Topic: What is your expectation of % of leads/prospects that will convert to traffic?

What is your expectation of % of leads/prospects that will convert to traffic? ie: if you have 150 leads/prospects how many would you expect to convert to walk-in traffic/virtual tour/visit? I understand there can always be tons of variables, I'm just trying set a standard KPI. For those of you that use Knock, I would imagine you established this as it’s a major area of the insight reports: “Prospect To Visit”. Thank you in advance for your insight.

Depends on where the leads came from

Also depending on your submarket, fraud could skew that number drastically.

Most important is leads to actual leases.

This phrasing is a bit confusing. You mean like guest cards to tours? Or web traffic to leads? Or leads to leases? In Marketing terms "traffic" is search traffic/website visits or users. Traffic then become leads/guest cards. Then tours, then applications, then leases which all have an average conversion percentage between steps.

TY, I’ve tried to clarify. I'm old school and we still call it traffic.

I’d expect that you’d not want to over simplify it into a single variable problem. In general if you’ve framed something as a single variable problem without doing a lot of work to really deep and narrow into your scope, that is an extremely good indicator that the framing of your problem needs to be analyzed.

actually I do. It's not a new industry metric/KPI. I'm just looking to see what others are using. TY

1. Depends on where they come from, 2. Time of year

I don’t have the answer but I’ll be glad to ask some of my clients. However if you are using Google Analytics and have events set up you can measure some of these metrics, IE click to tour, apply, schedule an appt, etc. Let me know if I can help you with any of that stuff

Our benchmarks are:
-Lead to Visit - 30% (-/- # of visits by total # of leads)
-Net Closing - 35% (# of approved leases -/- # of tours)
-Knock Lead Engagement 97%-100%, required, everyday
Hope this helps!

thanks, friend! Mine is 30% today too, but I feel
Like it’s too low, especially on a lease-up. We’d need 200 leads (which is a lot) to generate 60 traffic, even at a 35% gross closing ratio it’s only 21 leases pre declines.

Yes, I see your point! Lease-ups are a different beast, but we don’t currently alter the benchmarks—something to consider.

I was going to recommend starting with a base of 30% lead to tour rate first. Obviously then dig deeper into this by channel the lead came from, because you’ll quickly find some lead sources close better than others. And starting with 30% isn’t bad - use that baseline, then see if/where you can get that up. Even a 5-10% difference could make a big impact!
For lease ups especially, you’ll want to start focusing more on lead conversion tools and strategies vs. your lead generation tools. The property is new, so you need to advertise, but there are very likely some “holes” in how and what you use to convert those leads into tours so your team actually gets a chance to tour them and get the rental.
Lease ups are my specialty and I’ve marketed many of them over the years. Happy to chat any time and trade ideas!
The good news is, you’re watching this number and working to improve it…great job!

thanks Kristi. They are mine too. Was doing gutt check to adjust our entire firms expectation so our leadership teams have the right KPIs. I'm increasing to 40%. We spend a lot of money on advertising, if we can't convert than I have an opportunity to develop more sales training or we need to push our vendors for better quality.

25% - 30% minimum but would love to see at 40% or higher

Hi Ellie! You are talking knock leads converted to visits right? I would say depending on demographics (taking into consideration sites where majority of the leasing is done online and site unseen and never count as a visit) say a good conversion rate of lead to visits on average has been about 30-35% a rough estimate

30-40%

And I don’t think a one size fits all closing ratio works. It’s per property and business plan. Some sites have a lot of fraud based on market. Some markets are hotter than others. Some owners run their sites in tip top condition some want to skimp.

It depends on your market and property type but ideally 50% of initial contacts will convert to walk in traffic. 10% will lease without visiting (these prospects are driven by price/promotion only) and 40% will be “lost”. From there, 80% of your tours will apply and 50% of applicants will become residents. We use Knock and I honestly love the analytics! Keeping the dashboard open to maintain the 100% “engagement score” is key. Follow up is essential and I like to mix it up with calls, texts, and emails. I also personalize all of my responses because (to me) it’s really easy to recognize autogenerated emails. I actually secret shopped our comps last month and received the same “thanks for visiting” email from all of them. All sent via Knock and the only differences were the community and employee’s name.

We focus on closing ratio for leasing agents, they should be able to close 35%-40% of actual qualified traffic.

We focus on closing ratio for leasing agents, they should be able to close 35%-40% of actual qualified traffic.

We focus on closing ratio for leasing agents, they should be able to close 35%-40% of actual qualified traffic.

We focus on closing ratio for leasing agents, they should be able to close 35%-40% of actual qualified traffic.

Thank you for this insight. Atlanta is #1 in fraud attempts. I know there is a list out there with the other top areas.

Thank you for your insight on this. I know there is a list of the top areas that experience fraud attempts. I recall that Atlanta was #1.

How about a straight answer? Assuming you are asking about a prospect tour-to-application (lease) conversation, we use 30% benchmark. As for lead-to-tour conversion, our goal is 10-20%, depending on market conditions, advertising source, etc.