Marketing attribution is a hot topic in the rental industry, and for good reason. At the end of the day, you want to spend your budget on marketing efforts that are actually driving leases. While there’s no perfect way to look at attribution, a general understanding of it can help guide your marketing spend. We’ll take a look at some different attribution models and provide you with a framework to help you choose which works best for your marketing team.
Attribution 101
To put it simply, marketing attribution is the science of determining what is driving your revenue by assigning value to your marketing touchpoints. You want to spend money where you’re driving to your end goal, right? Determining where your money has the biggest impact and narrowing your marketing focus can make a significant difference in your metrics and success, which is why attribution is so important.
Think About Your Users
Before we dive into a few different attribution models, you have to ask yourself how you’re measuring success. Let’s start by understanding your user journey and determining which goals you’re tracking. Think about the following success metrics:
- Number of leads
- Number of tours booked
- Number of applications submitted
- Number of leases signed
The specific metrics you rely on to measure success are important to consider when understanding the full user journey and identifying any additional touchpoints throughout it–to ensure you’re measuring correctly.
Things to Consider Before Choosing a Model
When choosing a model, consider your user journey and the various touchpoints throughout it. Here at Zumper, we believe the renter lifecycle takes 45-60 days. Here are some additional things to think about before you choose a model:
- How long does it take a prospective renter from learning about your communities to signing a lease?
- How many active channels and how many different places are you advertising?
- What is/are your metric(s) for success? (number of leads, tours booked, leases signed etc.)
- How do you attribute the success of your marketing efforts?
Attribution Models
There are many attribution models out there, and each one can be customized to better fit your goals. The key is to keep it simple: once you pick a model, stay consistent with how you’re measuring against your marketing spend.
For simplicity, we’ll focus solely on lead attribution to leases. It’s important, however, to measure the lead attribution based on the multiple stages of your funnel. This will give you a holistic view of not only what’s driving interest to your property, but also which sources are driving the most qualified renters to it. Here are some of the most common marketing attribution models used:
First touch: All credit is given to the first lead source. This puts a higher weight on the user at the beginning of their apartment search journey. It will give you an understanding of how they found out about your community. It generally values the top of funnel channels, like brand advertising and social media, but discredits anything after.
Last touch: This simple model gives all the credit to the last source of the lead before a prospective renter signs a lease, regardless of how many times the user has been touched throughout the journey. Last touch is generally higher intent as it was the last interaction before a lease is signed.
Multi-Touch: This model is best for longer user journeys. It can be customized in many ways, here are two examples:
U-Shaped: Assigns a heavier weighting to the first and last touches. For example, it gives 40% of attribution to both the first and last touches and divides the remaining 20% among all other touchpoints. You’d leverage this model if you think the first and the last touch before a signed lease is the most important.
Equally-Weighted: Every touchpoint gets equal credit, regardless of its placement in the user journey. This model allows you to give credit to duplicate advertising sources that are sending you non-unique renters.
While the first-touch and last-touch models are the simplest, they don’t paint the full picture of the impact of your overall marketing and advertising spend. Conversely, the multi-touch model gives attribution to multiple sources and allows you to assign values for each touchpoint throughout the user journey, but places a varying level of emphasis on multiple touchpoints.
Choosing the Best Fit
Consider these different attribution models and decide which one helps you determine the best cost per lead and driver of quality renters to your property. By understanding your options, you can start to see which model makes the most sense for your marketing spend.
For purchases or transactions that have a longer lifecycle, like renting, we recommend using Multi-Touch, which accounts for your holistic marketing spend.
We’ve built a lease attribution generator to make it easier for you to identify your most valuable marketing efforts. Download the attribution generator and use it to determine which sources are most effectively driving qualified leads to your properties.
Download the attribution tool here.
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