Case Study - Rent it Furnished Realty

Services Provided: SEO, SEM, Analytics, Inbound Strategy, WordPress Maintenance

Increased site traffic, rankings, conversions, and revenues, and expansion to additional major cities in North America.

The Challenge

Rent it Furnished Realty is a local, Yaletown-based real estate brokerage specializing in rentals and property management of luxury apartments, condos, penthouses and houses in the Greater Vancouver Area.

Before Rent it Furnished Realty began working with Umami Marketing in 2010, they knew they had to create an integrated digital marketing strategy for their fast changing and growing business, as they wanted to be the market leader for furnished rentals in Vancouver, BC.

As a startup company, Erika had built a website on her own and got help doing whatever she could within a limited budget from its humble beginnings. The business was thriving based on referrals and her network, but she knew that to really grow and take the company to the next level, she would need to ensure that her site didn’t just exist, but could also be easily found.

Realizing there was space in the market to not only provide high-quality furnished and unfurnished rental listings, but also to provide services for property management, Erika and the team at Rent It Furnished decided they wanted to re-establish their online presence, expand their service offerings, and increase targeted leads for each new side of the business through digital channels.

However, they faced a number of challenges, including the fact that they lacked time, expertise, and in-house resources to commit to competing in the online space.  They didn’t know where to start, and how to integrate all of their marketing and digital marketing efforts.

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“I had no idea of the value of SEO or how it worked, and as such, had a site that had no ranking at all and had no idea why, or how to fix it. This was not my core competency, so outsourcing it to someone who knew it well made the most sense.

The team at Umami Marketing really helped me to structure a format and a training plan so that we could easily implement future improvements internally. They helped explain the theory behind Google rankings, educate on what SEO entails, and provided ideas on how we can engage our clients even further. We’ve had massive growth to our site and great rankings which have helped us build credibility and increased revenues.

We look forward to creating and implementing a repeatable strategy for digital marketing across our new territories in Toronto and NYC.”

Erika Weimer CEO, Rent it Furnished Realty

Our Approach

As a result of the solution that Umami Marketing designed and implemented, Rent It Furnished achieved their goals, including significant spikes in site traffic and unique visitors, web conversions and sales, and year over year revenue growth. Improved brand awareness and visibility online has led to increases to their base of property owners and tenants, producing even more rental inventory across many neighbourhoods in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Building on the success of their Vancouver site, Rent it Furnished has expanded into both Toronto and New York City and will continue to grow, with Umami Marketing leading their digital marketing strategy.

Early Successes

Umami Marketing began with a full website audit, in which the WordPress site was optimized from the ground up. We did thorough keyword and competitor research, including analysis on keyword trends and provided recommendations for immediate impact. We invested time in strong and reputable link development, and set up Google Analytics and tools as needed to make the website as SEO-friendly, manageable, and scalable as possible.

Maximizing Return through an Integrated Strategy

We created a Social Media marketing strategy to help Rent it Furnished become active on multiple social media platforms effectively, and began paid advertising campaigns. We started these campaigns on Google Adwords and found incredible success with increased conversions and lower costs per conversions, and then extended into Facebook Advertising, to help increase brand awareness and targeted leads.
Collaborate

Communication is Key

Communication was key in developing an integrated digital marketing strategy. We worked with Erika Weimer, Rent It Furnished’s CEO, from the beginning to understand her goals each step of the way, and then transitioned parts of this to her team as time passed and the company continued to grow. We ensured that we were always on the same page in terms of business priorities, and used this information to help feed and continually improve the marketing strategy. Based on this level of open communication, we have built a solid, trusting relationship.

Key Success Metrics

Lead capture was setup and processes were automated. Now, Rent it Furnished Realty gets over 400 qualified web leads per month.

  • Goal conversions – 14x Increase
  • Users (Unique Visitors) – 18x Increase
  • Sessions (Site Traffic) – 15x Increase
  • Page views – 16x Increase
  • Average Session Duration – 2x Increase
  • #1 rankings in Google and other search engines for numerous keywords
  • Accurate marketing analytics to support key decision-making
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Results

While working with Umami Marketing, Rent It Furnished Realty has seen the following results:

#1 Rankings

#1 spot & first page rankings in the search engines for desired keywords in a highly competitive space.

Increased Conversions

Not only did the amount of qualified leads increase, but so did conversions overall.

Year Over Year Revenue Growth

Increased revenue and profits each and every fiscal year for the company.

Expansion to New Cities

With Vancouver’s success, the business has expanded into Toronto & New York City.

“Victoria and her team actually care about the results produced, including getting us to that #1 spot on Google. She is always looking out for things that touch on SEO and our marketing, and how we can continually improve our online presence.

Trust and reliability has been key in our relationship, and she has never let me down.”

Erika Weimer CEO, Rent it Furnished Realty
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