How Catalyst Marketing Cuts Optimization Time by 30-40% Across a Multi-Property Real Estate Portfolio

Student housing and multifamily real estate is not a set-it-and-forget-it vertical. Every property has its own leasing calendar, and enrollment timing varies property to property and even region to region.

Manually optimizing that many accounts means a lot of repetitive clicking, structure-building, and double-checking, with a real risk of missing something along the way.

"It takes a lot of time to optimize accounts and figure out your structure," Robin says.

Without a consistent system to run through, that complexity could easily eat into the rest of the team's day.

1. Optimization blueprints for consistent monthly reviews

Catalyst completes optimizations for every property at least once a month, touching every account in the portfolio. Robin built out a set of blueprints in Optmyzr to standardize that process, creating a system the team can run through every time and trust.

"The ability to have one task after another, and Optmyzr's ability to also say, 'hey, nothing's here,' so you can just move on to the next task, is also very comforting."

Along with flagging what to fix, blueprints explain the why, which Robin sees as core to making them useful day to day.

“It doesn't just give me a task and say, 'here, figure it out.' It's prompting me like, 'hey, this happened, this is what you should do.”

2. Fast RSA updates with duplicate ad detection

Updating responsive search ads across a large client list used to mean working through Google Ads' interface or Google Editor, account by account. With Optmyzr, the same updates take less than five minutes.

"Optmyzr has saved our lives so much. It's so much time with just that one feature."

The recently added ability to toggle on duplicate ads has become part of that same workflow, cutting out a step Robin used to handle manually.

3. AI-generated RSA copy that already matches brand style

Catalyst writes headlines in title case, and Robin estimates picking an Optmyzr-suggested headline or description about seven times out of ten when refreshing an ad.

"If a headline is already written in the title case, whenever I click it to edit it, Optmyzr kind of already picked up on that. So any of the suggestions it gives me in AI are in the title case. I don't have to fix it."

4. The PPC Audit Score as a non-negotiable standard

Robin treats Optmyzr's PPC Audit Score as a mandatory check for every account, with specific standards the team holds itself to, like headlines between 20 and 30 characters and descriptions between 60 and 90.

"That is a non-negotiable now, because I love seeing the 100 on the magnification."

5. Sidekick for digging deeper

Robin investigates issues manually first, but turns to Optmyzr's AI assistant, Sidekick, when something doesn't add up or needs a second look. Sidekick can now answer more specific questions than it could even a few months ago, including pinpointing what changes drove a shift in a given KPI over the last 30 days.

"I always put my team onto it. If you have a question you can't seem to find the answer to and I'm not around, Sidekick will figure it out for you, or lead you in a direction where you can figure it out yourself."

Robin compares Sidekick to Alfred from Batman: not out fighting crime directly, but always ready with the right tool when called on.

Across the portfolio, Robin estimates that using blueprints in Optmyzr cuts down 30 to 40% of the team's optimization workflow into one streamlined process. That shows up most clearly in the account-level details- RSA updates that once took meaningful chunks of time now take minutes, and the team regularly ranked among Optmyzr's top 10 percent of users by usage.

Beyond time savings, Robin sees Optmyzr shaping the quality of the team's decision-making.

Recommendations come with context, not just instructions, and that combination of structure and reasoning has changed how the team approaches optimizations.

"As long as you understand what you're doing, Optmyzr is what I'd call a beautiful sidekick to your Batman. It trains you to be better and to think better."

Parting words

Robin is direct about where AI-generated ad assets still fall short for an industry like real estate, where brand consistency and accuracy matter and where there's little room to be wrong about property details.

"Not enabling certain AI features can hinder your account, because accounts are being pressured to thrive on AI. But it's never going to be 100 percent. It doesn't always follow brand guides, and there's no way to customize or narrow that down right now."

For Robin, that's exactly why the human stays in the loop, and why a tool that explains its suggestions rather than just generating them matters.