An undeniable indicator of the health of your real estate business is occupancy. How can you avoid high vacancy? You can predict upcoming vacancies using existing leases’ end dates. But how do you ensure that you have enough demand to quickly lease those vacant units or spaces? Easy, you just need to connect Google Analytics and RentCafe. Then, you’ll know which online marketing strategies give you the most leads and leases. Let’s explore how to combine Google Analytics and RentCafe: Supercharge your Lease Ups.
First, What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is hands down best tool for monitoring and managing website traffic. Google Analytics tracks and reports website traffic for free. It provides insights into website traffic sources, audience demographics, and behaviors. All told, Google Analytics helps your optimize your online presence and user experience.
Think of Google Analytics like a detective agency for your website. It helps you uncover the mysteries of who visits, where they come from, and what they do while they’re there.
If you are an experienced Google Analytics user, setup is quick and easy. If you are new to setting up properties, UTC, Google Tag Managers, and other tracking best practices, you may have challenges. We are here to help if you have questions!
Also, What is RentCafe?
RentCafe is a tool that enables property managers to create property websites, manage rent collections, and handle maintenance requests. It integrates seamlessly into Yardi Voyager. RentCafe also has a shared global website. Prospective residents can use it to find and lease your properties. RentCafe provides a series of website templates you can start with and modify. You will need web design knowledge to update their templates. If you don’t have this knowledge, we recommended that you hire a web design agency to make your website stand out.
Combine Google Analytics and RentCafé
If you have not already done so, correctly set up a Google Analytics account and property. Be sure to follow best practices for scaling to multiple properties.
Create a Google Tag Manager snippet of code to embed in each RentCafe page. This allows Google to track visitors to your website.
After the Google Analytics data starts flowing, import and collect it in one place using options such as Python, BigQuery, or an ETL tool.
Set up data extraction from your Yardi prospect data, which comes from RentCafe. Prospect data will give you insight into where leads came from (phone, walk-in, web, etc.), if they scheduled tours, and if they became tenants. It will not give you the detailed web traffic data that Google Analytics provides.
Improve Your SEO and Conversion
By combining these two sources, you can identify key areas for improvement.
First, review your Google Search Console to see what keywords you rank highest. Fix your on-page SEO and add blog posts with good SEO. This will allow your RentCafe page to rank higher with higher domain authority.
Make sure your website page speed is up to Google’s standards. This will cause you to fall in the ranks if not.
Design an easy to use website with clear calls to action. Remember, the best web design is in caveman speak. Unless you’re exceptionally captivating, your users will skim the page.
Use Google Ads to drive traffic to your website. Monitor ad spend to crank up automatically when occupancy drops and spin down when properties are leased up.
This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of dominating the search market for your properties. Next, you can explore creating a Google business account. Or Facebook pixel tracking. Or even collecting marketing spend data and aligning with lead to lease Yardi data! For more property marketing tips, be sure to check out our other blog posts. We’re always happy to help!
Google Analytics and RentCafe: Supercharge your Lease Ups.