Ad Spend Report Guide

For a walkthrough of the Ad Spend Report watch this Video Overview.

For in-depth metric definitions go here.

Overview

Knock's Ad Spend report is a great way to better understand the true value of the lead sources for your properties. The report captures the activities related to active sources and calculates a variety of cost metrics. These cost metrics give you insight into the effectiveness of your lead generation and help your marketing team optimize your marketing spend. 

For an accurate cost estimate the Sources page in Admin must be kept up to date and any mappings configured correctly. More details on how the configuration on the Sources page impacts the Ad Spend report can be found in the Sources section. 

Here are a few questions you can answer with this report: 

(1) What source is generating the most inbound leads over the last 2 weeks? 

After navigating to the Ad Spend report in Analytics, we can change the filters to Last 14 Days. In this example, we will look at the entire portfolio. 

Using the above screenshot, we can see that about 23% of the inbound leads come from the Property Website. While this is interesting on its own, we can gather a few other pieces of information that will help assess the performance of the marketing efforts. 

First, we can look to the Cost / Prospect to see how it compares to other active marketing sources. In this case, it compares very favorably to all except two: Drive-by and Google My Business. With the added insight of Cost / Prospect, our opinion about where to allocate additional marketing spend may shift towards Google My Business. 

However, other data points will provide even greater insight and a more complete picture: Visits and Leases. These two metrics compare even more favorably toward our original insight that Property Website is generating the most inbound leads. 

With all of these data points on hand, we can conclude that the Property Website has not only been effective at generating total number of leads, but has generated the highest quality of leads (i.e., the Property Website has generated more Visits / Applications / Leases). 

(2) What source is generating the highest number of interested leads? 

While a marketing source can provide a large number of leads, a lot of uncontrollable factors affect whether a lead ends up leasing. Some of these factors are unit availability, agent performance, and qualifications of the lead. One other way to assess performance is to look for number of 'interested leads' generated. 

For our purposes, we will consider an interested lead as one who visited during the date range selected. Using the same screenshot as Question (1), we can see that Property Website has generated 27% of the total leads who have visited. Drive-By and Google My Business once again come as a distant 2nd and 3rd, respectively. 

With all of these data points, we can make a solid conclusion as to what marketing efforts are working and where additional resources may go. 

Sources

The Sources page in Admin will list the active sources underneath each property within your portfolio. These are the sources that will be shown in the Ad Spend report. Once a source is disabled any lead/prospect created from that source will show in a row called "Disabled/Deleted" and default to a $0 cost (i.e., it will not affect the Total Cost calculation, but will impact the Cost per Prospect and Cost per Lease numbers). 

There are two configurations that each source can have and impact the Ad Spend report: 

(1) Fee Amount

This is type and dollar amount for a given marketing source for each month. These can be changed at any time and those changes will be reflected in the Ad Spend report. 

An example of a filled out Fee Amount is shown in the below screenshot. The last filled in row on this page will apply to all future months until otherwise specified. 

(2) Mapping

 The 'Mapping' column is how you can change the aggregation level within the Ad Spend Report. In the below screenshot, we can see that this property has indicated that Apartments.com should be mapped to 'Costar/Apartments.com'.

This will lead the Ad Spend report to show all leads/prospects for all Sources tied to this Mapping under the Mapping name. 

Filters

Filter Description
Date Range

You may select one of the preset date ranges available (defaults to Last 7 Days) or you may enter a custom date. Once you complete the date selection the report will automatically reload.

The Last 7 Days filter includes the current day.

Properties This is a multi-select for what properties you'd like data for. User can select all properties by clicking the "All" option. After selecting the properties, you must select ‘Apply’ in order for the report to reload.

Tiles

Data Point Definition
Total Cost

The total cost for the lead source over the date range.

We prorate the cost for marketing sources that have a cost per month plan. An example of this calculation can be found in the Data Definitions section. 

Cost / Prospect The total cost divided by the number of prospects.
Cost / Lease The total cost divided by the number of leases.

Graphs

mark_graph.png

The visual on the left-hand side will show the Top 10 sources that generated the most leases during the date range selected.

The visual on the right-hand side will display the cost per lease for each source where there is a cost associated (all free sources are excluded from this graph).

Data Definitions

Data Point Definition
Leads

This is the number of leads created for the filters applied in the time range selected. This includes leads marked as “Not a Prospect”

Leads match with the Conversions report unless a marketing source exists in Conversions and does not exist in the Sources page in Admin then the lead will not show in the Ad Spend report. 

Prospects

This is the number of prospects created for the filters applied in the time range selected. This excludes people marked as “Not a Prospect”.

Prospects match with the Conversions report unless a marketing source exists in Conversions and does not exist in the Sources page in Admin then the prospect will not show in the Ad Spend report. 

Visits

This is the number of leads that visited for each source in the selected time range. 

Visits match with the Conversions report unless a marketing source exists in Conversions and does not exist in the Sources page in Admin then the visit will not show in the Ad Spend report. 

Applications
(Yardi only)

This is the number of leads with application submitted actions within the PMS.

Applications match with the Conversions report unless a marketing source exists in Conversions and does not exist in the Sources page in Admin then the application will not show in the Ad Spend report. 

Leases

The number of lease events for leads for the filters applied in the selected time range.

Leases match with the Conversions report unless a marketing source exists in Conversions and does not exist in the Sources page in Admin then the lease will not show in the Ad Spend report. 

Total Cost

This is the total cost for the lead source over the selected time range based on what is currently available in Knock Admin -> Sources.

We prorate the cost for marketing sources that have a cost per month plan.

Example

Rent Path has a monthly subscription of $500 per month. You have selected Last 14 Days in the Date Range Filter. The total cost attributed to Rent Path will be approximately $233.

This is calculated by using the following equation: (500 / 30) * 14 = $233. This equation changes based on the number of days in a given month and the number of days in the selected date range. 

Cost / Prospect This is the total cost divided by the number of prospects in the selected time range.
Cost / Application
(Yardi only)
This is the total cost divided by the number of applications in the selected time range
Cost / Lease This is the total cost divided by the number of leases in the selected time range

 

 
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