The student housing industry is set to see a rise in competition as new supply hits the market. Yardi forecasts 46,285 new beds will be added by the end of 2024, a 30% increase from the 35,610 beds delivered in 2023.

As the demand for student housing is tampered with by rising supply and increasingly cost-conscious families, how you market and position your student property will be more important than ever in the years ahead.

If you’re tasked with leasing student properties in high-supply markets and aren’t meeting your expected targets, here are five marketing strategies you can apply to ramp up pre-leasing activity.

Optimize Keyword Targeting in Paid Search

Paid Search advertising is highly effective for reaching prospects actively in the market for student housing. With one of the highest lead conversion rates, traffic from this channel tends to be the most qualified. To get the most out of this channel,  ensure you have a tight keyword strategy in place to avoid wasting ad dollars on really broad search terms if you are in a highly competitive multifamily market. Consider increasing your search budgets during seasons when your two buying personas tend to search more (November and March for parents, then spring and summer months for students) and adjust your location targeting accordingly.

Reach Students Living Near Campus With Hyper-Local Targeting Strategies

Increase your brand awareness among current students with local targeting strategies. While state and national targeting is typically the most effective location targeting strategy for reaching parents and incoming freshmen, local targeting can be an effective way to increase leasing activity among college students looking for new accommodations for the next semester or school year. When it comes to local search optimization, maintaining an up-to-date Google Business Profile can be key to increasing visibility in Google Maps and local search listings in Google. In addition to optimizing your Google Business Profile, consider leveraging radius targeting in Display and Paid Social advertising to ensure your property is discoverable throughout the school year.

Increase Visibility With Social Media Advertising

Social media is important to students. They use it as a source of information and as a way to connect with family and friends. 

Simply publishing content on social media, however, means running the risk of reaching audiences that are not interested in off-campus housing. Invest in ads so you can make use of targeting options such as location and interests that guarantee you’re reaching your buyer personas. Consider advertising on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to ensure you’re reaching as many interested people as possible. While Facebook is widely used by Gen X parents, Instagram and TikTok cater to both students and younger parents. YouTube spans both of these age groups.

With 2.9 billion monthly active users, YouTube exposes your ads to a wide range of audiences but can be coupled with keyword targeting to ensure your ads are sure to reach a high-intent audience.

Leverage the Rise of Connected TV Popularity

Another video platform that is gaining popularity is Connected TV, especially for those within your current student and parent age groups. As more households get an Internet-connected TV device (87%), CTV usage is projected to be at 110 million among Gen Z and millennials. The good news for marketers is that almost 75% of these CTV viewers say they don’t mind watching ads on CTV as long as content remains free over paying for ad-free content. Non-skippable and with impressive targeting capabilities based on viewing habits, interests, and demographics, CTV ads are highly personalized and can, therefore, offer high conversion potential.

“Sell” the Right Lifestyle Messaging

One of the reasons students opt for off-campus housing is that it’s more private, it’s less chaotic than in-campus dorm life, and it offers more freedom. Highlight how your student housing can provide all of these – and more – to the student prospects. Talk about your amenities and how convenient their student life will be living in one of your units. Make these pieces of information known by publishing them on your social media channels and website.

Set Your Property Up For Success in a Competitive Market

While the reopening of schools has brought back a consistent flow of students seeking accommodation, the competitive landscape underscores the importance of strategic marketing efforts. By implementing targeted strategies such as local targeting, social media advertising, video advertising, paid search, and emphasizing lifestyle benefits, property owners can effectively position their offerings to attract discerning students and parents. In an increasingly competitive market, differentiation through effective marketing will be key to maximizing occupancy and profitability in the student housing sector.

Let us help you shape your student housing marketing strategy. Book a call today.

The post Student Housing Marketing Strategies to Turn Around Occupancy Quickly appeared first on Conversion Logix.

During our webinar with Student Housing Business, “You Have Eight Seconds: How to Market Student Housing in 2023,” we received insightful questions from the audience about ad targeting, TikTok, chat services, and marketing attribution. (If you haven’t had a chance to watch that webinar, click here to watch the recording.) 

In this blog, two of our speakers, Kat Callender, Conversion Logix’s resident student housing marketing expert, and Andrew Cederlind, our President and COO, answered all of your pressing student housing marketing questions. Let’s dive into the Q&A to discover their tips and strategies. 

Digital Advertising

Question: What is the best practice for creating video content for TikTok?

Andrew: Take high-quality photos and videos and then use an agency that can turn that into an engaging ad that speaks to your community. Keep it simple, and don’t try to overcomplicate it with influencers.

Question: Our off-campus student housing is trying to do paid ads through Facebook/Instagram. We want to capture the audience in our area, but Facebook/Instagram rejects us when doing so, and it wants us to promote to the entire United States. Do you have any insight on paid ads and how we can target our area?

Andrew: When you properly categorize the ads and follow ad targeting rules, you should be able to run the ads with more location targeting options. If your ads are getting rejected, it could be because you are selecting targeting options that aren’t recommended or allowed. I recommend working with an agency that specializes in EHO and student housing paid social to ensure you are doing this correctly. 

Question: What is the best way to submit an ad for targeted student population housing ads on Instagram and have it not get rejected? And, under what category? 

Andrew: They should be categorized under housing ads and follow the EHO rules.

Question: How do you deal with the targeting limitations for housing ads, specifically in the special ads category on social media platforms (Instagram/Snapchat) and the limited targeting of TikTok? 

Andrew: We do this in several ways. One of the primary strategies we use is to focus on targeting prospects with intent to purchase or an interest in student housing. We use a variety of interest and behavior targeting strategies to do this. TikTok is great for this because it is more granular than most other forms of advertising and has a large college-aged audience. In addition to interests, we get strategic with location targeting, and with the platforms and placements we choose to advertise on. We run ads on TikTok and Instagram Stories when we want to be discovered by students and Facebook to make sure our ads also reach their parents.

Question: How much do you use GeoFencing to capture who has been at your property? Is it worthwhile?

Kat: During the height of the pandemic, we didn’t use it much as it was harder to pinpoint prime locations for its use, and most touring was virtual. Now that schools are fully back in class and on campus, the school’s location can be a great choice for geofencing to capture students looking to move off campus for the first time or to encourage previous off-campus dwellers to visit your property. We’ve been adding Precision Mobile Targeting Plus more frequently to properties we work with.

Prospect Communication

Question: What do you recommend for our on-site leasing teams to implement to be authentic in replying to Messenger inquiries, texting, phone calls, and emails? We have leasing team members responding to Messenger messages by asking them to call the leasing office when they reached out by digital text/form. A lost opportunity to reach people on the platform they started the convo. What do you recommend for better conversations with students who have reached out primarily via text/forms?

Kat: I recommend having someone dedicated to SMS conversations. Part of what makes live chat so attractive is the quickness of response. They do not want to be told to call the leasing office. Gen Z has grown up entirely in the digital/social age and spent most of their high school and early college life on Zoom due to Covid, this is how they feel comfortable. Being able to accommodate this is critical to winning their buy-in.

Question: Is there a live chat that you recommend? I’ve tried out a few that seem more geared towards multi-family instead of student housing.

Andrew: We have a 24/7 managed live chat service that performs well with a 75% chat-to-lead conversion ratio. It also includes real-time translation into 40+ languages which is great for international students.

Marketing Attribution

Question: How do you attribute leads to digital advertising?

Kat: Through MatchBack reporting with The Conversion Cloud® and Live Chat, we were able to cross-reference leases in a year vs. the leads that engaged with the applications on the client’s website. This resulted in an 11% to 22% conversion rate per property.

Question: Can the panelist share something they did (TikTok, ad, etc.) that had a measurable ROI? 

Kat: We designed a video ad for a student housing property showcasing imagery of their apartment interiors and copy about the types of apartments they have available. These were their results over four months:

• 1,176,434 ad impressions
• 14,718 watched the video 100%
• 1,870 ad clicks
• 13 leases attributed at this time

This is how we were able to identify the ad’s impact on leasing:

1. We identified a lift in organic website traffic correlated with the ad campaign.
2. We launched our lead generation application, The Conversion Cloud®, on the client’s website. This allowed the team to collect the names, emails, and phone numbers of students who scheduled a tour or signed up to join the waitlist. 
3. In our Conversion Cloud® platform, we have attribution reporting that lets you see if they clicked an ad or searched organically to get to the website before converting. We were able to upload a resident list for this community and identify matches between the lead list and the leases through MatchBack, our lease attribution feature.

Question: What is a typical/average new tenant acquisition cost in the student housing industry, as far as marketing/advertising cost per new tenant who signs a lease? $300 to $500 per new tenant? 

Kat: Based on the MatchBack report we ran vs. the monthly cost of a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign, the spend per lease hovered between $78 and $135. You can get away with slimmer budgets on student campaigns if you target effectively and make quarterly optimizations to adjust to the constantly changing audience, which includes parents and students.

Wait! There’s More…

If you benefitted from Kat and Andrew’s student housing marketing expertise, you’ll want to watch the recording of their previous LinkedIn Live event, “TikTok Ads For Student Housing Q&A”.

Want more tips about communicating with Gen Z? Check out How to Get Gen Z Renters to Talk to You. 

Interested in learning more about our student housing marketing services? Visit our Student Housing page.

About Conversion Logix

Conversion Logix®, LLC provides digital marketing services, and licenses lead generation software to industry leaders in the student housing, multifamily housing, senior living, automotive, and small business markets. Conversion Logix has been ranked on the Inc. 5000 seven years in a row and listed in Austin Business Journal’s Fast 50 Growing Companies. Conversion Logix is a Premier Google Partner, a Facebook Business Partner, and developed The Conversion Cloud®, a lead generation software suite designed to help businesses generate more leads, appointments, and sales.

The post How to Market Student Housing in 2023: Q&A With Industry Experts appeared first on Conversion Logix.

With over 1 billion active users and a never-ending feed of personalized bite-sized video content, TikTok has quickly become the go-to social video platform for college-aged students. Gen Z uses TikTok as a discovery platform as much as an entertainment platform, often citing that they discover brands and make purchase decisions based on ads they have been served or content they have searched for.

As exciting as this is for student housing marketers, the app has received pushback, from many organizations, and marketing teams are struggling to keep up with the pace of change on the platform. We’ve received many questions from marketers in the student housing space over the past few months who want to try TikTok advertising but feel like they are entering an entirely new domain and need help getting started.

In response to this, we hosted a LinkedIn Live event with Andrew Cederlind, our president and COO, and Kat Callender, our Student Housing advertising expert, to address these questions and concerns. You can check out the full recording, TikTok Ads For Student Housing Q&A, if you missed it. 

Let’s dive into the top questions student housing marketers like you are asking about TikTok Advertising.

The Truth About Ad Creative on TikTok 

One of the most common concerns among student housing marketers is developing creative for TikTok. If you are using it for organic reach, you have to create fresh and engaging content frequently, which is a big challenge for short-staffed marketing teams operating on limited video and creative budgets. This is one of the reasons we recommend student housing marketers use the advertising side of the platform. It allows you to focus your efforts on one or two pieces of quick ad creative that can be updated and replaced over time and is guaranteed to deliver the reach you are looking for.

Both organic and traditional ad-style content can be effective in ads on the platform. Organic content presented as an ad can result in high video engagement rates, with viewers often watching videos all the way through.

However, even traditional ad content that is simple and headline-focused delivered even more impressive awareness and leasing results. Although there may be fewer impressions and a lower percentage of viewers watching the entire ad, overall reach and lead attribution remain high, proving that both creative styles can be successful in ads on the platform.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

We get a lot of questions about how we measure success on social media platforms like TikTok. Attribution and tracking aren’t as easy with brand awareness initiatives as it is with other forms of advertising like Paid Search. 

In response to this, Kat shared the two main metrics she likes to use to tie TikTok Awareness to key results.

1. Pre-leasing lift: Many properties in Kat’s portfolio have seen an 8-10% increase in pre-leasing rates year-over-year following the launch of a TikTok ad campaign. 
2. Organic traffic lift: In addition to the direct traffic generated by the ads, many properties experience a significant increase in organic traffic because of their TikTok campaigns.

This 8-10% increase can be attributed to the platform’s reach and its impact on organic search traffic, as users often search for brands (Google Search) after viewing their TikTok ads.

Budget Considerations

Although advertising on TikTok can be effective, many marketers may be concerned about the potential costs. Compared to similar platforms like Instagram and YouTube, TikTok requires significantly less investment to generate impressive results. A monthly spend of $850 can result in substantial reach and lead attribution, making it a high-return advertising option for student housing properties.

Instagram vs TikTok

When comparing Instagram and TikTok, both platforms offer engaging video content. TikTok has a significantly larger reach, making it a more effective advertising medium. Moreover, TikTok ads tend to be more engaging than Instagram Stories or Reels, which contributes to their overall success. “I don’t find that the video content can be as engaging as TikTok,” Kat shared.

In the conversation, Kat highlighted the massive reach of TikTok campaigns, with impression numbers ranging from 175,000 to over 300,000 a month. 

Furthermore, Kat emphasizes the platform’s enhanced targeting capabilities that continue to evolve, making advertising more accessible and tailored to specific audience needs. This allows advertisers to connect with their desired audience more effectively.

Targeting Options and Best Practices

In their discussion, Andrew and Kat touched upon the various targeting options available on TikTok and shared their insights on the ones that have worked the best

Location targeting is a crucial aspect of TikTok ads, especially for businesses such as student housing or local services. Additionally, Kat highlighted the importance of targeting based on broad interests, video interactions, and hashtags such as campus life, education, and college education. However, it is important to note, specifically targeting certain universities or anything that specifically falls under the university is not currently an available option. 

General apartment or rental interest targeting has also proven to be successful for Kat and her campaigns. She further explained that if a property has its own TikTok account and creates videos, it is possible to link one of its videos to the TikTok ad. This technique can help increase engagement and brand awareness by outlining the brand and linking to a specific video. 

Regulatory Considerations

Finally, Andrew and Kat touch on potential regulatory concerns surrounding TikTok, specifically regarding geo-targeting and fair housing. Kat explained that TikTok has become more sophisticated in its ad targeting capabilities, allowing advertisers to target specific Designated Market Areas (DMAs) for more accurate and effective campaigns. This granular targeting is particularly beneficial for businesses looking to reach audiences within specific geographic locations.

However, with more precise targeting comes the responsibility of ensuring fair housing practices. Kat emphasized that businesses must remain compliant with fair housing regulations when creating and targeting TikTok ads. By being mindful of their targeting choices and the content they promote, businesses can avoid potential pitfalls and maintain a successful and compliant advertising strategy on the platform.

In the final part of the discussion, Andrew addresses the future of TikTok concerning the recent challenges TikTok faces with the US Government and some universities banning access to TikTok concerning data privacy. 

In the end, Andrew shared his standpoint—TikTok is a large medium and a powerful platform that has a long runway. The results of TikTok speak for themselves. He encourages taking advantage of TikTok and trying to capitalize on the audience and grow from there.

The post TikTok Ads For Student Housing: What Marketers Want to Know appeared first on Conversion Logix.

I’m sure this isn’t your first time hearing a marketer wax poetic about the benefits of reaching prospects on social media and “meeting your future residents where they are”. These platforms have forever changed media consumption habits making it a can’t-miss opportunity for marketers. 

As much as we love all social media, the inevitable day comes when the social fabric changes and everyone jumps ship to a new platform to reach their audience.

Today that ship is TikTok, and it’s become a megayacht transporting its users through a sea of personalized video content.

The short-form video-sharing app is most popular among young adults, with 43% of users ages 18-24 and 32% of users ages 25-34 (DataReportal, 2022), making it an incredible platform to reach students and young professionals.

Building up a presence on a new social media platform can feel daunting, and for many organizations, “going viral” isn’t a viable marketing strategy. If this is the case for your organization, the best strategy is to leverage TikTok through advertising. Unlike uploading organic video content to TikTok and hoping to “make it big”, TikTok advertising offers a targeted and scalable approach to reaching college students in the market for an apartment. 

Here are five reasons why we think student housing marketers should consider advertising on TikTok.

1. TikTok ads are immersive.

TikTok offers full-screen mobile video placements that can highlight the features and benefits of highly visual products like apartments. 

Whether you are sharing a video walkthrough of a unit, showcasing student social life, or a splash into the community pool, the vertical video format can bring your units and amenities to life across your prospects’ screens in a way that static images can’t match. 

This lifelike ad format makes TikTok ads more memorable, increasing brand recall. Across client campaigns, we saw lifts in organic and paid search results after running TikTok ad campaigns, indicating the stickiness of video-first branding strategies like TikTok.

2. TikTok has powerful targeting and AI capabilities. 

The platform has evolved in recent years from its initial focus on music and dance videos into an entertainment platform that caters to all types of interests and niche communities.

Today the platform is well known for its intelligent learning algorithm. It excels at determining which video content users are likely to respond to, which is why its “for-you-feed” is such a popular feature of the platform. 

As a TikTok advertiser, you gain access to a wide variety of interest-targeting options that ensure you reach your target market consistently. When creating student apartment ads, we were able to layer TikTok’s targeting strategies to build an audience of prospective renters looking for housing for a specific university, enabling us to reach the right audience for our clients.

3. TikTok users are more engaged.

The TikTok user base engages on the platform more than other social media sites, with 79% of users reading the comments and over half saving sound clips or searching hashtags (Nielsen). 

Even though the content is primarily video, users on the platform aren’t just passively scrolling through content. They are opening and reading comments, sharing content, and utilizing the search function to discover new content. 

4. TikTok prioritizes discovery.

The platform is unique in that it prioritizes discovery, presenting users with a wide variety of creators and content curated to their user behavior. A Nielsen study commissioned by TikTok found that 88% of TikTokers love discovering new content while using the app, and 52% of users say they discover new products through ads on TikTok.

Unlike other social networks, where users follow friends and expect to see most of their content from their followers, users are in a discovery mindset on the platform, making them more open to seeing content from new users and brands.

5. TikTok users are receptive to advertising on the app.

Over 80% of users say ads on TikTok are enjoyable (Kantar). 43% of heavy TikTok users feel that the advertising on the platform blends in well with the content, and 61% of users feel that advertising on TikTok is unique compared to other top social and video platforms (Nielsen).

Interested in bringing your brand to TikTok but don’t know where to begin? Learn more about Conversion Logix’s TikTok advertising service and how our team of social ad experts can get you started. 

The post Five Reasons Student Housing Should Advertise on TikTok appeared first on Conversion Logix.

At Conversion Logix, we understand that a continuous marketing approach brings benefits to everyone. Driving traffic to your site, generating conversions, and analyzing where that traffic comes from lets you make immediate changes to your campaign for a better customer experience. Today, we introduce two new features to deliver successful campaigns.

Continuous Marketing Approach: 

These new solutions enhance the capabilities of our three-step approach to digital marketing, “Capture, Connect, and Convert.” The 3Cs represent the process of driving traffic, generating leads, and nurturing prospects until they convert. 

Analyzing attribution in the last conversion step shows us the customer journey and enables insights that we leverage for performance-enhancing optimizations.

Reach Your Target
Market On TikTok

TikTok rose to social media juggernaut status during the beginning of the pandemic when video consumption and social media usage were on the rise. It’s now a preeminent social network with over one billion monthly users worldwide (TikTok).

With the addition of TikTok advertising, we expand your reach across social media channels, delivering another powerful “capture strategy” for our clients. 

We’ve tested the effectiveness of TikTok advertising among a sample of student housing and multi-family housing clients and found promising results.

Our Findings:

• Expanded reach. TikTok ads delivered high volumes of impressions and quality traffic.
• Increased brand recall. We identified a lift in organic search traffic, paid search, and direct traffic for clients running TikTok advertising, indicating the effectiveness of our ads in building brand awareness.
• Higher ad engagement. TikTok ads received high volumes of clicks, video views, and video completion rates. 
• Lead generation. In our study, TikTok ads drove traffic that completed lead-generating actions in our Conversion Cloud software platform. These actions included: scheduling a tour, claiming an offer, or contacting the community.

Expand Your Marketing Mix With TikTok

Reach out to your Conversion Logix account manager to include TikTok in your campaign strategy.  If you’re new to Conversion Logix, schedule a call today, and we’ll help get you started!

Our New Virtual Assistant, Say Hello To Claire

To enhance the customer experience, engage prospects with immediate information, and reduce stress on your staff, we are introducing a new virtual assistant, Claire. Claire is a complementary addition to The Conversion Cloud and can answer frequently asked questions anytime, day or night. Pairing Claire with Live Chat further enhances the customer experience allowing a live team to answer those tough or detailed questions.  

This will be a game-changer for clients that haven’t yet made the leap to adding live chat services to their site. This chat product will enable our clients to respond to inquiries instantly during times when onsite teams may not be available to answer a call or respond to a web inquiry.

Claire can:

• Prompt engagement. The vast majority of queries are related to pricing and availability. Claire can prompt customers with frequently asked questions, increasing the likelihood of engagement. 
• Deliver instant responses. The automated nature of a virtual assistant provides immediate information to website visitors. This ensures your website visitors have instant access to support 24/7.  Many common questions, including pricing and availability, arise outside of business hours and can be immediately addressed.
• Increase lead conversions. Claire encourages prospects to schedule a tour or claim an offer after their initial chat conversation, increasing lead generation from your site.
• Gain customer insights. Identify the topics most frequently asked by your target market with real-time reporting in The Conversion Cloud.
• Fully integrate with Live Chat. Seamlessly incorporate Live Chat with your virtual assistant experience to deliver personalized responses from highly trained chat professionals.

Bring Claire to Your Website

Reach out to your Conversion Logix account manager to enable Claire as a part of your Conversion Cloud subscription. If you’re new to Conversion Logix, schedule a call today and we’ll help get you started!

The post Conversion Logix® Introduces TikTok Ads and Virtual Assistant appeared first on Conversion Logix.

For many businesses, the Facebook Ads platform is the wild west. The platform is constantly evolving with updates to the algorithm, new features, and changing consumer preferences that can make or break your ad creative. As a preferred Facebook Business Partner, we’ve had a front-row seat to the changes in the platform and how they impact campaigns. In this blog post, we’re sharing our most up-to-date learnings for getting consistent results in the Facebook Ads platform.

Target In-Market Prospects

While it’s common knowledge that Facebook can target users based on their demographics, location, and platform behavior. A lesser-known tactic is to leverage interest data to find people in the market for your product or service. To leverage this data, we target Facebook and Instagram users who have visited pages or websites related to popular brands in a given industry. As an example, when creating ads for our apartment clients, we target Facebook and Instagram users who have searched for apartments on popular listing sites. This ensures communities meet equal housing opportunity advertising requirements for the industry while marketing to an audience that is more likely to convert into a lead or resident.

Allow Facebook to Manage Ad Placements

In the old days of Facebook Advertising, we manually selected placements and segmented campaigns by platform as a common practice. Today, Facebook has become more sophisticated in adapting ads to fit more than one format and they can deliver impressions intelligently across a variety of ad placements. It’s now more common for advertisers to give Facebook control over ad delivery and to use ads that fit across a variety of placements. 

The one exception to this best practice we’ve experienced is with Stories ads. While you can still run this placement with an ad designed to run in the Facebook feed, Facebook will auto-adjust your photo or video to show a blurred background at the top and bottom of the content. Since these placements are presented in a full-screen photo and video format, we recommend using a vertical video or photo designed just for Stories so your ad looks more native to viewers watching Instagram and Facebook Stories.

Avoid Optimizing Campaigns in the Learning Phase

When an ad is first launched in the Facebook Ads platform it can take a few days for Facebook to gather enough data about users’ reactions to optimize delivery. This is known as the “learning phase.” It’s best to avoid making changes while the ad is in this state. If changes are made, Facebook will reset the learning phase and keep your ad in this stage for a longer period of time. The faster you can get out of this stage the better. Once you exit this stage, Facebook will optimize your ad delivery and maximize your budget. 

Your budget and audience are both variables that impact how quickly you exit the learning phase. The larger your audience and daily budget the faster your ad will exit this stage. If you have a very small budget and a highly targeted audience, it will take Facebook longer to reach enough users to exit the learning stage. 

Update Ads Every 30-40 Days

At the same time, you don’t want to avoid updating your Facebook ads altogether. After analyzing thousands of ads we found that ads that ran for less than 15 days or over 50 days don’t perform as well as ads that run for 30-45 days. This showed us that the sweet spot for updating an ad is monthly. If you make updates too quickly you run the risk of disturbing the learning phase and you lose the momentum of Facebook’s data collection and optimizations. If you let an ad rotate for too long it can end up delivering a high volume of impressions to the same audience and become stale.

Conclusion

We hope you found these tips helpful in understanding how the Facebook ad platform works and what you can do to get the most out of the platform. For more tips like these check out How to Create Thumb-Stopping Moments, Facebook Domain Verification for iOS14, and other articles about Facebook advertising on our blog. 

The post Facebook Ad Best Practices appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Do you ever feel like your marketing messages are getting lost in a sea of content? You have reason to feel like that since the average person sees 4,000-10,000 ads per day. While Facebook’s ad network provides advertisers with incredible tools to reach consumers across today’s most popular social media apps, it offers no guarantees that your ad will receive engagement or result in revenue-driving actions. It’s crucial for companies to create compelling ad content to get the most out of their ad dollars. To help you rise above today’s tsunami of ad content, we’re sharing five tips for creating thumb-stopping Facebook ads.

Establish Relevancy

It’s one thing to capture your customer’s attention and an entirely different thing to hold their attention. The key difference is relevance. One of the most powerful tools that Facebook offers advertisers is the ability to target an audience based on their interests and behavior. Use this feature to your advantage and create ads that show your audience you understand them. 

Three ways to establish relevancy:

• Speak your audience’s language. Does your target audience use emojis or pop culture references when they post to social media? Try incorporating them into your ad copy.
• Address pain points. Are you promoting a product or service that makes a working professional’s life easier? Tell them how your offering can help solve specific stressors or inconveniences they face in their day-to-day life.
• Speak to objections. Are competing products or services missing the mark? Explain how your offering is different and describe how it meets the needs similar products have failed to address.

Design With Sound Off for Facebook and On for Instagram Stories

Don’t assume that all of your video viewers are watching your ad with sound on. 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound, while 60% of Instagram Stories are watched with the sound on (Instagram for Business). When creating Facebook and Instagram feed ads, show before you tell. Avoid filming video content that is solely based on a person speaking. Instead, use visual cues and copy in the ad to ensure your audience understands what your ad is trying to communicate. When designing for Instagram Stories, incorporate audio when it enhances your ad experience but similar to feed ads, don’t rely on it to communicate your message.

Design for Mobile

Most Facebook and Instagram users access these platforms on their mobile devices which means they consume content in Facebook and Instagram’s feed and in Instagram Stories. To maximize space in the mobile feed, use vertical or square video and photo ads. 

One of the most compelling aspects of Stories as an ad placement is the full-screen experience. Create vertical video content to design your ad content to fit in this ad format. This will help your content appear more native in Stories and take advantage of the visual real estate this placement offers.

Capture Attention with Color

Communicate with color. Facebook and Instagram are both visual platforms. The colors you use in your imagery, graphic design, and video can play a role in the emotions that a user experiences when they see your ad. Leverage color psychology to your advantage and select colors that elicit reactions that align with your ad message. Facebook advises that advertisers use contrasting colors to help users differentiate between your product and the background colors in your photo or video content.

Deliver Value Through the Ad Experience

The value your ad content delivers has an impact on how engaged your audience will be with your brand. What “value adds” do ad viewers find the most engaging? In a consumer survey from Sprout Social, here’s what people said was thumb-stopping: 

• 41% said the most engaging social ad content entertained them
• 37% said it offered a discount 
• 33% said it taught them something 
• 26% said it referenced their interests 
• 20% said it told a story
• 10% said it came from a brand their friends like

If you can find a way to make your ads entertaining, promote an offer, or teach your audience something, you are more likely to hold their attention and engage them with your product or service.

Conclusion 

While it’s more competitive than ever to stand out in today’s online social networks, today’s advertisers have more tools at their disposal than they ever had. Facebook’s ad platform is offering more ways to create compelling content that drives awareness and ad engagement across their family of apps. We hope you found these tips helpful and utilize the recommendations to create top-performing ad campaigns. To learn more about Facebook Advertising with Conversion Logix visit this page. 

For more Facebook ad tips watch the webinar “Harness the Power of Facebook Advertising”

The post How to Create Thumb-Stopping Facebook Ads appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Recently we touched base with our new Director of Ad Operations, Mark Skalla, about advances in digital marketing and how Conversion Logix is leveraging new technologies for our clients.

Mark, what new marketing technologies are you and the team working on?

We have a lot of exciting ad technologies and strategies we’re testing right now to help our clients get more leads, appointments, and sales. We’re exploring and testing dynamic display ads, exploring display networks that leverage avatars, and the ad placement opportunity in Instagram Reels. 

Let’s start with dynamic display ads and why they’re beneficial to our clients.

When a prospect searches for a multifamily apartment or senior living community there’s a lot of information they want to know—how many available units, number of bedrooms, square footage, price, etc. Our clients want to display this information in an ad, however static ads become obsolete quickly due to changes in occupancy. Recently we started testing dynamic display ads that pull property information from a client’s website, populates custom ad templates, and then launches multiple up-to-date ads. Essentially, clients will pre-qualify prospects with ad information so when the prospect schedules a tour with Schedule Genie, there is a stronger chance of closing the lease. We’re rigorously testing this ad technology and can’t wait to offer it to our clients when it’s ready to go-live.

There’s a lot of speculation about the deprecation of cookies. How is Conversion Logix preparing for this change?

Yes, there is a lot of talk about Google deprecating cookies. Although it’s several years away (end of 2023), we’re proactively exploring ways to provide the same relevant service of targeting prospects so clients continue to have access to their intended audiences. We’re currently exploring and testing the use of additional ad networks with large data sets. These networks aggregate information about people so you can market to a group versus an individual. For example, let’s say you’re interested in a one bedroom apartment in Portland, you like gardening, and you buy dog toys for your pup. These ad networks group a prospect into different data sets—someone seeking an apartment, garden enthusiast, and dog lover—then retarget groups of people who may be interested in a property, product, etc.  We’re also testing new ArtificiaI Intelligence audiences to further our reach and scale in light of the deprecation of cookies.

Instagram recently announced ad placement in Reels. Tell us more about this new ad option.

Reels invites you to create 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and new creative tools.  Conversion Logix is an early adopter of Reels ad placement which gives our clients a competitive advantage by enabling visibility on an emerging social advertising platform.   We have a talented and tenacious team that is always looking for new ad opportunities to maximize clients’ social ad spend.

Stay on the lookout for more Ahead of the Curve blog posts to learn more about Conversion Logix’s end-to-end marketing solution. To learn more about how we can enable you to accelerate lead acquisition and unveil a prospect’s journey to give you powerful insights that drive ROI, schedule a call to learn more. 

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Prepare for iOS 14 with Domain Verification

With the launch of iOS 14, website event tracking among Apple users on devices running iOS 14 will be limited to those who opt in to accept data tracking. In preparation for the changes iOS 14 will bring, advertisers can take steps to optimize their event tracking by verifying their domain. 

Verifying your website domain allows you to select the eight website events your business would like to track for iOS 14 users who come to your site via a Facebook or Instagram ad. Domain verification also allows you to prioritize which events are most valuable for your business to track.

Ready to verify your domain? Find steps for verifying your domain, details on how domain verification helps you track iOS users, and insights on setting up your event tracking below.

Steps to Verify Your Domain

1. Go to business.facebook.com/settings
2. Go to the left hand nav bar > Brand safety > Domains > Add > [enter your domain]
3. Copy the TXT record into your DNS records (i.e. GoDaddy)
4. In your DNS records, select the TXT type, paste your TXT record, and save. 
5. Wait 72 hours, go back into Facebook Business Manager, and then click to verify your domain (you will do this in the same location where you entered your domain Brand safety > Domains > Verify).

Additional Resources:

• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/domain-verification/verifying-your-domain/
• https://www.facebook.com/business/help/286768115176155?id=199156230960298
• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/domain-verification/

Domain Verification Details

Limited to eight total event types

For iOS 14 users who choose to opt in to data tracking on your website, you will only be able to track a total of eight event types for those users. What does that mean exactly? There is a list of website events that Facebook tracks when a user reaches your website via an ad (i.e. Schedule, Submit Application, Contact, etc). From the full list of website events that Facebook is capable of tracking, you are able to select only eight events to track for all iOS 14 users who opt in.

One event type per engagement

Though you have the ability to track a total of eight different event types, due to iOS 14’s more stringent data policy, you will only be able to track one event type per engagement. That means each time a user visits your website via a Facebook or Instagram ad, you will only be able to track one event that they complete. If a user triggers a “Find Location” event, “Contact” event, and “Schedule” event in a single session on your website, only one of those events will be tracked.

In light of these limitations, Facebook is allowing advertisers to prioritize events. You will now be able to rank your eight events by the value they bring to your business. If multiple events are triggered, Facebook will record the event highest on your prioritization list. 

In the previous example where a “Find Location” event, “Contact” event, and “Schedule” event are all triggered, Facebook would reference your prioritization list. Let’s say that your prioritization list is as follows: 

1. Submit Application
2. Schedule
3. Lead
4. Contact
5. Subscribe
6. Find Location
7. View Content
8. Search

In this scenario, Facebook would only track the “Schedule” event. 

Event Selection and Prioritization

Choosing your events is a crucial, but fairly straightforward process. You should select the eight events that provide the most value to your business. After initial setup, you can change which eight events you decide to track or reprioritize your events. However, making changes to your event selection and prioritization will cause your ads to pause for 3 days. Avoiding long pauses in your campaign is vital for campaign health, so we advise carefully choosing and prioritizing your events so you can get it right the first time. 

Need help setting up your events? We’ve got you covered.

If you are a Conversion Logix client, we will work with your team to select the best eight events and set them up for you. Please reach out to your account manager. 

If you are not a Conversion Logix client, we are happy to answer questions you have about tracking events from Facebook traffic and getting the most from your social ad spend. Schedule a call anytime.

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In September of 2020, Apple announced that a future update of iOS14 will require users to opt-in to see targeted ads. In the past, users opted-in by default, but had the ability to opt-out of targeted ads if they chose to. 

Since this announcement, Facebook and Apple have battled over the best path forward. Apple is promoting privacy, while Facebook is defending the businesses that rely on their platform to find new customers. Ultimately, Facebook is following Apple’s rules and will be displaying the “opt-in” prompt on all their apps once the new update is released.

In December 2020, Facebook announced several updates to its system to stay compliant with iOS14. Every advertiser is going to see changes in their campaigns, but it will affect large companies and e-commerce businesses more than smaller, offline advertisers. 

Upcoming Changes

One change is the number of conversions that Facebook will support. They used to support a virtually unlimited number of actions to optimize campaigns against. Once Apple releases the iOS14 update, the maximum number of conversions that you can optimize toward is 8.

Smaller advertisers like Multifamily Housing, or Senior Living facilities, who are tracking and optimizing on contact forms, phone calls, and appointments scheduled, won’t see huge changes with their performance. Large advertisers who get extremely granular with their conversions (and measure conversions differently in each country or state they operate in) may see some changes in reporting and campaign performance.

Additionally, if a user opts-out on their mobile device, Facebook will no longer send data for every single action they take on a website. Facebook will report the highest-value conversion chosen by the advertiser. So if a user completes four different conversion actions, Facebook will only show the “best” one that they completed.

An example of this would be someone who views a floorplans page and then submits a contact form. Facebook will use the information from the contact form submission to optimize the campaign, even though both activities happened.

Note that this will not affect how conversions are reported through Google Analytics. In the example above, both of those actions would show as conversions in Google Analytics reporting. These are specifically the actions that are set up in Facebook’s platform for optimization.

The second change that will affect advertisers is targeting custom audiences. Right now, some advertisers have specific creative that targets a granular audience, and then exclude that audience from other campaigns. For example, targeting males who live in Reno with a specific t-shirt on an e-commerce site. Once the new iOS14 update is live, Facebook won’t have as much data to use (depending on opt-out rates), and it will be harder to tell who belongs to one audience but not another if mobile users are opting out in high rates.

Businesses of all kinds might have a harder time targeting website visitors depending on how many people opt-out on mobile devices. However, unless they have specific audiences for certain actions on a website, their performance should remain similar.

So what should advertisers do?

At Conversion Logix, we focus on delivering quality results for our clients. For our Multifamily Housing customers, many of the advanced targeting and optimization strategies outlined above are not allowed due to the Fair Housing Act. This makes the impact on our clients’ campaigns smaller than it would be for other types of businesses.

We do expect to see some changes with retargeting campaigns depending on how many users opt-out of the ad targeting. We will be looking at different audiences like Facebook’s Fair Housing approved special ad audiences to help reach new prospects.

We believe that paid social campaigns are still going to drive immense value for our clients, and don’t recommend any strategy changes at this time.

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