Your Dashboard Looks Great So Where Are The Leases?

Your marketing dashboard might look impressive—but if you can’t connect the numbers to tours and leases, are you really measuring performance?

In this episode of The Multifamily Marketers Podcast, hosts Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills break down one of the biggest problems in multifamily reporting: stopping the measurement too early. Impressions, clicks, website traffic, and leads all matter, but they only tell part of the story.

From lead-to-tour and tour-to-lease conversion to leasing-team follow-up, reporting accountability, and AI-powered analysis, this episode explains how marketing and leasing teams can connect the entire renter journey and turn dashboards into actual business decisions.

You’ll learn:

• Why impressions, clicks, and leads shouldn’t be treated as the final measure of marketing success
• The three questions every marketing conversation should start with: traffic, tours, and leases
• How to identify whether you have a marketing problem or a leasing conversion problem
• Why “bad leads” may actually be a lead follow-up or handling issue
• How lead-to-tour and tour-to-lease conversion rates reveal where prospects are dropping off
• What separates a useful marketing report from a simple data dump
• How AI can improve reporting—and why it can’t fix missing or inaccurate data

To suggest a topic, get in touch!

For more multifamily marketing help, connect with us at Resident360.

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TRANSCRIPT

Episode 55: Your Dashboard Looks Great So Where Are The Leases?

Podcast Co-Hosts: Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills, Resident360

Josh: Welcome back to another episode of the Multifamily Marketers Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Grillo, co-founder here at Resident360, and I’m joined by Miss Caroline Mills. Caroline, how are you?

Caroline: Hello, Josh. We’re having a rainy yet sunny afternoon. That’s just how Florida is.

Josh: I don’t know if you’ve seen, but there are a couple of tropical depressions or storms everybody’s been talking up. One of them might actually hit San Diego, but I don’t think it will. I think it’s going to sweep right off the coast. It’s supposed to take effect toward the end of the weekend, Sunday into Monday. Probably a bunch of swell and maybe some wind. I don’t think we’ll get any rain, but it’s all over the news.

Caroline: Wow.

Josh: Oh, yeah, exciting times. It reminds me of when I lived in North Carolina during hurricane season. There were always hurricanes, and you’re in Florida now, so you’ll know soon enough. You watch them start forming and wonder where they’re going to go and where they’re going to hit. I went through several hurricanes that hit Wilmington, North Carolina, when I lived there. Always interesting times.

Anyway, let’s jump into today’s show. Today we’re talking about dashboards. More specifically: Your dashboard looks great, Caroline, but where are the leases? It’s a problem we see constantly in multifamily marketing. You have a dashboard, impressions are up, clicks are up, leads are coming in, but nobody can tell us how many of those leads turned into tours or leases. So let’s start with the big question, Caroline. What’s wrong with most of these marketing reports?

Caroline: I would say most people just stop measuring too early. They’re looking at impressions, clicks, website traffic, and even leads. Those metrics help us understand whether marketing is creating interest, but they don’t tell us whether that interest is turning into actual business, actual leases.

The problem is that marketing usually has visibility through the lead, while the property has the information about tours, applications, and leases. If those two sets of information aren’t connected or don’t line up, neither side can see the whole picture. A campaign can generate a high number of leads at a really efficient cost, but if those leads never get a timely response, never get answered, or never schedule a tour, then the campaign isn’t producing leases.

Josh: So it sounds like there’s a disconnect. Marketing may be doing its job of driving traffic, but on the property side, there has to be some real accountability: How much of the traffic coming in is actually turning into tours, and then into leases? So are impressions, clicks, and website traffic meaningful, or are they just vanity metrics in your eyes?

Caroline: They’re very meaningful when they’re viewed in the right context. Impressions tell us whether people are even seeing the property. Clicks tell us whether the messaging, the ad, or the creative is generating interest. Website engagement helps us understand whether renters are finding the information they need: whether they’re leaving the site, staying on, or interacting.

But none of those metrics should be presented as the final result or the be-all and end-all. A high click-through rate is encouraging, but it doesn’t automatically mean the campaign is successful. As marketers, we still need to know what’s happening on site. Did those clicks become leads? Did the leads become tours? Did those tours lease? The problem isn’t the metrics themselves. It’s treating them like business outcomes and not following them all the way through.

Josh: So when a client tells us, “We need more leads,” how do we determine whether that’s actually the problem?

Caroline: That’s a good question, because we hear it a lot. The first thing we need to look at is the existing funnel. How many leads is the property receiving? How quickly are those leads being contacted? Is the phone being answered? And not only are we getting back to them, but how? Are we sending a generic email, or are we taking the time to send a personalized text or make a phone call?

How many tours are being scheduled, and how many people actually show up? That’s another metric some teams don’t even look at. They’ll say, “Oh, we had 12 scheduled tours,” and then you find out only half of them showed up. And after the tour, how many are actually applying?

If the property is generating a healthy number of leads but very few tours, spending more money on additional leads probably won’t fix the problem. Before we ever recommend more advertising, we need to understand where prospects are dropping out of the funnel. Sometimes the property doesn’t need more leads. It may need faster follow-up or better appointment setting. Can prospects schedule on their own, or do they have to contact the property? Maybe it needs stronger tour execution: how we give tours on site and how we close. Or maybe it just needs clearer pricing and availability.

Josh: Looking back at this, there are three really good questions we’ve identified for pretty much every marketing conversation: How has traffic been over the last few weeks? How many tours have you had? And how many leases came from those tours? Those three questions are so important.

Caroline: I completely agree. Sometimes we talk with people who don’t realize how important these are, so one of those metrics is missing, and we can’t complete the full picture. When you immediately connect the marketing data to what’s happening at the property, the picture comes together.

If leads are increasing and tours are increasing too, that’s a very positive sign. If leads are increasing but tours are flat, we want to investigate what’s happening when a lead comes in. Why aren’t they scheduling a tour? If tours are increasing but leases aren’t, we might be dealing with a pricing, product, competition, or leasing conversion issue rather than a marketing issue. Marketing is carrying them through the funnel, but something is happening at the end. Those three questions alone give us the context we need before we start interpreting what’s on your dashboard or in your reporting. Without that context, we’re making recommendations based on half the story.

Josh: So what does it tell us when marketing is producing leads but the property isn’t getting enough tours? That’s a common one, right?

Caroline: So common.

Josh: We’re sending tons of leads, and the on-site team says, “Yeah, but we’re not getting any tours.”

Caroline: Yes, that’s common, and it usually points to how the lead process is being handled. If you’re a marketer with access to this data, look at response times. How quickly are you getting back to these prospects? And again, not only how quickly, but how. Are you sending a generic email blast, like, “Thanks for contacting the property. Schedule a tour below”? That’s not nearly as meaningful as, “Hey, Josh, I saw you reached out about our two-bedroom. I see you also have a pet. I’d love to show you the community.”

Look at your missed calls and how often you’re following up. I talked with a property once that said, “Oh, we just close leads out after three follow-ups.” I asked, “Over how much time?” They said, “Oh, a week.” I said, “Oh my gosh. People search for a lot longer than a week.” Especially if they said they’re interested in December and it’s September, we need to keep them in the pipeline.

Also look at appointment availability and the quality of communication. Are prospects getting a response within minutes, or hours and days? Are they getting personal responses or automated ones? Is the leasing team making it easy to schedule a tour, or do prospects have to call and talk to someone to pick a time? That can make it a lot harder. It could also reveal a disconnect between the advertising and the actual offer. For example, a prospect might discover that the pricing, availability, or incentive doesn’t match what they expected. But we shouldn’t immediately conclude that the leads are bad. We need to examine what happened to them first.

Josh: What if tours are strong but leases are weak? How about that one?

Caroline: Ooh. We actually had that one recently. Someone came to us with a 6% closing ratio, which is incredibly low. That means you’d need 100 tours to get six leases. At that point, marketing has done a large part of its job. It created awareness, generated interest, drove people to the website, and helped bring prospects to the property. It completed all of those steps in the funnel.

Now we need to look at the tour and closing experience. How is the property being presented? Is the leasing team asking the right questions? Are they connecting the prospect’s needs to the community’s benefits? Are they handling objections well? Is there consistent follow-up after tours? How are they closing?

We also need to consider factors outside the leasing team’s control, like pricing, unit condition, availability, and how the property compares to competitors. But that doesn’t mean marketing just walks away. Marketing can still help with messaging, follow-up materials, and competitive positioning. But buying more clicks won’t fix a weak tour-to-lease conversion rate.

Josh: All right, Caroline, here’s one for you. We frequently hear, “These are bad leads.” How do we distinguish between poor lead quality and poor lead handling?

Caroline: I’m glad you asked. Whenever you’re talking with your marketing specialist and looking at your leads, you need specific evidence. Where did the leads come from? What were they searching for? Did their budget and move-in date match the property? Did they receive a response? How many follow-up attempts were made? Did anyone actually speak with them?

Like we were talking about a minute ago, a lead shouldn’t automatically be labeled unqualified just because they didn’t answer one phone call and got closed out within a week. Put yourself in their position. They’re searching multiple properties, often while they’re at work or after hours while they’re doing something else. If the leasing team makes one attempt and stops, that doesn’t necessarily indicate a lead quality issue. But if we’re consistently seeing leads in the wrong bucket (the wrong location, no interest in the unit types we offer, the wrong move-in timing) or coming from a particular source, then we have a targeting problem. But we need data and patterns, not one-offs or anecdotes.

Josh: Where does marketing’s responsibility end and the leasing team’s responsibility begin?

Caroline: Ooh, I love this one. Marketing is responsible for creating the right kind of opportunity. Leasing is responsible for converting that opportunity. But there isn’t a clean wall between the two. Marketing needs feedback from leasing teams to improve targeting and messaging, and leasing needs marketing to communicate the property’s value accurately and attract the right prospects. The best-performing properties don’t treat it as marketing versus leasing. They treat it as one connected renter journey. Both teams should understand the complete funnel, even if they work on different parts of it.

Josh: Is it fair to evaluate marketing based on leases, when pricing, availability, property condition, and the leasing experience also influence conversion?

Caroline: Yes. You want marketing connected to leases, but it shouldn’t be held solely responsible for them. Lease results are affected by several factors. Marketing can generate qualified demand, but it can’t make a floor plan available. It can’t repair a unit, change an uncompetitive price, or conduct the tour. That’s why we need to evaluate both the final business result and the conversion rates throughout the funnel. The goal isn’t to use the funnel to assign blame. It’s to determine what’s working, what isn’t, and where improvement needs to happen.

Josh: Okay, what happens when the on-site team can’t tell us how many tours, applications, or leases came from marketing?

Caroline: I actually had this happen just last week. To be honest, in that case we can’t fully measure how marketing is performing. We can still generate awareness, traffic, website activity, and leads, but we can’t pretend those metrics prove the campaign is producing leases. The immediate recommendation should be to improve tracking, whether that’s through better CRM usage, consistent source attribution, call tracking, or even a simple weekly process for documenting traffic, tours, and leases. The system doesn’t have to be perfect or expensive, but the team needs a consistent process. Otherwise, everyone is just making decisions without the full picture.

Josh: What separates a useful marketing report from a data dump?

Caroline: It can be overwhelming. A useful report should explain three things: what happened, why it matters, and what we recommend doing next. A client shouldn’t have to stare at a chart and figure out the story themselves. The chart is there as a visual, but the marketing team should identify the important changes, explain what they mean, and recommend an action. So instead of saying, “Website traffic increased by 20%,” we should explain where the increase came from, whether it produced more leads, and what we can do with that information. Data describes the past, but our recommendations improve what we do in the future.

Josh: Let’s talk about how every marketing call should end. Let’s say a marketing vendor talks with the marketing director or the on-site team every month for a check-in on how things are going. What should happen at the end of that call?

Caroline: Every call should end with a clear “what happens next” conversation. Identify the most important action items, assign an owner to each one, and set a date for when they’ll be completed. That could include adjusting your advertising budget, changing your messaging, reviewing missed calls, improving follow-up, or checking tour-to-lease conversion rates. The next call should start by reviewing those commitments. Otherwise, the same issues can come up month after month without anything actually happening. A good reporting call should create momentum, not just put another meeting on everyone’s calendar.

Josh: Let’s dive into AI for a second when it comes to reporting. Where can AI assist or improve reporting for a property?

Caroline: I remember from the research study we did that this was one of the biggest things people mentioned: wanting to use AI for reporting. AI can absolutely help analyze large amounts of information and turn it into a clear narrative, and it saves a ton of time. It can compare performance across different time periods, identify unusual changes, summarize the most important findings, and even help draft recommendations. It can save your specialist or your marketing team hundreds of hours a year on these small tasks. Instead of manually transferring numbers into presentations or writing out repetitive explanations, the marketing team has more time to think strategically and have better conversations with clients.

That said, AI still requires oversight. You need someone who understands the property, the market, and the campaign to review the analysis and determine whether the recommendations actually make sense.

Josh: So what can’t AI fix?

Caroline: AI can’t fix missing or inaccurate data. If tours aren’t tracked, AI can’t tell us how many leads became tours. If leases are attributed to the wrong source, AI will analyze the wrong information. And if nobody documents what happened after the lead, the funnel will still be incomplete. AI can make our analysis faster, but it can’t manufacture reliable business information. The quality of the output still depends on the quality of the data and the judgment of the people using it.

Josh: All right, let’s dive into some rapid-fire questions, Caroline. I know we’ve covered some of these in past episodes, but the more we repeat this stuff, the more people will tune in and think, “Okay, I need to start doing that. I need to start thinking this way.” So I think it’s all good information, whether it’s repeated or not. Here we go. First question: most overrated marketing metric?

Caroline: I’ll say impressions, when they’re presented without any additional context.

Josh: Most underused metric?

Caroline: This is a good one from today. I’m going to say tour-to-lease conversion.

Josh: Oh, that’s a good one. Absolutely. That can tell you a lot. Okay, biggest warning sign in a marketing report?

Caroline: A significant increase in leads without a matching increase in tours.

Josh: First thing you’d investigate if leads suddenly dropped?

Caroline: I’d check your availability, your pricing, your tracking, and your campaign delivery before assuming demand actually decreased or disappeared.

Josh: First thing you’d investigate if leads increased but leases didn’t?

Caroline: If I have access to it, response times and lead-to-tour conversion.

Josh: Number one metric every property should know before joining a marketing call?

Caroline: Absolutely the number of leases signed during the reporting period, whether that’s two weeks or a month. That’s the biggest metric.

Josh: One change that would immediately improve most marketing reports?

Caroline: Ooh, I’ll call back to this one: End every report, call, or meeting with clear recommendations, who owns each one, and the timeline.

Josh: Love it. All right, Caroline, if listeners remember only one thing from today’s conversation, what should it be?

Caroline: Marketing performance can’t be evaluated in isolation. You need to understand the entire renter journey, from the moment someone discovers the property, through the tour and the application, to the signed lease. When marketing and leasing come together and share that information, we can stop guessing, identify the real problems, and make better decisions.

Josh: I think that’s a great takeaway. Every marketing report should answer three questions: What happened? Why does it matter? And what happens next? All right, we’ll call it right there. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in today. We’ll be back next week with another episode of the Multifamily Marketers Podcast. See you guys next week. Caroline, take care out there, and we’ll talk next week.

Caroline: Thanks, everybody. Bye!