Everyone in multifamily wants to control vacancy. Vacancy is the defining problem of our industry and it creates stress for everyone, from leasing agents to owners. 

One way to think about the problem simply, is as a basic math equation: How many leases do you need to maintain or improve occupancy during a given month? From there, you just work backwards: How many leads do we need to get that many leases? How many phone calls and web visits do we need to get that many leads? 

Generating Traffic at the Right Time

Controlling vacancy simply becomes a mechanical problem: Can you build a sustainable, scalable system that reliably produces the right amount of traffic, leads, and leases?

Once you start thinking in those terms, you may realize that you have a problem. You look at the numbers and realize that to generate the number of leases you need will require an unrealistic number of new leads. And generating leads at that volume will be incredibly expensive and time-consuming. So what then? Are you doomed to huge marketing expenses and uncertain returns?

The answer is “no.” There are ways to improve your leasing team’s efficiency so that you won’t need as many leads to become leases. In today’s blog, we discuss one of the most basic marketing methods: dynamic marketing.

What is dynamic marketing?

By “dynamic marketing,” we mean marketing plans that can adapt to your community needs. So if you need more leads, you increase your marketing budget to create more ads, which will generate more leads. If you need fewer leads, you decrease your marketing spend, which will generate less leads.

Dynamic marketing improves efficiency for the simple reason that it allows you to align your advertising spend with your actual leasing needs. When the two are out of balance, it creates extra work for your leasing team because it becomes that much more urgent that they answer every phone, schedule unqualified tours, and turn the most dubious lead into a lease.

A dynamic marketing strategy creates a predictable routine for your leasing team in which they have what they need to service your vacancy need and no more or less. This helps your leasing team have clear expectations of what the week ahead will look like and allows them to prepare accordingly. Additionally, by tightly aligning marketing and vacancy, you should also be able to quickly identify problem areas in your leasing processes. If you know that you are generating enough leads to meet the vacancy need and you’re still not hitting your goals, that’s a good sign that your leasing team is struggling somewhere in the process or that the property isn’t well-managed. If it is the former, you’re generating enough leads, but leasing staff isn’t closing the deal at the required rate. If it is the latter, you’re generating enough leads, but the property is scaring off leads once they arrive on-site. In either scenario, a dynamic marketing system makes it easier for your team to identify and correct your leasing issues.