How Digible Surpassed Marketing & Occupancy Goals for Nashville’s Largest Private Owner & Manager of Apartments

Who is Freeman Webb?

Formed in 1979, Freeman Webb has grown from just a Nashville, Tennessee friendship into over 11 million square feet of multifamily, office and retail property in the Southeast and Midwest. As a private real estate investment firm that specializes in the acquisition, management, and renovation of multifamily residential and commercial property, Freeman Webb is the largest private owner and manager of apartments in the Greater Nashville Area – and beyond.  

However, in July 2018, marketing leadership took a closer look and knew something had to change. Although Freeman Webb has had tremendous growth in the past, they began seeing that they were struggling to bring in consistent, quality leads and didn’t have visibility into what channels were best to spend their marketing dollars on.

Because of this struggle, marketing leadership started the search for a strategic multifamily marketing partner that would give them the flexibility they needed for month-to-month changes, technology to back up decisions and, most importantly, drive leads to reach occupancy goals.

Finding Digible through an online paid ad (talk about quality conversions), Freeman Webb reached out, loved the conversations and began a long-standing partnership. 

Why Did You Choose Digible as Your Multifamily Marketing Partner?

“We initially partnered with Digible due to their competitive pricing and our interest in exploring Fiona. Digible has been instrumental in our success, consistently helping us achieve our occupancy goals and manage multiple successful lease-ups. Their agility allows us to maximize our ROI by adjusting our spending as needed, without being restricted by contract terms.”
Digible client, Erika Walker VP of Marketing at Freeman Webb
Erika Walker
VP of Marketing & Brand with Freeman Webb

Digible Services Freeman Webb Engaged In

 

How SEO Tactics Increased Conversions by 24%

Freeman Webb understood the impact that organic strategies could have and wanted to see how focusing on these tactics could improve their online visibility, traffic and conversions – so Digible’s experienced organic team got to work.

Utilizing our technology, Fiona Google Business AI Posts, Digible started posting daily on each of the properties’ Google Business Profiles. 

In tandem with keyword optimization on each of the properties’ websites, the results speak for themselves.

Properties that posted daily on Google Business Profile with Digible’s Fiona Google Business AI Posts saw these results:

  • The average organic website conversion rate increased by 24% (see graph below).
  • Experienced a notable visibility boost, with an average 5% increase in Google Maps views across both mobile and desktop platforms (see graph below).
  • Requests for directions and phone calls originating from the Google Business Profile listing dramatically increased.
  • Metrics like average session duration and pages per session also improved.

A year later, Digible investigated the impact on properties’ organic presence after discontinuing daily Google posts. Within this test, Digible saw that implementing fresh daily Google posts content puts the property’s online brand presence in favor of Google’s content freshness algorithm while also driving quality organic traffic onto the property’s website. 

Incorporating daily Google posts into your property’s marketing plan is a highly impactful strategy to achieve occupancy goals and increase organic presence.

Doing so can not only significantly enhance your property’s organic presence, but also brand awareness, user engagement, and traffic, ultimately leading to increased customer actions and conversions for your apartment community.


Related Reading for Rebranding: 

Google Business Profile data graph for a Digible SEO case study
Google Post GBP 21v22 graph for Digible's SEO casestudy

What Has it Been Like Working With the Digible Team?

“Fiona provides us with unparalleled access to a vast array of market data, delivering insights that streamline our budget planning and strategy. This allows us to adjust our spending dynamically based on occupancy and specific needs. With Fiona, we've eliminated the guesswork in our allocation decisions, optimizing our investment across various platforms. I also appreciate the detailed ILS information, including which ILS’s appear in specific searches and the package recommendations for Apartments.com. Fiona's daily update emails are my go-to resource each morning, keeping me informed on everything from new platform offerings to social media analytics, best practices, and community-specific insights on reputation and SEO.”
Digible client, Erika Walker VP of Marketing at Freeman Webb
Erika Walker
VP of Marketing & Brand with Freeman Webb

Increased Conversions by 8% with Paid Media

While Digible’s organic media and SEO team were churning out the results, Digible saw an opportunity to recommend that the Freeman Webb team implement Performance Max campaigns in 2023. 

Performance Max, or Pmax for short, is a conversion-based campaign type that allows advertisers to access all of Google’s channels like YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps through a single campaign. 

An analysis of 27 Freeman Webb properties over 6 months of Pmax campaigns gave us some pretty impressive results:

  • 152% increase in impressions 
  • 70% increase in clicks 
  • 33% decrease in cost-per-click ($0.12 underneath our benchmark)
  • 8% increase in conversions (91% above our benchmark) 

 

PMax final data for a Digible Paid Media case study
Pmax CPC graph for a Digible Paid Media casestudy
Pmax CTR graph for a Digible Paid Media casestudy

Beyond Occupancy Goals: A Recap of the Results

Since 2018, Digible has worked as an extension of the Freeman Webb marketing team and implemented countless campaigns that have achieved occupancy goals, optimized marketing dollars and yielded successful results while maximizing return on investment.

 

These results are the averages across all the Freeman Webb properties we work with:

Increase of 5% in Google Business Profile Views

Posting daily on each properties’ Google Business Profile,  Freeman Webb saw an average 5% increase in Google Map views across both mobile and desktop platforms.

Organic Website Conversions Increased by 24% 

Daily Google posts also drove higher-quality organic traffic to business websites. Organic search sessions saw a modest increase of 0.2%, although the average organic website conversion rate increased by 24%.

8% Increase in Conversions from Paid Media 

Implementing Performance Max advertising yielded successful results with consistent KPIs, engagement, and click-through-rate, which led to an 8% increase in conversions.

 

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