Apartment Marketing: Measuring web traffic conversion.

Over the past couple of weeks the conversation on Apartment Marketing Gone Digital, which is a weekly Pod Cast with a handful of us in the industry every Tuesday evening, has started to drill down into how we are, or how we aren't measuring web traffic conversion on our apartment community web sites. Our sense is most apartment operators have no clue what their conversion numbers are, or even where to start to establish what the metrics should be.

Do You Know Your Numbers

It seems like there is consistent industry agreement on a couple of key leasing ratios and conversions, those being;

1. Traffic to Tour Conversions
2. Tours to Rental Conversions

And, even if the data is wrong, most property management companies think they know where the source of where the traffic is coming from. So there you have it, to increase rentals, just buy up more stuff from the highest producing traffic sources right? We think there is a better way, by Moving the Google Needle, and Enhancing Your Google Page Ranking, Increase your web traffic, and leasing traffic will follow proportionately.

Your Web Site

But what about your web site, and maybe you have just launched a blog, and what if you are now active on twitter, and also have a facebook fan page, what are those numbers, and how do they fit into the metrics you need to measure.

Arguably your blog, twitter and facebook could

be deemed social media marketing, soft marketing, relationship marketing or whatever the buzzword of the day is. I suggest the follow view.

Lead Them Through the Tunnel

We view our Social Media Marketing efforts as a conduit to tunnel the prospect to our website. For us, nothing happens, meaning we aren't renting an apartment until we secure a Guest Card.

What Are Your Web Site Numbers

1. Are you paying much if any attention to your web site traffic?
2. Do you know your the basic web site numbers, Monthly Visitors and Monthly Page Views
3. How often do you check your web site analytics?
4. Do you know where you show up on a Google Page Rank?

Before we dive into the whole conversion conversation, these basic metrics must be established and maintained