you in the auction to outbid your competitors and, depending on the keyword, you could possibly even be saving some money and paying less for those clicks than if you were sending the user to a landing page that was completely not optimized towards the keyword that you're bidding on. So, being in alignment with your SEO team and letting them know what clicks are the most valuable for you on the paid search side, where you're getting the most conversions, and which ones are the most expensive for you. We've seen CPCs when we've run A-B split tests directing users to a landing page with very specific keywords that we're bidding on, versus just a static homepage. We've seen incredible results and decreases overall by up to 60% in overall CPC of what you would spend. So that's huge and yeah, so very, very important to be aligned.
Speaker 2:And another thing that I would say on the SEO and SEM kind of working together is also when you kind of look at the short-term and long-term strategy.
Speaker 2:So say, for example, you have an apartment 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 fill that building. At that time, when the website and the community has no relevance and no ranking on Google, it's a brand spanking new site. You're going to lean heavily on your paid search efforts and your PPC efforts because you just need to get people to that site and you have to pay to play to do that because you're not ranking organically for any keywords. So you're paying, you're going out there, you're getting the users to the websites, you're putting ad dollars behind it. Eventually, I think every owner would agree that they don't want to be spending all that money forever. They're kind of hoping that they'll fill the building and that word of mouth and that people will renew and they'll be able to gain some organic traction to then not have to spend so much on their marketing efforts.
Speaker 2:And that's our goal for any lease up as well, and so what we always encourage is listen, take this opportunity where we're spending heavily on our PPC and get your website optimized from an SEO standpoint. Get yourself ranking on Google map packs organically, and then we can start eventually being able to scale back on ads and you're going to see those SEO efforts just kind of take over from there. So you know that I might be shooting myself in the foot here, and if any of our clients hear this, I'm not saying you should cut budgets, but I'm saying you should invest in your SEO so that way, eventually you will not be as reliant on your paid search efforts and your website will rank organically. And that's free traffic and that's what we want.
Speaker 1:You're, in some ways, saying something that I've said for years, which is search is the tip of the spear, and that's both paid and organic, but you have to have enough wisdom and experience and work with the right people that can help you navigate that. Um, I guess a subdivision of how much time and effort and cause it's time and money to be really good at what you're doing with marketing, and the alignment of both paid and organic, sem and SEO is critical in, I think, every business vertical, most certainly in multifamily. Claire, you have absolutely scored touchdown after touchdown to stay with my football example earlier in the episode as your first time on the podcast. So what a fantastic. I don't know if you have any closing thoughts.
Speaker 2:Before we shut it down, I'll give you the floor if there's anything else that you wanted to mention that you didn't get a chance to would say, you know, from a practical standpoint for marketing directors, is is to get in front of your 2025 budgets Now, um, start taking a look at that seasonality, taking a look at your user journey, taking a look at what your 60 to 90 day um, uh, uh availability is for your communities. Um, and making strategic decisions 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 today because it is a process and the traffic that you get today is going to turn into leads a month from now, two months from now. So, be proactive, get ahead of those budgets and yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1:Look at that audience. We found, once again, a perfect place to park this episode and, of course, you know we appreciate your comments and questions. Please feel free to share. Your feedback is what helps us deliver relevant episodes just like this one. If you are not following Claire Shogg on LinkedIn, well, you need to do yourself a favor and go do that While you're there. Go over there and follow Premier Online Marketing and their business page as well, and then just go to all the socials, in fact, go to premieronlinemarketingcom to learn more about what Claire and Mike and the whole team does for their clients. It's absolutely worth your time and, of course, thanks for tuning in again. We'll see you really soon right here back on the podcast. Thanks, claire.
Speaker 2:Thanks.