When I started my journey with GRO in 2018, I saw a tremendous opportunity in the student housing and multifamily verticals due to the glaring absence of digital marketing knowledge and education. You’d be lucky to find a marketer in those spaces who was digitally savvy, let alone someone who could analyze marketing data or interpret campaign reports.
Fast forward to 2025. You’d think that in seven years—with advancements in marketing technology, the rise of AI, and the creation of digital-specific marketing roles—marketers in these industries would now be razor-sharp in their digital expertise.
Sadly, that’s not the case.
Over the past year, I’ve had just as many educational discussions with prospective clients as I did in 2018, still teaching the same fundamentals I taught in my early GRO days.
Why is this still happening?
I firmly believe it’s due to an over-reliance on 100% automated or AI-driven marketing platforms that promise to “take care of everything.” They’ve convinced marketers and regionals that reporting calls and communication with their teams are no longer necessary. “Let the automation do its thing.”As a result, collaboration and shared learning are fading, and the old saying “iron sharpens iron” is falling by the wayside.
In the past year alone, I’ve reviewed countless digital marketing reports in the multifamily and student housing sectors that are incomplete, inaccurate, or even deceiving. These shoddy reports create confusion about whether campaigns are truly performing and many times foster a false sense of success. And when ownership groups start asking, “If these campaigns are performing so well, why aren’t we leasing up our communities?” things get tense—fast. The real issue? Most marketers don’t know how to spot red flags or challenge questionable data. That needs to change—and it needs to change now.
Below are seven of the most common pain points/red flags I’ve seen recently in multifamily and student housing digital marketing reports, along with tips to help you spot and address these issues with your marketing agency or in-house marketing team—so we can all become better, smarter marketers in 2025.
You’d think that in 2025, conversions—arguably the single most important metric for your digital marketing campaigns—would be broken down by type in every report. Yet, I’m still seeing far too many reports that only list a total conversion count, which is simply not good enough. You need to know exactly how many phone calls, form fills, scheduled tours, and applications were generated, as each of those holds a distinct value for your property. If your marketing partner can’t (or won’t) provide this breakdown, it’s time to re-evaluate that partnership.
Fix:
Ask your vendor to list conversions by type. That’s the only way you’ll know which actions your campaigns are driving.
It’s entirely reasonable—and frankly necessary—to know how many conversions come from Google, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), ILSs and display campaigns. But don’t stop there. You also need to see cost per conversion and conversion rate by channel. Understanding how much you’re paying for each conversion is extremely important, because it helps you identify your top performers and decide where to shift or add budget.
What to Ask:
Unless you and your marketing agency have explicitly agreed otherwise, the only “conversions” worth counting are true opportunity generators: phone calls, form fills, scheduled tours, live chats, and application starts. These actions require a prospect’s personal information, signifying a genuine commitment to advance in the leasing process. Yes, floorplan pageviews are helpful signals, but lumping them in with high-value goals inflates your numbers, creates a false sense of hope, and can land you in serious trouble with ownership groups. For instance, here’s a real-world example of a report I reviewed just two months ago…
Real-World Example:
A property management prospect asked me to review their monthly marketing report for one of their properties in a competitive market. It showed 500+ conversions on a $1,500 budget. That number alone is impressive, but at $3 per conversion, that’s unbelievable…seriously…it’s not believable.
I’ve analyzed enough student housing and multifamily digital marketing campaigns to know this is impossible if we’re talking about true opportunity conversions. I asked the client, “How many leases did you sign this month?” They said, “Only 2.” So, I replied, “Either you’re tracking the wrong conversions, or you’ve got the worst leasing team in history!” Turns out, the marketing vendor was counting floorplan page and individual floorplan views as conversions. Out of those 500+ conversions, only three were actual leads. Needless to say, the ownership group was fuming mad.
Fix:
Ask your vendor to track only “true opportunity” conversions. Yes, highlight those soft signals, but don’t count them as conversions.
One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is the ability to optimize your campaigns. Done right, you’ll see your performance gradually improve in the near term and build toward significant gains over time. If your campaign metrics suddenly show huge swings—good or bad—in a short time period, something may be fishy.
Real-World Example:
We audited a marketing report where the agency highlighted a drop in CPM from $7 to $1 and a drop in CPC from $1.03 to $0.13 in just 14 days. Those are dramatic drops! At first glance, that sounds like a win. But when we dug deeper, we discovered the agency had loosened targeting and placements, pushing ads onto low-quality/foreign websites that are cheap to serve ads on and notorious for generating unqualified or spammy visits. Cross-referencing Google Analytics, we saw the average time on site from those campaigns was only one second. So yes, impressions and clicks went up, but they came from worthless, unqualified visitors.
Fix:
If you see drastic month-to-month changes in CPC, CPM, or any other KPI, don’t just pat your vendor on the back—ask how and why it happened. If they can’t explain, be skeptical.
I see this a ton in executive summaries from not only agencies, but also regionals who are generating reports for their ownership groups. They’ll drum up excitement over boosts in ad impressions and website visits—“We saw a jump of 20,000 impressions and over 1,000 new visitors this month!” That can sound great on the surface, but at the end of the day, it’s about the quality of the person seeing your ads and engaging with your site. It’s not just a matter of racking up numbers; you need to ensure you’re attracting the right audience—those actually interested in your property—rather than a sea of unqualified lookie-loos.
Think of It This Way:
You own a clothing boutique and just launched an advertising campaign. The next day, 200 people show up to your store. You’re beyond excited—you can practically smell the money! Then reality hits: not a single person buys anything. Turns out they had zero interest in your products, and some weren’t even there to shop at all. Basically, all that traffic was unqualified. All that excitement for nothing. How pissed off would you be? I bet you’d have taken two customers who actually made a purchase over 200 non-buyers, right? Remember…quality over quantity!
Fix:
Ask your vendor not only for total sessions, but also for engaged sessions (GA4 can provide this). That way, you’ll know how many visitors are spending time on the site or looking at multiple pages, not just how many clicked and bounced.
I’m seeing this issue more and more on reports, and it’s downright infuriating. Display campaigns are primarily about generating brand awareness, not cranking out a ton of conversions. Yet, I’ve come across several reports lately showing jaw-droppingly high display conversion rates. According to Databox, the average display campaign converts at 0.55%. Some reports I’m seeing boast double-digit rates—20x higher than the industry average! If you spot a double-digit display conversion rate paired with a rock-bottom cost per lead, you can almost guarantee something’s fishy.
Real-World Example:
We recently analyzed a marketing report for a BTR community that touted a 50% conversion rate on a display campaign. FIFTY percent?! What?! Just as crazy, the average cost per conversion was under $2. IMPOSSIBLE. We dug deeper and discovered the marketing agency was linking the property’s display ads directly to a “thank you” or “conversion” page—so as long as the page loaded, every ad click counted as a conversion. Yikes!
Another trick we see is rolling Google Performance Max results in with display data to inflate conversions. That’s definitely not cool, and PMAX should always be broken out separately from Display-only campaigns.
Fix:
Remember, Display is mostly about top-of-funnel awareness. If your display campaign is showing a large number of conversions (especially with a small budget), you need to ask exactly what’s being counted as a conversion—If your vendor can’t provide clarity, you probably need to find another vendor — they’re fudging the data.
If you’re paying for SEO, you should be receiving real data on your organic performance. Yet, many agencies and marketing professionals in multifamily and student housing only focus on paid channels in their reports. Think about it: SEO is an investment, too—so you need to track its ROI.
Fix:
Ask your marketing team to include organic metrics from Google Analytics and Google Business Profile in your monthly reports. Organic conversions, engaged sessions, Google Business Profile views, link clicks, and phone calls all matter. If you need to go more granular, ask for keyword tracking updates.
So, there you have it: the seven most common red flags that plague student housing and multifamily marketing reports. Hopefully, this article gives you more confidence to speak up, ask questions, educate yourself, and hold your marketing partners accountable when it comes to campaign reporting. Yes, AI and automation are incredibly helpful and will keep shaping our industry, but putting everything on autopilot—and neglecting real collaboration, brainstorming, and education—is a recipe for failure.
In 2025, let’s commit to being more data-savvy, more strategic, and more transparent about our digital marketing campaigns. We should never abandon “iron sharpens iron.” By staying engaged, digging deeper, and sharing knowledge, we’ll push the multifamily and student housing industries forward—rather than remaining stuck in the same old patterns we were battling back in 2018.
