For many multifamily marketers, one question continues to surface:
Which marketing efforts actually influence leases?
Mid- to lower-funnel channels like ILS listings, PPC campaigns, and paid social often receive the most attention because they appear closer to the leasing decision. But renters don’t start their apartment search on a listing site or search engine.
They start with awareness. They begin noticing. And by the time they start actively searching online, many renters have already formed a mental shortlist of communities to explore.
The challenge for marketing teams is proving how those early impressions influence leasing outcomes.
A Texas-based owner-operator recently set out to answer that question.
Operating across highly saturated submarkets, this owner-operator faced a common challenge: a lean marketing team responsible for supporting multiple communities competing for renter attention.
The team needed a marketing strategy that could:
Scale across properties
Deliver measurable results
Operate without expanding internal resources
To gain clearer visibility into marketing performance, the company implemented consistent UTM tracking across all marketing initiatives and began analyzing website traffic, leads, and leases through Google Analytics and their CRM.
This approach allowed them to compare how different channels contributed to leasing outcomes.
With the measurement framework in place, they launched geofencing campaigns across a subset of communities.
What happened next revealed something surprising.
Upper-funnel advertising is often misunderstood because its influence happens earlier in the leasing journey.
Geofencing helps communities reach prospective residents before and during their apartment search by targeting where they:
Live at competitor communities
Work at nearby employers
Spend time at popular local destinations
By increasing community visibility while renters watch their favorite shows on Streaming TV or scroll their favorite apps/websites, communities stay top-of-mind before renters begin actively comparing properties online and during their apartment search.
When renters eventually start researching apartments, those early exposures can influence which communities make the shortlist.
In this case, the campaigns were designed to deliver consistent, repeated exposure across mobile devices and streaming TV while driving interested renters directly to property websites.
The results demonstrated just how powerful that early visibility can be.
Because the operator had implemented standardized UTM tracking and website analytics across their marketing channels, they were able to evaluate performance in greater detail.
Instead of relying solely on walk-in attribution or anecdotal feedback from leasing teams, they could examine:
Website traffic patterns
Leases tied to website visits and other channels
This provided a clearer picture of how different marketing initiatives contributed to leasing outcomes across the portfolio.
And when they compared properties running geofencing campaigns to others in the portfolio, the data revealed a significant shift in website-driven leasing performance.
This case highlights several important lessons for multifamily operators.
1) Upper-funnel marketing plays a critical role in influencing renter consideration. Renters are exposed to communities long before they begin actively searching online and need to stay top of mind during the search period.
2) Consistent measurement matters. By implementing UTMs, analyzing website activity in Google Analytics and lease generation in CRMs, marketing teams can gain much deeper insight into how marketing efforts contribute to leasing outcomes.
3) Scalable awareness strategies can help lean marketing teams compete in highly saturated markets.
When communities increase their local visibility earlier in the renter journey, they position themselves to capture more attention once renters begin actively exploring their options.
In the full case study, we break down:
The campaign strategy deployed across multiple communities
The scale of impressions, traffic, and engagement generated
How geofencing influenced website-driven leasing activity across the portfolio
What the data reveals about scaling local awareness with limited marketing resources
📥 Download the full case study to see the results.