We recently hosted a webinar about a question multifamily teams ask all the time: where should we put our marketing dollars when we need more leads? You can watch the full session on demand here, and we also wanted to share some highlights from the session.
It almost always plays out the same way. We’ve heard questions around lead generation more times than we can count: “Should we be running Meta ads?” “Is our SEO any good?” “Do we need to raise the Google Ads budget?”
Someone saw a competitor’s Instagram ad over the weekend. Someone else read an article about AI search. A regional wants to know why the Google Ads number went up. Forty minutes later, everyone has an opinion about channels, and no one knows what problem the money needs to solve.
The part that gets lost in those conversations? A tactic isn’t good or bad on its own. It’s either the right fit for the problem, or it isn’t. Google Ads is only expensive if you’re using it to solve a problem it was never built for.
So before you decide where to put your budget, get clear on what you’re solving for. Are you sitting on a vacancy that has to be filled this month? Are you fully occupied but your cost per lead is high? Are you opening a brand new property that nobody in the market has heard of yet?
Three very different problems. Three very different first moves.
If your problem is occupancy and the timeline is now, turn to Google Ads.
Paid search usually doesn’t create demand. It catches people who are already raising their hand. Someone typing ‘two bedroom apartments near me’ into Google at 10 pm isn’t browsing. They’re shopping. They could be touring somewhere on Saturday. Google Ads is how you get in front of that person at the exact moment they’re looking, which is why it’s the fastest tactic when units need to lease.
Google Ads is usually the right move when patience is not part of the plan:
The tradeoffs:
An attendee from the webinar pointed out that his total ad clicks were way higher than the Google Analytics users attributed to Google Ads, and that gap can make you go crazy. It looks like the campaign is lying to you.
It usually isn’t. That discrepancy is normal, and it’s almost always a measurement issue rather than a performance issue. Bounced sessions, blocked cookies, cross-device behavior, and tracking setup can all pull those two numbers apart. Before you kill a campaign that “isn’t working,” go check your setup. We’ve seen teams cut spend on a perfectly healthy campaign because two dashboards disagreed with each other.
The takeaway: when the problem is occupancy, start with demand that already exists.
We covered how Google Ads is basically rented traffic. SEO, on the other hand, is how you start earning it.
Practically speaking, SEO is the work of earning your fair share of organic search visibility so that a meaningful chunk of your traffic shows up without a cost per click attached. It’s slower. It’s less satisfying. It’s also the first thing that gets cut the second a budget tightens, which is precisely why so many properties end up completely dependent on paid traffic they can’t afford to turn off.
If you’ve been cutting SEO every time things get tight, the cost per lead you’re complaining about today is the price you pay for that decision.
With strong SEO investment, you get:
What it won’t do:
There’s a pattern we see consistently with new customers: a property is spending heavily on Google Ads every month and getting almost no organic traffic. Every lead comes at a cost. That price is set by how much their competitors feel like bidding that quarter. They have no floor under them.
Improving that site’s content and search visibility doesn’t replace paid traffic overnight. Nothing does. But it starts building traffic that keeps showing up after the work is done, and that changes the whole shape of the budget conversation a year from now.
The takeaway: SEO is how you build an asset instead of renting all of your traffic.
Meta is the one people reach for first and should usually reach for last. That doesn’t mean Meta is a bad channel. It’s often a great one. It’s just doing a different job.
The difference comes down to how each platform finds people. Google reaches people who are actively searching. Meta reaches people based on location (typically a 15 mile radius at minimum), signals of intent to rent, and previous interaction with your website or brand. Nobody on Meta went looking for you. You’re showing up in their feed between a friend’s vacation photos and a video of somebody’s dog.
Meta earns a place in the mix when:
The tradeoffs:
For example, if you have a new luxury property with a healthy Google Ads campaign already running. It still needs people to know about the rooftop pool, the coworking space, the neighborhood. Meta extends that reach with visual storytelling while Google Ads keeps capturing the renters who are ready right now. Together, they can work beautifully.
The version where it doesn’t: a property with real vacancy builds a gorgeous Meta campaign, gets great engagement, and fills its funnel with people who won’t be ready to sign for four months. The campaign isn’t broken. It’s just answering a question nobody asked.
The takeaway: Meta builds awareness and familiarity, but it usually shouldn’t be your first dollar when units need to lease immediately.
Let’s think of all three tactics together:
And the mix should move through the year. A property might push Google Ads hard during a vacancy problem, keep SEO steady the entire time no matter what else is happening, and turn Meta on selectively for a lease-up or a major campaign.
Setting a budget split in January and defending it until December is how properties end up spending beautifully against the wrong problem. That’s not discipline. That’s just not looking.
You have an immediate occupancy problem. Priority: Google Ads. Secondary: SEO. Later: Meta. You need qualified prospects now, so go where the demand already is.
You’re stable on occupancy but paid leads cost too much. Priority: SEO. Secondary: maintain targeted Google Ads. Later: Meta for remarketing and branding. The goal is more organic traffic and a lower blended cost per lead.
You’re opening a new luxury lease-up with a real budget. Priority: Google Ads and SEO together. Then layer in Meta. You need immediate leads, long-term search visibility, and broad market awareness all at once.
Use Google Ads when you need leads and leases now. Use SEO to earn your fair share of organic traffic and bring down your long-term lead costs. Use Meta when you have the budget to build awareness through visual branding.
The goal isn’t to be everywhere just because the channels are available. It’s to invest in the tactic that solves your property’s most important leasing problem right now, then layer in the others as budget and strategy allow.
And if you’re not sure which of those three situations you’re actually in, that’s not a knowledge gap. That’s the most common place to be. It’s also the most useful conversation you can have this quarter.
If you want to talk through which of those three situations your portfolio is in, we are happy to walk through it with you. Get in touch.
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