Mule Media helps real estate companies turn leads into lease

Mule Media’s mission is to help its multifamily real estate clients grow. It has built a business that truly collaborates with its clients.

When Fernando Clemente launched Mule Media in 2019, he planned to build a full-service marketing agency focused on the insurance industry, where he had spent his career up to that point. But after a friend asked him to market a multifamily apartment building, he quickly realized there was a much bigger opportunity. “[Real estate] companies don’t just need to drive leads. They need leases so people are moving into those apartments,” says Clemente. 

It wasn’t long before word spread that Mule Media, which offers brand strategy, website development, SEO, paid advertising, social media, content marketing and email campaigns, could consistently fill apartments. The company has handled as many as 130 buildings at a time, with growth primarily driven through word of mouth. 

Clemente’s differentiating factor in the market is primarily customization. For example, he and his team do not use the common advertising distribution networks that are popular within the industry as their main strategy. “The industry default is to dump budget into this automated black box and call it strategy,” he says. 

Instead, the team builds and manages search campaigns manually so that they can target the specific units a property needs to lease. If a building suddenly has an influx of two-bedroom vacancies, his approach allows his team to quickly focus on those floor plans rather than taking a more generic approach across all available inventory. That level of control has helped his team generate a higher volume of leases than a one-size-fits-all automated approach. 

He also measures success differently than many real estate marketing agencies do. While others focus on generating leads, Clemente’s objective is to get leases signed. “Anyone can flood a property with form-fills,” he says. “We build the entire funnel around the outcome of signed leases.”  

Such outcomes require more than marketing tactics. Digital Mule’s team understands occupancy phases, lease-up timelines and concession strategies, all of which contribute to helping clients define the right actions across the tenant cycle. The team also understands “the lender pressure our clients are under, so we’re a strategic partner, not a vendor waiting for orders,” he says.

The combination of tailored marketing strategies and deep industry expertise has helped fuel the company’s growth. In less than a decade, Mule Media has grown into a $2.8 million business with 19 employees.

One of the biggest lessons Clemente has learned is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Every market requires its own strategy, and sometimes the best marketing happens offline. He has created strategic partnerships with local restaurants and businesses to offer discounts to local tenants. The team uses grassroots tactics like distributing flyers locally. Clemente also creatively targeted student renters: Instead of advertising monthly rent, the team promoted per-semester, per-student pricing. “We treat each property like a problem to solve instead of a budget to spend,” he says.

Amid economic uncertainty and higher interest rates, Clemente has also had to think carefully about how Mule Media delivers value to its clients. “Mass exposure,” he says, “is the value an agency should deliver first. Today you develop the content and the strategy to get a client in front of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Then you start tailoring your approach to be more targeted.”

But visibility alone isn’t enough. Renters now often compare floor plans, research neighborhoods and read online reviews before ever booking a tour. To turn that interest into signed leases, companies need “a good product, good people on your team, a real sense of community and clear reasons to choose a place and stay there,” he says. “That’s the trend that’s going to separate the winners from everyone else.” Clemente sees growing opportunity among smaller property owners who struggle to compete with larger, better-resourced operators. 

Since then, Mule Media has expanded beyond multifamily real estate to adjacent industries. Clemente found that the same approaches that worked for real estate companies—customized approaches that fuse online and grassroots efforts—worked for local trade businesses too. From roofers and plumbers to larger contracting companies looking to streamline their marketing, the principles that helped Clemente succeed in multifamily buildings continue to shape how the agency approaches every client.

As a small-business owner, Clemente has relied on his Capital One Spark Cash Plus card to help him grow. Over the years, his monthly spending has increased from about $5,000 to more than $150,000, and he uses the cash back rewards to purchase everyday office supplies like printer ink and paper. The card also lets him redeem rewards directly on Amazon, which he uses to buy gift cards for employees to celebrate birthdays and work anniversaries. The card, he says, “provides flexibility and acts almost like this small chest that can be used for ancillary or miscellaneous expenses.”