Tracy Uhl-McNutt’s challenge is to deliver the leads needed to maintain high occupancy at the right time — and stay within her budget.

Uhl-McNutt is the Internet Listing Service (ILS) and reputation manager for Village Green, which manages 40,000 apartment homes in more than 50 cities across the country. Its portfolio features every kind of rental including luxury units, garden- and resort-style properties, and historic renovations.

The challenge for Uhl-McNutt is convincing her ownership groups that maintaining a steady flow of qualified leads is the key to high occupancy rates — and that investing in online advertising can help them achieve it.

“Everything is 100 percent up to each owner, and they consistently want to know what the benefit is in advertising,” Uhl-McNutt said. “My challenge is getting them to understand that the number one method for generating leads is ad traffic, and without advertising, it is likely their communities will lose traffic.”

Seasonal gaps

Leasing seasonality poses another hurdle for Uhl-McNutt to overcome. In the fall, property owners are close to 100 percent occupancy so they curtail their lead generation efforts, but in Uhl-McNutt’s opinion, that’s exactly when they need to ramp up.

“Properties are often at 97 percent occupancy in fall, but as May and June creep forward and occupancy creeps lower and lower, ownership groups are aggressively looking for ways to increase traffic. I’d rather help owners have the strategy in place to maintain their numbers all year round,” she remarked.

Uhl-McNutt opted to try Zillow Rent Connect, the advertising product, and set up the feed to automatically add Village Green listings to Zillow Group sites.

Right away, Uhl-McNutt saw significant increases in the traffic to each property she listed on Zillow Group Rentals’ network: Today, Zillow Group Rentals’ tools are one of Village Green’s highest lead traffic generators. Uhl-McNutt recommends Zillow Rent Connect platform to owners and runs a Boost campaign for any property in the portfolio that needs to increase occupancy.

“Property owners want to know what more they can do to squeeze more performance out for struggling properties, and Boost helps with all those properties,” Uhl-McNutt noted. “If you need additional exposure because you’re in a competitive market or just for a pick-me-up, it works in any situation.”

Targeting made easy

In September 2016, The Moderne, one of Uhl-McNutt’s luxury apartment properties in Scottsdale, struggled to increase its occupancy rate. She looked into Boost with Precision Targeting, which targets Zillow, Trulia and HotPads apartment shoppers with relevant advertising across Zillow Group’s display network, including Facebook. It sounded ideal for The Moderne.

“It was hitting its cap every month as far as leads go, but the property needed extra visibility and more traffic to its website,” Uhl-McNutt explained. “Scottsdale has a mixed demographic with students who are ready to leave college and people well-established in their career. With Boost, we could target people on Zillow — because it’s real estate — and social media because everybody uses Facebook.”

Uhl-McNutt ran Boost ads for The Moderne for five months, with the campaign generating leads and helping the property reach 96 percent occupancy. Today, the Moderne runs a Boost campaign every 90 days to generate high quality lead traffic and maintain its occupancy rate.

“When you get to 97 or 98 percent occupancy, that’s when you drop off Boost, but not out of Zillow altogether because you can be occupied and still create a waitlist since you don’t know who’ll stay or go next year,” Uhl-McNutt pointed out.

Village Green originally listed only a few properties with Zillow Group, but as Rent Connect continued to generate quality traffic, they increased their listings and now have 67 properties listed on the platform — all with comprehensive detail

s that help prospective renters to find the perfect apartment home.

“Regardless if someone drops off Zillow, we don’t typically lose the lead because they’re just going to go to the property’s website,” Uhl-McNutt remarked. “Historically, we know the ROI is higher for a lead who clicks on your website, so it’s a great card to have to play.”

Tools to increase ROI

When Village Green re-evaluated its advertising sources and culled many that weren’t performing, Uhl-McNutt opted to keep Zillow Group Rentals. One of her goals is to get property owners to delve into their lead reports to understand that Zillow Rent Connect and Boost with Precision Targeting actually bring in the apartment shoppers.

“It’s a work in progress to get owners to regularly compare sources and review their invoices,” she admitted. “But this is about getting everyone on the same page and Zillow Group was our underdog that has performed amazingly for all properties across the board.”

Uhl-McNutt can find a Rent Connect solution or Boost campaign that fits the budget for every Village Green property listed on Zillow Group. However, she realizes the challenge is getting all her property owners to make the investment.

“If they’re not signed up for Zillow, it’s the first recommendation I make because we’ve proven that it works,” Uhl-McNutt related. “I tell them it’s perfect because of the cost-per-click model; plus, they never pay for duplicate leads. Owners see what’s coming in and what they’re paying for — and I can’t tell you how amazing that is.”