Being a young agency is not an easy feat — even more challenging with the onset of the pandemic and a major shift to many businesses going completely digital. This was the case for Donald Kleckner, owner of Street Digital Media, a real estate digital marketing agency and production studio.
Street Digital helps multifamily property managers throughout the U.S. attract prospective renters who are looking to move into an apartment building through digital advertising. Unit count can range from 200 to 500 units, with properties costing around $500M+, depending on asset type: garden style, mid-rise, or high-rise complexes.
Lucky for Kleckner, he started Street Digital Media with six years experience and good connections. But connections don’t guarantee clients. It takes being proactive and hands on to grow organically, traits that emerging agencies know all too well.
Keeping his hard-earned clients meant Kleckner had to prove return on their investment. He saw an opportunity to “bridge the gap” between his agency’s paid advertising campaigns, lead tracking, and reporting that could give Street Digital an edge.
He decided to combine CallRail Call Tracking with Form Tracking to “make reporting and tracking as comprehensive as possible and as seamless as possible within the reporting package we provide.”
Tackling lead attribution by powering up Call Tracking
Kleckner had been a Call Tracking customer for over two years. Knowing the ins and outs of the multifamily industry, he knew the difference connecting online and offline lead attribution would make. Together with CallRail’s Call Tracking, Form Tracking allowed Street Digital to follow phone and website form leads for each client, integrating with the property websites for the communities that they work with.
Crucially, powering up Call Tracking with Form Tracking helps Street Digital “properly attribute the credit to their campaigns, other campaigns they may/may not be running themselves, and giving them full comprehensive insight into how things are working from an ROI marketing standpoint on behalf of their clients.”
Form Tracking makes it easier to show value
Many of Street Digital’s clients come from Asset Management backgrounds. They understand how to run the operations of a 400 meter high rise, but may not know CPC from PPC. CallRail helps make sure ROI doesn’t get lost in translation.
“From a reporting standpoint, we use Form Tracking to kind of speak in more layman's terms, giving credit where it is due with the campaigns that we're running.”
CallRail integrations allow Street Digital to connect Call and Form Tracking data to other marketing software they rely on.
“We use Google Data Studio — integrating with Google Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook, and Supermetrics — to integrate Call Tracking and Form Tracking so we can pull everything together to give a fully comprehensive insight into how things are working.”
Kleckner states that, “we want to make sure that we have the proof to show our value and the impact that we're having for each of these apartment communities across the country.” And showing value can be tough. It’s more than the amount of traffic we are driving to our client’s site.
According to Kleckner, “Our clients want to basically tie revenue back to two [things]: how many leases (or how many phone calls) and on how many site tours they are generating.” So with Form Tracking, Street Digital is able to attribute how their campaigns are generating calls and closing deals. Therefore, they’re able to see different touchpoints, where without Form Tracking, it really wouldn't work.
The customer journey isn’t linear
For starters, multifamily is a niche industry, so providing an extra layer of data is essential to clients. Many onsite teams use their own CRM or lead tracking systems. So, the attribution model for this industry is based on first contact attribution.
Before Form Tracking, Street Digital wasn't getting credit for leads that clicked through search or ad campaigns. By integrating Google Analytics and CallRail data, they gained multi-touch attribution. This let them combine offline and online analytics and capture a prospect's entire journey.
With CallRail and Google Analytics integration, Street Digital can attribute credit back to the property website.
Kleckner noted that prospects usually find properties through their paid search campaigns or banner ads. Therefore, it’s easier to show those touchpoints, in a more in depth manner, rather than just calling a number that gets the credit for the lead. As for leases, Kleckner stated that shoppers don't immediately go to the site to purchase.
Kleckner gave a simple example to explain this.
“We don't immediately go to Nike.com and purchase a pair of shoes. We go to Reebok, and then to Adidas, and then maybe we come back to Nike. And that's what we're really trying to show. And attributing the credit to either our sources or any other iOS that teams and properties may be utilizing.”
The impact of Form Tracking: “Data within one place” for more “efficient decisions”
“The biggest thing Form Tracking has done is streamline results .... in today's marketing world, everything is vastly shifting digital — even more so with everything that's happened the past year. We want to make efficient decisions and have all of that data within one place.”
According to Kleckner, “We really value showing the full robust landscape of all that the properties are doing. And if we’re able to be a part of that, and help show how everything is working together, we prefer to do it that way.”
As a result, Form Tracking gives Street Digital the ability to highlight all lead activity, helping them market and spend smarter, while connecting touchpoints in a seamless manner.
Want to see how Form Tracking can show how everything works together? Try it free for 14-days to experience it yourself.
