The best data driven decisions for apartment marketing

Just like corporate doesn’t have to be boring, apartment marketing doesn’t have to mean shooting in the dark. In this article, we’re going to share our data-driven blueprint for apartment marketing to increase your revenue and occupancy rates.

Visibility

Is your apartment listing getting enough of the right eyes? Before we discuss booking paid guests, we need to get them to the shop window (so to speak).

Every marketing channel will have its own performance metrics available to you as a host, and although the data titles may vary, each provides an outlook on the visitors seeing your listing.

Let’s take Booking.com as an example. They provide you with an analytics dashboard showing:

• Search results views – where your property has appeared in a search result.
• Click-through rate – calculated by dividing the number of clicks on your property by the number of views it received in search results.
• Property page views
• Bookings – bookings received, including cancellations.
• Search Results Score – listing’s performance in search results compared to others in your market.

Search Results Score and your Click-Through Rate are the most vital metrics here when discussing visibility.

Search Results Score

Booking.com, like most online travel agencies (and the web in general), utilizes SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Essentially, SEO is the practice of understanding how the platform prioritizes properties in search, and then tailoring your listing so your property is consistently at the top of guests’ search results.

With Booking.com, they look at everything from cancellations to how attractive your property page is when considering where to position your property in search (full breakdown here).

By improving your Search Results Score (and similar scores on other platforms), you are ensuring that you have the best chance of people seeing your property online.

If you’re already marketing your property for short term rentals, complete an audit on your listings’ SEO visibility.

Click-through rate

Some platforms like Booking.com provide this calculation for you, but you might have to work this out yourself. Using Booking.com as an example, this is calculated by:

(Property Page Clicks / Search Result Views) x 100

Click-through rate gives you an understanding of how engaging and appealing your property is in search results.

If you have 100 page clicks and 150 search results, that means 67% of people that viewed your property in search found it interesting enough to click through to your property page.

On the other hand, if you have an extremely low click through rate it’s time to make some improvements. A/B test written copy, pricing and imagery to increase the number of people viewing your property page.

Conversion

Now that we’ve got people viewing your property, it’s time to convert them into paid guests. To measure how effective your current listing is, work out your conversion rate.

Most platforms like Booking.com provide this, but if not you can use the simple calculation below:

(Bookings / Property Page Views) x 100

For example, if there were 50 bookings and 100 property page views, the conversion rate is 50%. Half of the people that viewed that page were engaged enough to book their stay at your property.

If your conversion rate is low, it again indicates that improvements need to be made to your listing. Perhaps the images are very low quality, there are a large number of negative reviews, the pricing isn't right for the market… and more!

This is another way A/B testing can drive positive impact to bookings and your bottom line.

Staykeepers’ agents are both SEO-trained and utilize conversion tactics to improve booking rates. On up to 450 marketing channels, we optimize your listing and ensure every listing is accurate - more details here.

Cancellations

You might be at the top of search results and booking guests, but what happens after the initial reservation? It’s vital to measure the number of cancellations you are receiving and why.

If you are experiencing a large number of cancellations after the initial booking, it could indicate a number of things (depending on the other information the platform and your team are collecting):

1. Your listing is misleading
2. A need for further guest verification
3. Ineffective guest communication
4. Changes needed in the cancellation policy
5. Payment issues

Staykeepers rejected 4.5% of all bookings made in 2022 for guests failing our additional verification process. We take this optional step to ensure our clients’ communities are maintained with the best guests.

Review the reasons why, and see where improvements need to be made to not only improve your net operating income, but guests’ experiences. You can view how Staykeepers achieves this for property owners and operators below.