Case Study
Student Housing Solutions
GRO’s comprehensive ad strategy increased SHS’s online leasing across all properties and increased their overall impression share.
The STory
Student Housing Solutions, LLC is a national leader in the niche student housing industry. The company, its predecessors and principals have actively managed and/or participated in over $400,000,000 of real estate transactions, including 11,271 student housing beds and 475,000 sq. ft. of retail space. The company has also developed approximately 10,000 beds and currently operates a portfolio of 5000 beds in the Tallahassee, FL market. In addition to traditional management services, SHS offers site selection, market analysis, market comparables, land planning, financial proforma’s and construction management services.
In a challenging year for student housing leasing due to COVID19, SHS was significantly behind their benchmark leasing numbers mid-2020 across multiple properties in an already competitive market of Tallahassee, FL. SHS reached out to GRO looking for a company with a proven track record of success in student housing looking for ideas and an aggressive plan to reach students and increase their online leasing efforts. Specifically, they first wanted to help specific properties in their portfolio that were severely under-leased heading into Fall 2020.
The Solution
After reviewing the current SHS digital efforts and a careful analysis of the competitive Tallahassee, FL market GRO enacted a 2-part strategy. First, GRO enacted property specific sprint campaigns designed to focus on those properties with the most need identified by SHS prior to Fall 2020 semester. In addition to a more aggressive and targeted search campaign GRO used advanced location based targeting tactics to reach students who had previously been enrolled and on-campus at FSU but had been displaced by COVID19.
Second, after the success of the sprint campaigns for specific properties. GRO completely rebuilt SHS Google Ad campaigns from scratch and incorporated a more comprehensive digital ad strategy utilizing search with a goal of increasing the overall impression share for SHS and their online leasing across all properties. In addition, GRO continued with both social and programmatic ads to stay in front of students in the competitive Tallahassee market.
The Results
GRO’s 2-part strategy for Student Housing Solutions generated 220+ direct conversions for leasing opportunities on targeted properties during phase one, and overall increased leasing by over 30% across stressed properties. Phase two earned over a 12% conversion rate on Google Ads and increased average impression share on paid search from under 20% to over 60%.
The Numbers
850+
Total Conversions
30%
Increase in Signed Leases
12%
Google Ads Conversion Rate
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