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Optimizing ROI
By Catriona Orosco on Jun 1, 2015 in Marketing
Savvy marketers know the importance of having good data to draw on when making marketing decisions. Google Analytics is the most widely known, free analytics platform available. Last month, the digital marketing experts at RentCafe hosted a call to dig in to the importance of using analytics data to understand your online audience, traffic, and conversions.
One of the biggest complaints we hear about Google Analytics is that the information provided is overwhelming, making it difficult to know which reports are most important for property managers. In fact, a large percentage of people on our call said that they find it too confusing to use regularly (see below). We think that’s a shame!
There are bits and pieces within each reporting segment that are relevant to all marketers. With the right questions in mind, you can use the data to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy.
Who are you marketing to?
The Audience tab provides in-depth reporting into who your current website audience is. It offers a broad overview of your audience profile, including how much time they spend on your site, where they’re located, and information about the devices they use. You can also learn a great deal about the demographics of your online audience.
To put this information to use, start by taking a look at how well your online demographic information matches what you see on the property itself. Ask yourself if you’re actually reaching the people you want to target. If you’re trying to shift the demographics within your community, have you positioned your website to appeal to the new prospects you want to attract? Geo-location information will help you see if the audience visiting your site is coming from the cities you’d expect.
Which channels are you relying on for traffic?
The information available in the Acquisition section of Google Analytics will help you identify your traffic sources. Having diverse sources of traffic promotes stability on your website. If you’re relying on just one source for all of your traffic and there’s a change to an algorithm, the effects can be tremendous. In addition, if you’re paying for all your traffic then you’re missing out on building an organic audience on other channels.
One critical piece of data that many of our audience members were missing is information from email campaigns and print advertising. These important sources of traffic can be tracked in Google Analytics by building a campaign URL and using it in your marketing campaigns. You can then track the traffic coming from this URL to see how much activity that specific campaign is driving.
What does your audience want?
You can learn more about the actions your visitors take in the Behavior section of Google Analytics. As you review the behavior of your website visitors, pay attention to the most popular pages and time spent on each page. If you notice pages with a high bounce rate, be sure to review those pages to find out what information may be missing that people were hoping to find. If your visitors can’t find what they’re looking for, they will leave.
RentCafe marketing sites have click events included in the leasing workflow. This information provides data regarding how your visitors are moving through your leasing funnel. If you find your traffic drops in half when moving from floor plans to unit selection, you may want to look into what additional information is needed to encourage prospects to continue. Some options including mapping your units to a property map so prospects can see where the unit is located. They may also want to know what amenities are available with each unit. When you provide more information to your prospects, it helps them to continue through the process to make an informed decision.
ROI
At the end of the day, understanding the dollar value of your marketing efforts is critical. If you don’t have some sort of baseline, it’s hard to know if you’re making improvements.
Conversions are an important measurement to determine ROI. Using the default Events from the Behavior section in Analytics, you can create goals with a defined dollar value. The conversion screen will then help you understand your conversion rate and the value of the leads you’re driving.
Goals are set up in the Admin section of Google Analytics. This is one piece of information that needs to be defined in the property in order to see data for it.
Creating a Snapshot
Dashboards are a convenient way to view all the reports that are important to you, on one screen. Reports sometimes contain a link to the specific section in analytics so you can drill down for more information. You can also create your own custom reports to tailor your dashboard to suit your needs.
Below is a link to our Property Management Dashboard configuration designed especially for property managers. You can use this link to add the dashboard to your own Google Analytics account, and then adjust it as needed.
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=JFsHG_6wSUuh2-3e72WrRA
This Property Management Dashboard configuration is designed to be used with RentCafe marketing sites. If you’re using a 3rd party for your marketing site, you may need to adjust the setup based on your available events and processes. We’ve also included a widget to help you see how often application fees have been submitted. If you’re not currently accepting application fees online, you may want to remove this from your dashboard.
Get More from Your Analytics
As you become more comfortable and familiar with Google Analytics, you’ll find many ways to dig further into the data that’s available. For current clients who want to watch our recorded Open Café Google Analytics webinar, please log in to the RentCafe Site Manager, select the Resources link, and go to Online Learning. You’ll find the recorded webinar along with many more video tutorials to help you with your marketing needs.
Do you currently use Google Analytics to monitor traffic to your property marketing sites? If so, what is your top takeaway?
