Digital Marketing Strategist

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary digital performance strategist for the assigned portfolio, ensuring campaigns, spend, and optimizations directly support leasing and occupancy goals.
• Lead the intake for all new community transitions by gathering package recommendations, spend options, and digital channel proposals from Agency Fifty3, ILS partners, and additional vendors.
• Analyze community-specific data (historical leads, GA4 data, market velocity, current occupancy, seasonality) to determine the ideal digital marketing mix per property.
• Present digital strategy recommendations, expected impact, and budget allocation guidance to Portfolio Sales & Marketing Managers and Portfolio Managers.
• Continuously monitor monthly performance reports to identify trends, assess ROI, validate lead quality, and recommend optimizations.
• Prioritize high-impact digital actions across the portfolio by understanding community goals, risk levels, and marketing constraints.
• Ensure the accuracy, functionality, and visual quality of all community websites, including WordPress updates, content refreshes, new photos, specials, floor plan updates, and troubleshooting issues.
• Conduct quarterly website audits to assess SEO health, user experience, compliance, page speed, broken links, content accuracy, and form functionality.
• Manage and maintain all vanity numbers ensuring routing, tracking, and call attribution are functioning as intended.
• Partner with Agency Fifty3 and internal stakeholders to ensure new websites or redesigns follow brand standards and operational needs.
• Manage and optimize Internet Listing Service (ILS) platforms (e.g., Apartments.com, Rent., Zumper, Zillow), ensuring compelling content, competitive pricing display, accurate amenities, and optimized tracking.
• Maintain consistent and accurate property profiles across directory sites including: Google Business Profile, Yelp, Yext (ensuring listings syndication, accuracy, review tracking, and SEO strength).
• Ensure all directory profiles are optimized for local search visibility, reputation management, and conversion.
• Partner with Agency Fifty3 and other digital vendors to oversee paid search, social, retargeting, display, geofencing, and remarketing campaigns.
• Evaluate media performance monthly and provide strategic insights such as: Spend reallocation, Updated keyword strategy, Audience refinements, Creative recommendations.
• Ensure vendor performance aligns with contractual expectations, KPIs, and community needs.
• Maintain a strong understanding of lead quality indicators and downstream leasing metrics to advise on the true value of generated leads.
• Own the accuracy and ongoing integrity of GA4 and GTM across the portfolio.
• Validate tracking scripts, pixels, tags, and conversions are implemented correctly for all websites, ILS platforms, and paid media partners.
• Conduct periodic audits to ensure the health of the digital tracking ecosystem, including cross-domain tracking, conversion attribution, and event measurement.
• Translate analytics insights into understandable, actionable takeaways for internal teams and onsite staff.
• Partner with BI/Data teams to ensure digital KPIs and data sources can be integrated into DOMO or future dashboards.
• Act as the key day-to-day liaison for digital agencies, ILS representatives, directory partners, and third-party vendors.
• Oversee the onboarding, setup, and configuration of digital tools for new communities.
• Ensure all needed contracts, approvals, assets, access permissions, and operational inputs are completed in a timely and accurate manner.
• Maintain digital documentation, processes, and standard operating procedures that support scalability across a large, diverse portfolio.
• Provide digital budget recommendations for new business, acquisitions, and lease-ups.
• Support review response strategy through Google, Yelp, and ILS platforms as needed to maintain brand reputation and consistency.
• Aid communities in maximizing online curb appeal, including image strategy, review health, and consumer-facing messaging.
• Ensure brand compliance and accuracy across all listings, websites, and collateral.
• Stay informed on emerging multifamily digital trends including SEM, SEO, AI capabilities, local search evolution, analytics changes, and platform algorithm updates.
• Recommend new tools, technologies, or strategic approaches to strengthen performance and streamline operations.
• Provide training and education to Leasing & Marketing teammates on digital best practices.

Qualifications

• 4–6+ years of experience in digital marketing, ideally within multifamily, student housing, real estate, or high-volume B2C environments.
• Intermediate to advanced working knowledge of AI tools including Gemini (or equivalents).
• Demonstrated experience analyzing paid media, SEO, and ILS performance and providing data-driven optimization recommendations.
• Proven hands-on experience managing and updating websites in WordPress and understanding of UX fundamentals.
• Deep understanding of lead funnels, digital attribution, conversion paths, and performance metrics.
• Proficiency with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google Tag Manager (GTM), and tracking ecosystem best practices is required.
• Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple projects across dozens of communities simultaneously.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate technical data into actionable business recommendations.
• Familiarity with Fair Housing laws, digital accessibility considerations, and industry regulations.
• Ability to embody and model the Cardinal Culture and Core Values daily.