It’s 2020, and with the fresh start of a new year, marketers in all verticals are paying attention to what’s shiny, new, and trending. What’s truly effective, though, when it comes to the competitive multifamily residential marketing space? Dive in and take a closer look at five of the top 2020 marketing trends—and how some of the hottest fall short for the multifamily market. 

Voice Search

As search itself has become more intelligent, voice-activated searches have surged in popularity. In fact, Google has estimated that in 2020 50% of searches will come from voice and images. While this is a trend that is shaping Amazon, e-commerce, and local business marketing, it shouldn’t consume your energy. Apartment search is still a highly visual process and seekers are using traditional search methods on desktop and mobile to find what they want. Optimizing your current paid search campaigns and keywords will help you capture more searches, both traditional searches and voice searches. But for 2020, avoid spending precious resources to create long-tail keyword phrases for apartment seekers using voice-search.A

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI tools in content creation and marketing are becoming more common. While AI and automated tools offer a great deal of promise for the future and may shape apartment searches, human touch still plays a big role in the work done by copywriters, designers, and digital advertising experts to create and optimize effective campaigns for residential communities.

Chatbots

Automation offers many ways to improve the way apartment seekers experience your website, the first place they may truly connect with your community. Many consumers are seeking ways to easily and quickly handle the steps in the leasing journey. Automated tools like tour schedulers and application portals can help accelerate the process. 

Yet there are places in the leasing journey where automation doesn’t offer improvement. Unlike tour scheduling and application portals, online chat experiences provide website visitors with a way to engage in a quick conversation when they have questions or need help.

And as use of chatbots increases, we’re seeing some areas where they fall short. 

Chatbots provide an automatic response triggered by a keyword or phrase. These programmed responses often don’t give apartment seekers the information they want, and they don’t bring a prospect closer to taking a tour or signing a lease. 

Human chat conversations, on the other hand, can address nuanced questions and provide a level of personalization that chatbots simply cannot. That’s why we offer Live Chat, a tool powered by a live team that can engage prospects in conversations that convert.

Self-guided Tours

Busy work schedules often mean that apartment seekers struggle to book tours during business hours when leasing staff are on site. As a result, self-guided tour offerings have increased in popularity. This trend has proved popular in the single-family space, where over 75% of prospects who book a tour chose the self-guided option (according to a recent analysis by Anyone Home). 

Is the multifamily market next? Self-guided tours do introduce new risks, including lower close rates when prospective tenants don’t truly connect with communities and new people on community premises without help from a leasing agent. There are downsides for both parties—the leasing agent and the apartment seeker—when no community expert is on hand to highlight key features and amenities. Without help from a leasing agent, apartment seekers are unable to receive answers about the residence or community and may leave questioning if the apartment is truly a good fit. When your leasing team is removed from the tour process they are unable to field prospect questions and turn inquiries into opportunities that highlight great aspects of the community.

Influencer Marketing

For certain audiences and brands, influencer or affiliate marketing is the most effective way to reach (and compel and convert) thousands. It doesn’t work the same way for the rental market. Social proof—rave reviews from your residents rather than outside affiliates—will always be important. Investing in influencers to drive interest in your community is budget that could be spent—and measured—more effectively elsewhere.

Conclusion

In 2020, effective digital marketing for multifamily communities should continue to focus on precise targeting, lease-driven strategies, and performance you can measure for optimization and higher ROI. Interested in learning more about how our expertise and powerful conversion tools can help you fill your community? Reach out to talk with one of our experts or to schedule a demo.

The post Five 2020 Marketing Trends That Don’t Work for Apartments appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Instagram Stories was introduced back in 2016 and since then it has taken off to become one of the most used features on Instagram. The Facebook-owned, 15-second format has allowed businesses to create engrossing and powerful advertising for a wide audience. Before jumping straight into brainstorming your quarter-minute masterpiece, let’s go over the 5 things you need to know about creating Stories ads for your apartment community.

1. Best Way to Reach Millennials and Gen Z

Millennials and Gen Zers are a huge segment of apartment renters. Instagram Stories is a great way to reach this demographic. 60% of Millennials and Gen Zers watch and post stories to their account, while 25% actively watch Stories of products and services they want to buy. Still not convinced you’ll be able to reach a younger audience with Instagram Stories? Almost two-thirds of US-based Instagrammers are 19-29 years old, a higher proportion than almost any other social media platform.

2. Higher Reach

At the end of the day, if no one sees your ad, they can’t take action. Over 500 million Instagram users watch Stories on a daily basis, and the relatively new format means you won’t be competing with as many advertisers as you would on traditional Instagram ads.

3. Powerful Targeting

Facebook has one of the most robust audience targeting tools in the industry. Marketers will be happy to know that all those powerful systems can be applied to Instagram Stories as well. You can use interests, locations, and behaviors to create the perfect audience for your ad.

4. Stories Format

Stories take up the full vertical screen on mobile devices. Only your content is viewable to the user. This allows your story viewers to be fully engrossed in your video with no distractions. Stories can take the form of a single vertical photo, a single video, or a sequence of photos or videos in a carousel format.

5. Brand Recall / Video

As with any marketing channel, video content is one of the best-performing ad formats on Instagram Stories. Tap-forward rate, which is when a user skips past your content by tapping it, is 5.65% lower with video than it is with images.  (Source: Socialinsider). Not only will more people view your story, but they will remember it too. According to Insivia, 95% of a video’s message is retained by viewers. If that still isn’t enough to persuade you, video social posts receive almost 50% more views than static images

Conclusion

Story ads are a great way to get your business in front of your audience. In only three years the story format has grown faster than anyone could have predicted. Plus, it is one of the least competitive formats to advertise on. This magic mix of a huge audience and low competition won’t last forever though, so marketers that jump on it now will have a huge head start on the competition. Need some help getting started? Schedule a consultation with our digital marketing experts today!

The post 5 Things Apartment Communities Need to Know About Stories Ads appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Every generation brings a new challenge to marketers and Generation Z is no different. How do you reach them both as a group and as individuals? With Gen Z reaching college-age, student housing communities will need to start approaching their marketing a bit differently to make sure they aren’t left with vacant units. Check out these 6 tips to increase your student housing website lead conversions.

Show Don’t Tell

The old saying “sell an experience, not a product” is especially true when selling to Gen Zers. They have been bombarded with online advertisements their entire lives, so a photo of your community with a “Tour Now” tagline just won’t cut it. You want to make sure your website conveys an experience that they can’t get at any other community. Show happy students using your amenities and smiling as they leave the building on their way to school. Have consistent messaging and imagery on all your campaigns to help push your experience. Remember, showing prospects what makes your community special converts more leads than simply telling them.

Video Content

Video consumption is at an all-time high, with over 50% of consumers watching a video about a product before making a purchase. Younger generations watch even larger amounts of video, with 89% using YouTube on a weekly basis. Suffice to say, if you want to get your student housing community in front of Gen Z, video content is going to have to be incorporated in your marketing campaign. Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered with this video guide for apartment communities and this social media video guide.

Respond to Reviews and Social Media

41% read at least 5 reviews before making a purchase. That number is higher when the product is an apartment. Try having your google and yelp reviews feed directly to your website. Not only will this make you more transparent, but it will keep visitors on your page longer.

If they leave a review or comment on your social media networks, then it is even more important to respond. These are people who are invested in your community and are willing to share their experience. Thank those that leave a positive review, and help those that leave negative ones. Bad customer service is the number one reason tenants leave apartments. Showing you are determined to fix a student’s problem will make them more willing to stay at your community their entire college career. 

24/7 Availability

Your leasing office may not be active all night, but students sure are. Having the ability to schedule tours and ask questions from your website at all hours of the day is vital to converting students to sign leases. Automatic tour schedulers and chat options will allow your community to still be active even after your leasing office has gone home for the night.

Unique Offer

82.3% of students want an email with a special promotion or discount. How they redeem this offer is just as important as the offer itself. Gen Zers grew up in the age of instant gratification. That means having them jump through several hoops to sign up for a promotion won’t work. Use tools such as Concession Manager to make sure your promotion is displayed prominently on your site and easily accessible regardless of the page the visitor is on.

Mobile Friendly

Gen Z spends more time on their phones than any other generation. Make sure your website is optimized for all those mobile visitors to avoid low conversion rates. Take the time to test and make sure the site is functional on various devices, including android, ios, and tablets. Have someone unfamiliar with the site go through and see if they can find information quickly and easily before setting it live. This will ensure a quality user experience and reduce site bounces.

Conclusion:

The good news is that Gen Z isn’t too different from the previous generation. Implementing the changes mentioned above will help prevent your student housing community from getting stuck in the past and losing potential residents. If you want to learn more about how to get students to your site, check out this article about Search Marketing Strategies for Student Housing.

The post How to Increase Student Housing Leases Through Your Website appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Constantly growing and innovating is not easy. Many companies struggle to continuously expand without losing their core values. For Conversion Logix, it is just another day at the office. Conversion Logix has made the Puget Sound Business Journal’s Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in Washington State for the 6th consecutive year. This year, Conversion Logix ranked 5th, their highest position yet. Sitting down with Co-Founders Jeff Jobe and Dave Pavlu shed some light on how the company maintains its consistent success and growth.

When asked what inspired him to help found a marketing tech company, Pavlu responded that it was all about finding a way to stop media spend on ineffective marketing strategies. “Programmatic seemed like a good way to only buy the part that works”. For Jobe, who had years of experience in the hospitality industry, it was about seeing an opportunity. “The hospitality industry was just beginning to adopt digital and I saw an opportunity to use my experience and relationships to build a company driven to move the industry forward.”

Digital Marketing is a constantly evolving industry. Despite this, Conversion Logix has been able to stay ahead of the curve. “We’ve accomplished this by creating a testing culture,” said Pavlu. “We test and prove (or disprove) a lot of solutions. We really only want to deliver on things that bring massive value for our clients. We have thrown a lot of great ideas away because they weren’t a clear value to our clients.”

“We test and prove (or disprove) a lot of solutions. We really only want to deliver on things that bring massive value for our clients.”

How exactly has Pavlu, Jobe and their team seen such growth? It can be attributed to two simple words. “Service Disruptors”, says Jobe. “We strive to make sure our clients are taken care of at whatever time they need us.  We created a culture of Hustle and focus coupled with a five-star service mentality which means we do it now”. That great service has led Conversion Logix to find massive success. While the industry as a whole is seeing a 9% growth, year over year, the Conversion Logix team saw a 266% increase in revenue from 2016 to 2018.

With such a packed industry, it can be easy to get lost in the crowd. How does Conversion Logix differentiate itself from the noise? “The team’s focus is unmatched in the industry. Our ability to not drop the ball and drive through with incredible results creates loyalty from our clients that is unmatched in this industry, said Jobe. How are these incredible results achieved? According to Pavlu, it comes from “Extreme Ownership. If we deliver a product, or a strategy, or a solution, we own it. We aren’t chasing great ideas. By the time it gets to our clients it is a tested proven digital strategy”.

“If we deliver a product, or a strategy, or a solution, we own it. We aren’t chasing great ideas. By the time it gets to our clients it is a tested proven digital strategy.”

One of the biggest challenges that comes with rapid growth is maintaining an intimate relationship with your clients. How has the team been able to grow and stay connected with their clients? “We have had to employ a lot of technology to ensure that our touch time with clients doesn’t go down and that we can push through the work on an efficient timeline,” said Pavlu. “We continue to scale with our business in order to put personal relationships at the core of our service-driven culture,” added Jobe.

As mentioned before, digital marketing is a constantly evolving industry. According to Pavlu, that won’t change in 2020. “It will continue to grow towards this mobile-centric world and demand marketing that reduces friction and lives up to the instant, on-demand, mobile lifestyle that our clients, and their clients demand. The days of making a prospect work hard to do business with you are gone. Make it easy or you are gone too.”

“The days of making a prospect work hard to do business with you are gone. Make it easy or you are gone too.”

How will Conversion Logix adjust for this instant and on-demand world that digital marketing will evolve into? Pavlu and the team are already working on it. “We will continue to make investments in software and solutions easy for our clients to get incremental business using digital tools. Tools that are measurable and capture actionable intent in real-time.”

Throughout the years Conversion Logix has grown both in size and from the lessons we learned. The team would not be where it is today without the amazing clients we work with. You have trusted us with your business and grown with us. From everyone at the Conversion Logix team, thank you. We look forward to many more years of amazing partnerships.

The post Conversion Logix Founders Celebrate Another Fastest Growing Company Award appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Getting prospects to visit your website is only half the battle. 97% of website visitors leave webpages without ever converting. That is a lot of missed opportunities for senior living communities trying to fill their units. Here are some helpful tips to make sure you are maximizing webpage conversions and getting the most out of your online presence.

Helpful Content

When someone visits an assisted living website, they are coming for information. Your website must be able to accommodate them. Having plenty of helpful and relevant content on your site will build trust between you and website visitors, leading to more conversions. Examples of content you can create include blogs, e-books, and newsfeeds.

Mobile Friendly

With 70% of internet traffic coming from mobile phones, having a website optimized for mobile users is a must for staying competitive.  80% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies with mobile sites or apps that help them easily answer their questions. Those questions can be answered with all the helpful content that you now have on your site.

Reviews

Do you remember the last time you made a significant purchase without reading the reviews for the product/service? Reviews are the best way to build trust between a brand and a website visitor. Having customer reviews on your site creates transparency, and makes visitors feel at ease knowing others have had positive experiences. You may be worried about negative reviews but these actually add to your brand’s image as long as the positives outweigh them.

Easy to Navigate

When someone visits a website, they do not want a steep learning curve. Have someone that isn’t familiar with your site go through it to try and find various resources. The same goes for the mobile version of your site. 57% of mobile users won’t recommend a brand with a poorly designed site. One way to improve the design of your website is to use software such as Schedule Genie to make it simple for your prospects to schedule tours and contact you.

Help Options

Speaking of a prospect’s ability to contact you, make it easy for visitors to get the help they need. This is key for boosting the quality of your customer! Having a chat service on your site where visitors can quickly ask a representative questions will make them feel important and more likely to convert. Using a live chat service is generally preferable as older generations prefer speaking to actual humans over a bot.

Unique Offer

The Senior Living market is crowded so making sure your site sticks out is a must. A great way to accomplish this is by offering a deal or discount on your website. Generally, when a prospect visits a Senior Living community’s website they are not ready to commit for several weeks, if not months. A compelling offer can help you capture a lead’s contact information so you can remarket them in the future. You can use a tool like Concession Manager to promote your offer on multiple pages of your website and help you capture your website visitors’ lead information.

Video Content

Including video content on your site is a must. Video is more effective at converting leads than any other form of content. Very few assisted living communities have implemented video in their marketing. This is a huge opportunity for those that do it sooner rather than later.

Conclusion

Nothing is worse than losing a potential future resident due to a poorly created webpage. Luckily, if you implement some or all these tips, you’ll see your conversion rates jump in no time.

The post 7 Easy Ways to Increase Senior Living Website Conversions appeared first on Conversion Logix.

“You have to make video content!”. You’ve been hearing this phrase and others like it for years now. They even have crazy statistics such as “50% of people watch a video about a product before they make a purchase” (Google). You already know you have to create video content to help showcase your community. That part goes without saying, the hard part is knowing where to begin, what type of videos to create, how much to budget for video content, and where to post it once you’ve made your masterpiece. Luckily, you made the wise choice of reading this article and in just a few minutes, you’ll be a video marketing whiz.

Where to Begin/Budgeting

Before we can even begin making videos, we need to determine what portion of your budget you want to allocate to video. Most videographers can cost anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars to create a video. So finding the right one is key. Some will only film and give you raw footage leaving you to edit which can take several days assuming you know what you’re doing. Many marketers prefer to produce through a marketing agency as they will do everything including writing, filming, and editing. Once the editing is complete they will even optimize your video for different channels and in different formats (we will get to that later). The benefit of using an agency is that they are all-inclusive, offering one price upfront so you know how much you’re going to need to budget without worrying about hidden fees and paying extra for someone to edit your content. After you find someone who is going to create your project, the next step is figuring out what types of videos you want to for your apartment community.

Types of Videos

There are several types of videos you can make to engage your leads and residents. This is not an exhaustive list, but it should give you some ideas on how to get started.

Tour Videos

Photos are a great way to show off your community’s best features. However, photos are only a piece of the puzzle, creating video tours can create further interest and allow you to stylize your content more than with photography. Just make sure it’s an accurate representation of your community.

Event Videos

Have an event that you want people to know about? Creating a video about it is one of the best ways to get the word out. This can be for either a special leasing event to get new leads or for current residents to engage more with the community.  Make sure the video is clear about what the event is, has an enticing offer to bring people in (free food, sweepstakes, etc.) and makes the event look fun. These videos shouldn’t be more than a minute or two in length otherwise viewers will fall off before making it to the end.

Promotional Videos

Similar to event videos, promotional videos are a great way to add a sense of urgency and get prospects to engage with your community. By rewarding interested prospects with an offer, you can speed up the time it takes for them to convert into a lead, and ultimately a lease. Pair this strategy with an offer claiming tool like Concession Manager so you can drive interested prospects to a landing page experience that allows them to take action right away. This will increase the follow-through you see from prospects and help your community build a healthy list of leads. The best part is these kinds of videos can work for multiple types of promotions. Want your leads to know you are offering a $0 deposit if they sign up this month? Make a promo video. Current tenants get a reduced rate if they renew early? Make a promo video. These videos will make it easier for your community to get more impressions and engagement as opposed to static content. Here’s an example of a promotional video we created for a luxury apartment client in Seattle for a YouTube ad campaign. The community used this video to attract potential residents with their “One Month Free” offer.

About Us Videos

About Us videos can give prospects a greater sense of connection to your community.  The difference between About Us and Tour videos is that About Us content focuses more on the history of the complex, the people that work there, and the values the community has. In contrast, those that want to see what the complex looks like and amenities that are offered would prefer a Tour video. About Us content is meant to be more of a storytelling video and makes for great content to add to your website.

Where to Place Videos

Okay, so you made your videos, congratulations! Now, where are you supposed to put them? Certain videos perform better on different channels, so let’s break it down.

Your Website’s Homepage

As mentioned before, About Us videos are some of the best types of video content to put on your website. Any video that showcases your community and has visual appeal can be placed here. You can typically put your longer videos here as well. An added bonus? Having a relevant video embedded on your site helps increase your SEO. It’s a win-win.

Social Media

As of 2019, Facebook and Instagram push video content in their algorithms. These are great places to post your content and reach your audience. Unfortunately, thanks to Facebook’s constantly changing algorithm, posting your videos organically won’t often give you the best results. If you want to really maximize impressions on your video content, creating paid social media campaigns is the way to go. Each platform has different requirements for aspect ratios and file size. Keep this in mind when receiving your videos from your videographer. Using the right psychographic and geographic targeting to maximize ROI is also required to have a successful social media video campaign. All this can get pretty overwhelming to create and monitor so many communities outsource ad creation and management to agencies that specialize in the multifamily industry.

YouTube

Although some would group YouTube with social media, YouTube is its own beast. If you plan on creating multiple videos, it is best to create a channel where prospects can have access to all your video content. Similar to social media, you can also pay to have your videos appear as advertisements to reach a larger audience. Through YouTube, you can take advantage of keyword targeting to reach people in your area who searching for apartments. Youtube Ads can be various lengths from 5 to 60 seconds and even longer. Check with your videographer if their package includes different lengths of your video to make sure you are getting the most out of YouTube. Read our article about the “5 Best Practices for YouTube Apartment Ads”  to learn more about how you can optimize your video ad campaign on YouTube.

Conclusion

There you have it! Now you know what video content you need to market your community and which platforms to advertise on. That wasn’t so bad, was it? There is one last step and that is making sure you keep that great content coming!

The post How to Create and Market Video Content for Apartments appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Innovation. That’s not the word most marketers think of when they hear “Out-of-Home Marketing”. Those old billboards and in-window flyers may seem outdated, and hard to scale. Now, what if I told you that Out-of-Home Marketing has an expected growth rate of 12.6% and can be used to reach your audience in new ways. Welcome to the world of DOOH.

What is DOOH?

DOOH stands for Digital-Out-Of-Home and refers to digital marketing that is displayed out in public areas. Examples include the digital billboard you would see in Times Square, on highways, and in malls. Out of home marketing is one of the oldest forms of advertising. The rise of the digital age has given new life to the medium with some cool new benefits.

Benefits of DOOH:

DOOH ads are typically located in high traffic areas, such as movie theaters and major transit centers. With multiple people being able to view an advertisement at the same time, impressions are racked up much more quickly than other digital marketing channels.

Unlike watching an advertisement online, viewers can not skip or exit out of a digital billboard ad. Compared to old fashioned print billboards, digital is much cheaper to set up, maintain, and update. It also comes with the added benefit of playing multiple ads in one loop.

Customization is also an advantage of DOOH. If there are times with less foot traffic in front of your ad, you can get a lower rate for those hours or completely pull your ad during those times. There are many unique ways a marketer can use DOOH, such as showing a rendered tour of an apartment community in front of where it is being constructed. Advertisers have even started to incorporate AR to engage viewers.

How Are Metrics Collected?

One of the biggest ways DOOH differs from In-home marketing is the way impressions are measured. Depending on where the ad is displayed, these methods can vary. For example, movie theaters use ticket sales to know how many people are in the auditorium that the ad is playing in. Digital billboards can use sensors and cameras to measure impressions. On the more advanced side, some billboards have face tracking and can give not only an exact amount of impressions but information about the demographics that viewed your ad as well. 

Depending on where you are, there are even ways for billboards to read data from a bystander’s phone to deliver a more custom ad experience (some countries treat this as a privacy issue so make sure to double-check what the laws are where your content is displayed). The most common way impressions are measured is by using data collected from 3rd party agencies to give you an estimate of how many people will pass by your sign. For example, if you are posting on a billboard that is on a highway with 10,000 daily drivers, then those will be the impressions counted. 

How do you Keep Track of Conversions?

So how does a marketer measure if the leads that are coming in are conversions from their DOOH impressions? After all, you can’t track them with a cookie. Well, the most commonly used way is to simply measure your campaign’s lead numbers before and after the DOOH advertisement goes live. Using QR codes on your ad can help track users to achieve more accuracy with conversions.

Why Invest in DOOH?

It takes at least 6 impressions before a prospect is ready to become a warm lead. The more chances you have to leave an impression on them the better the chances they will see what you are offering. DOOH can be a cost-effective way to reach those that may not normally see your content in organic/paid internet searches. The added benefit of being able to interact and engage prospects in a physical space makes it easier for them to remember you and your message.

Conclusion:

DOOH has put a new spin on one of the oldest forms of marketing. Taking advantage of this revamped marketing channel while it is still growing is a great way to supplement your current marketing strategy. Using DOOH will keep your brand in mind both in and out of the conventional digital landscape.

The post What is DOOH? appeared first on Conversion Logix.