I use Craigslist, where I post ads myself. It takes less than 10 minutes to post one ad with photos. Zillow,the same.
If you calculate the time spent preparing these ads by dividing the hourly rate for your staff who performs this task and how many ads you expect them to post per day, you will see Craigslist is not free.
Then,document your phone calls and visits for a month. I spend an average of 5-11 minutes on the phone with each phone inquiry. About 10-30 minutes with a visitor. E-mail inquiries takes less then 5 minutes. Add all of this time up then multiply by the hourly rate you pay your staff for a cost.
Do you want to use magazine ads, such as ForRent.com? Get a quote from the one that has the best distribution.
Your website? How much is it costing you to host it each year? Also, does your property management software include marketing? What percentage of the cost do you want to apply to your marketing budget?
Do you use signs and banners? What is the initial cost of these?
Brochure boxes? I use a good quality paper and print them myself. A ream of 500 sheets of this paper costs $14.00,plus the time and ink to print them and the cost of the box.
Check your phone bill. Do they charge an "advertising fee" to be in the yellow pages? Mine does.
Facebook? Pinterest? You Tube? How much time do you allow staff to work on these?
How about a newsletter? I still do a paper newsletter,but I am looking at switching.
Do you use a mini-model? How many? What was the initial cost of supplies?
I'm sure I missed something. Could everyone else help me out here?
I spend around 3-4 hours per day marketing my small property, as written above. So, if I spent 4 hours per day and made $20 per hour, you would be spending about $80 per day or $400 per week on labor for marketing. This really varies so much daily, especially with phone and walk-in traffic. On a good day last week, I had 17 phone calls and 4 visits. This resulted in zero applications (I have very tight criteria). I leased it to someone who 1. never called; 2. never visited; 3. never emailed. He saw my ad on Craigslist, went to our website and applied online.