MARKETING
WEBSITES AND BLOGS AND SOCIAL,
OH MY!
If you have not been using marketing
analytics in the past, this may seem
daunting, but don’t panic! There are many
tools available to use:
Google Analytics - Create a free
Google Analytics account to track your
website or app. This is a great tool to
collect the demographics and behavior of
your site visitors, as well as track what they
are searching the your site, what they’re
clicking on the most, and how long they’ve
spent on each page.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram-
Social media sites such as Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram have their
own analytics, if you transform your
multifamily property’s social account into
a business account.
Similar to Google Analytics, you
can see your follower demographics,
engagement behavior, and what times of
the day they are most active on the app in
order to better target your audience. These
sites also allow you to track impressions,
reach, and engagement, as well as
conversions and clicks if you sent out
advertisements.
Hootsuite and Buffer - If you
are willing to spend a little bit of
money, Hootsuite and Buffer are great
applications to use to track all of your
social media and website analytics on a
single dashboard. You can save time and
energy by scheduling posts out from a
single app instead of having to log-in and
out of multiple social accounts.
HubSpot - HubSpot allows you
to wrap all of these analytics into one.
With this tool you can schedule-out
ads, social media posts, and blogs as well
as track the analytics for all of them.
Since many multifamily properties use a
combination of different digital channels,
using a single application to monitor
and maintain your marketing and brand
message is extremely helpful.
www.aamdhq.org
Always stay up to date with the
different tools and trends in marketing
analytics. The digital world is constantly
developing and pushing forward, so don’t
get left behind!
PATIENCE IS A MUST
Once you begin tracking your
marketing efforts, stick with it. You
will not see huge progress within the
first week, or month, or even quarter
potentially. Yes, it is important to track the
day-to-day items such as the conversion
from a specific Facebook ad, or clicks on a
CTA for your weekly blog post so you can
see what performs best with your target
audience.
However, it is more important to
track these analytics over longer periods
of time in order to see real improvement
in areas such as reach and engagement.
For example, your Instagram account may
receive 50 new followers in one week, but
only 1 or 2 the next. This is not necessarily
a reason to be concerned, as much as it is
just a trend you should follow to find out
WHY your followers didn’t increase as
much one week over the next.
Use strategies such as A/B testing and
follow different social media trends to
see where you can improve. The goal is to
not get frustrated with your results. Stay
patient and keep tracking.
5 STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR ANA-
LYTICS METHODS
Analytics are essential to the evaluation
stage of any marketing strategy. However,
if not collected diligently, they are of no
use. Here are a few good practices to
make habits that will increase your data’s
relevance and improve your strategy’s
effectiveness:
1. Nail down your needs. First,
decide where you could use some
improvement. Focus your efforts on
a few specific areas such as social
media engagement or website traffic
in order to track relevant data for your
multifamily property.
2. Create SMART goals. In order to
prove your analytics efforts are worth
your time, you have to set goals that
are specific, measureable, attainable,
relevant, and timely. This way, you
can continue to track your progress in
comparison to your end goals.
3. Consistency is key. Tracking and
reporting your analytics data on a
weekly basis as well as monthly and
yearly is crucial to finding different
trends, so stay committed.
4. Make small adjustments and track the
results. Follow different trends in your
analytics data and make adjustments
accordingly. Then, track and report the
results to find new insights.
5. Report and Repeat. When you’ve met
your goals, report your data to your
team and set new ones.
DON’T TAKE A SHOT IN THE DARK
Use marketing analytics to make
informed decisions about the time, place,
and manner in which you advertise. This
way you can focus your ad spending in
specific areas, to better reach
your target audience and
improve the value of
your marketing. You
spent time and energy
creating a brand that
has a unique value
proposition, so now it is
time to create a marketing mix that sends
the right message to the right people.
Cyndi Castle is a Content Strategist for
Criterion.B an agency focused on branding and
inbound marketing for the commercial real estate
and multifamily housing industry.
APRIL 2018
TRENDS | 47