The lead source said "drive-by." I have my doubts. Ask a new resident "How did you hear about us?" and you often get the first choice on the list. I once changed that first choice from Apartments.com to For Rent. The leading source changed with it. I get it. They came for an apartment, and the form is in the way. But that answer feeds the report we use to decide where the marketing money goes. I thought about that last week at The Harbor, our student housing community near ETSU in Johnson City, Tennessee. The Harbor has a yacht club. There is no yacht. The Yacht Club is what the management team named the local business program. Fifteen members: restaurants, a barbershop, a bank, a tanning salon, a soap shop, Red Bull. Show a Harbor ID, get the deal. This tray was on a kitchen island. It held a free Sun Tan City pass marked $105 value, a free Buff City Soap mini, five dollars from City Barbeque and ten percent off at Texas Roadhouse. Plus a can of Red Bull, because college. It looks great. The name is clever and the team earned the credit. Will it lease an apartment? Probably not by itself. NMHC and Grace Hill asked 172,000 apartment renters in 2024 why they move, and lower rent came first at 49%. A free tanning pass was not the top answer. The offer is the drive up, the front door, the tour, the unit and the price. The tray is the mint on the pillow. The value is in the half of the program that isn't on the tray. Those fifteen businesses see students we haven't met, including ones who live somewhere else. With our name on their counter, each one can send us a lease. Would we know if they did? A dropdown won't tell us. A QR code for each partner will. So will an offer tied to the partner's name, because the source gets recorded when the prospect claims it. Neither one asks a 20-year-old to remember where they saw us. Skip that and the program may still be working. You just can't tell which partners send leases and which ones just hold our flyers. This is the most frustrating part of the business for me. The spend is known to the dollar. What it bought is often a guess. A lease gets signed and the lead source reads "drive-by." Maybe it was the drive-by. Maybe it was the coaster at the barbecue place three weeks earlier. Or maybe "drive-by" was the first choice on the list.