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.

In this blog post, we shared a recap of the video trends these marketing leaders presented to help guide your video marketing strategy in the coming year.

#1 Show Don’t Tell

Video has become a popular entertainment, and educational tool for personal and professional uses as the format engages multiple senses and increases information retention among customers and employees.

In this discussion, Kristi shared the following eye-opening stat, “People retain 90-95% what comes from video vs. 10% from written content”. She went on to say, “if you are tired of prospective residents asking the same questions over and over again, show a video they will retain it better”. 

Andrew elaborated on this point by sharing that at Conversion Logix, video has become a go-to media format for clients to showcase their property and within the company between employees. He shared the effectiveness of sending videos within the organization to quickly communicate a point or demo instructions for a task, providing a reference that employees can go back to. 

#2 Authentic Video Engaging Prospects

With the popularity of video formats like TikTok and Instagram Stories, the demand for authentic video content is growing. When it comes to apartments, this means that apartment seekers are expecting real-life reflections of what a community is actually like.

Kristi advises property managers to gather behind-the-scenes content. While the everyday renter may not think about some of the things that go into getting an apartment ready to rent during their search, things like watching the carpets being cleaned, new paint, and unit upgrades could increase affinity for the community through video.

It’s also important to note that just because authenticity is on the rise, doesn’t mean low-quality visual content is. Andrew mentioned that it’s still important to create visually appealing video assets but to focus on the message, delivery, and content over high-production styling.

#3 Repurposing Video Marketing Assets to Extend Your Budget

Brands are extending the life of their video content by repurposing it. Prospects are demanding video in various formats and across many different channels. To keep up with this demand, communities can take video assets they are already developing, like virtual tour content, and reuse them across assets like their ads, emails, and social media channels, or as a lead generation opportunity. 

During the live event, Kristi shared a story of a community that pre-recorded video tours and pre-recorded videos of post-tour follow-up messages from the property manager. The community leveraged these authentic videos on multiple platforms and even tried testing the videos in ads. The result was a 300% ROI! Their team built awareness and trust by using the community’s staff and a personable approach to talking about the community.

#4 Accelerate the Sales Process

Using video in the tour process can save communities three times as much time. “The average tour lasts 14 minutes while the average in-person tour lasts 45-50 minutes”, says Kristi. Considering the staffing crisis the industry is experiencing, leveraging virtual tours to sell your community while in-person staff focuses on prospects further down the sales funnel is key. 

Andrew illustrated the importance of video in the prospect journey by sharing a recent Zillow study that found people used to tour five communities in person and are now only going to two. “The more we can meet people how they want, the better the experience. That way, the people on site are there because they want to be there versus they have to be there.”, says Andrew.

#5 Experimenting With Video Marketing

Creating video marketing content can feel intimidating for many operators which is why they don’t get started. In the live event, Kristi encouraged operators to get more comfortable on camera by doing it more often and putting themselves out there. “It’s ok to be vulnerable,” says Kristi. We are all learning and trying new things when it comes to video. The more you do it, the better you will be at it.

The speakers both shared the importance of testing new things with video to find out what resonates.

Andrew remarked, “what I think is going to work isn’t always right.” You don’t always know for sure what video content will grab people, especially with ads which is why A/B testing is so valuable. He went on to share a recent experience when he was analyzing the results of a multifamily video ad campaign. Everyone thought the video that was less polished and more off the cuff wouldn’t perform as well as the polished video. On the contrary, the less polished video outperformed the traditional style video ad two to one in conversions on the website. 

With the new technology built into ad platforms, video testing is more accessible than ever and is something everyone should try.

Bonus: AI-Generated Video Marketing Tips

At the end of their discussion, Andrew and Kristi tested out the trending AI platform ChatGPT to see if AI software had additional video marketing tips to share. The AI shared the following advice for operators and marketers working with video that was spot on.

Don’t Miss Our Next LinkedIn Live

Wish you had the chance to watch this discussion live? Follow Conversion Logix on LinkedIn to make sure you are the first to know when we have our next LinkedIn Live event.

The post 5 Video Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2023 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.

Digital media consumption has grown exponentially over the past few years as more people have spent time indoors and sought entertainment, information, and a connection to the outside world through video. From fast-paced short-form Tik Tok videos to binge-watching a series on streaming platforms, today’s marketers have more opportunities than ever before to reach their target audience with memorable video advertisements. To help you stay up-to-date with the biggest trends impacting the video advertising space, we’ve assembled a list of the ten video trends we think marketers should pay attention to in 2022.

The Trends

1. “In 2022, US advertisers will spend $63 billion on programmatic digital video which is an increase of almost $11 billion over the last year.”¹ 

Marketers looking to implement video advertising are turning to programmatic video channels to automate the delivery of ads in this medium. From social video ad platforms to streaming channels, programmatic digital video is one of the fastest growing segments of the marketing industry.  Half of all advertisers prefer this medium to invest in above all others.

2. “Mobile represents two-thirds of programmatic video advertising, but its share is declining as connected TV (CTV) attracts more advertising dollars.”¹

When marketers think about video advertising, social video platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or Tik Tok come to mind. In recent years advertisers are expanding that view to include TV. Once seen as the old hat form of advertising, the TV advertising industry is experiencing renewed interest with the expansion of Connected TV. This new form of advertising allows marketers to leverage the targeting and tracking of modern digital channels coupled with the brand impact of TV advertising. In 2022, eMarketer anticipates that programmatic CTV ad spend will increase by 39%, on top of an 82% increase already seen in 2021.

3. U.S. households reachable through CTV advertising grew to 86% in Q2 of 2021 compared to 50% in Q4 of 2019.¹

Connected TV viewership has risen dramatically over the past two years as consumers have increasingly “cut the cord” with cable. The recent COVID pandemic accelerated the increase; however, the amount of content online has also continued to expand with greater offerings from HBO Max, Apple TV+ and Disney+.  The number of mobile devices used for video and CTV consumption has also skyrocketed.  As viewership increases, this channel becomes more attractive for advertisers looking to expand their reach and meet viewers across a variety of devices.

4. YouTube is the second most viewed website in the world.²

While the digital video landscape is changing, YouTube remains at the forefront of the digital video industry. In addition to being a source of entertainment, YouTube is also a search engine, powered by the largest search engine, Google. 

5. On a monthly basis, more people viewed video on YouTube in 2021 than used Facebook.² 

Facebook is still an amazing platform to reach target audiences; however, YouTube’s massive volume of videos attracts just as much attention.  YouTube and Facebook are both excellent advertising platforms with enormous reach of greater than 2 billion monthly users each.  Unless you have a strong need for a Facebook only feature, consider advertising on both.

6. “42% of videos were watched with the sound off on Facebook in 2021, compared to 35% in 2020. Moreover, two-thirds of brand videos on Facebook were viewed with the sound switched off.”³ 

Another difference between Facebook and YouTube is the way people watch videos. On Facebook, people are more likely to watch videos with the sound off and this trend is growing. For the marketers running ads on Facebook, this is something to consider when designing video ads. Make sure to use captions and maximize headline and description content to communicate messaging.  A significant benefit of YouTube is that people are more likely to watch with the sound on. If you want to add music or a catchy narrator, YouTube is a much better environment.

7. 50% of Instagram users visit a website after seeing it in Stories.⁴

Stories are an effective way to build brand awareness and develop a connection with a target audience. Known for its hyper-relevant storytelling, Stories offer a way for users to share an inside look into their lives, quick updates, or highly topical content that would lose relevance in a feed. It’s also an effective advertising tool for businesses looking to expand their video reach. Owned by Facebook, Instagram Stories ads take advantage of powerful targeting capabilities, increasing the likelihood of the ads reaching a high-intent audience.

8. TikTok was the #1 most downloaded app from 2019 to 2021.⁵

Originally a music and dance-centric platform, TikTok has transformed into a social media platform tidal-wave.  TikTok has skyrocketed in popularity over the past few years with a highly curated and creepily intelligent “for you” feed combined, and its focus on entertaining short-form video.  Marketers looking to promote their business on this platform should develop ad content that aligns with the fast-paced, humorous, and creative nature of the channel. 

9. YouTube Shorts receive 30 billion views a day.⁶

In response to the growing popularity of TikTok, YouTube added a new video format to their platform called Shorts. The concept is to easily and quickly create short 15-second videos directly from the YouTube app.  This short-form video format has surged in popularity indicating the larger global shift of short-form videos delivered in tailored feeds. Unlike Stories, Shorts don’t disappear in 24 hours. The content lives on and continues to be delivered to users in their recommended feeds. This provides content creators with an incentive to invest in creating content in these formats, providing more ad inventory.

10. 43% of TikTok users are between 18 and 24 years old.⁷

In 2025, TikTok will surpass YouTube for the largest 18-24 video viewership base. While the majority of users are between 18 and 24, the second-largest segment (32%) is between the ages of 25 and 34.

Take a Deeper Dive Into Video Advertising

Conversion Logix uses our national media and advertising experience to keep abreast of the trends that are important for your success.  We host a variety of webinars on topics ranging from YouTube advertising (guest hosted with Google) to innovative Facebook/Instagram ad strategies.  Visit our webinar library to learn more!

Sources

The post 10 Video Advertising Stats Marketers Should Know in 2022 appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Each quarter we interview Conversion Logix’s Director of Operations, Mark Skalla, to learn about new marketing technologies the Conversion Logix team is working on to drive better ad performance. If you missed our last interview, read it here.

Mark, we’re about three months into 2022. What ad trends have stood out so far this year?

One trend that is top-of-mind for our team is the renewed emphasis Google is placing on AI and automation in the Google Ads platform. Another buzzworthy trend is the expansion of video advertising. As video consumption continues to rise across all platforms, we’re seeing advertisers expand into platforms they haven’t tried before.

Tell us more about Google’s focus on AI and automation.

We’ve seen Google go in this direction before. They’ve released solutions to help advertisers automate ad delivery and bids towards specific ad objectives, introduced responsive ads to optimize copy combinations, and included time-saving automation like de-duplicating keywords in your keyword list. Now Google is expanding its ability to automate the implementation of these AI features through automated workflows. This has the potential to provide a couple of benefits to advertisers: 

• Eliminates the tasks getting in the way of high-value activities. Ad managers will be able to prioritize additional testing, and new campaign builds with the time-savings workflows provide. With more attention given to high-value activities, campaigns will see more significant performance gains.
• Ad managers can apply optimizations faster, maximizing the length of time campaigns run on peak performance. Similar to getting an oil change in your car. The more regularly you maintain your car, the more efficiently it runs. Workflows enable us to instantly apply optimizations at scale, increasing the period of time campaigns run with the optimizations in place, ultimately maximizing ad investment.

While automation and AI can be powerful tools, most of Google’s optimizations are single-minded in the way they optimize a campaign. For example, one feature may deliver more ad clicks for your campaigns, but this may come at the expense of conversions and vice versa.

Think of it like this. You want a clean house. A Roomba is great at vacuuming your floor. But a Roomba isn’t going to clean your counters or put away your laundry for you. 

Google’s AI workflows automate the implementation of specific tasks in the platform (like a Roomba), but you still need to monitor the combination of workflows in place and how they work together to attain optimal end results.

What do you recommend to advertisers looking to increase their investment in video?

Most of our clients are already advertising on social networks like Facebook and Instagram, and more and more are leveraging video on these platforms. Outside of Facebook Ads, we recommend our clients leverage platforms like YouTube and Connected TV. 

Something many marketers don’t realize is that on a monthly basis, more people watched video on YouTube than used Facebook. Even with the rapid rise of Tik Tok, recent eMarketer reports show that YouTube is still the most-watched video platform. ⅔ of the U.S. population and ¾ of internet users visited YouTube monthly in 2021.

In addition to advertising on YouTube and Connected TV,  we’re running tests to determine the viability of Tik Tok’s ad platform. So far, we are seeing positive results from our initial tests and we will have more to say about it in the coming months.

What strategies would you recommend for clients getting started with YouTube Ads?

We’ve uncovered new findings from an internal study about the relationship between ad spend and ad performance. It turns out there is a threshold of ad spend that yields a greater increase in performance. It shows us that the relationship between spend and performance is not linear on YouTube and that if you spend past a certain amount, you can achieve a greater boost in results.

Outside of this finding, we are seeing a combination of audience build type, bidding strategy, and ad type that has consistently performed better on the platform. We’ve seen the best results from in-stream video ads targeting a custom audience with a max conversion bidding strategy. This takes advantage of the skippable ad format, the platform’s Google keyword targeting abilities, and the power of Google’s AI to optimize bids and ad delivery.

You mentioned Connected TV as a recommended video advertising channel. Why should advertisers consider adding this to their portfolio?

Video consumption on Connected TV devices has grown dramatically in recent years. Nielsen reported that video streaming accounted for 25% of total TV time in the U.S. in 2021, and eMarketer forecasts that US CTV ad spending will increase from $3B in 2019 to $19B in 2023.

TV viewers have changed how they purchase TV services from monthly cable packages to a customized mix of individual subscription services. 

Connected TV advertising offers the best of both worlds for advertisers. You get the reach and opportunity to expand your ad placements to TV viewers combined with the attribution of digital channels. Now we can answer questions like, “Did they watch the ad?” “How long did they watch it? Did the viewer click the ad or search for it later? Answering these kinds of questions is impossible with traditional TV. Connected TV gives us important data to optimize our clients’ messaging and campaigns.

How to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Ahead of the Curve is a series Conversion Logix started to keep marketers updated on trends and technology impacting the marketing industry today. Don’t miss your chance to learn from Conversion Logix’s digital marketing experts, schedule a call to learn more.

The post Ahead of the Curve – Hot Trends & Timely Topics appeared first on Conversion Logix.

YouTube has over 1 billion monthly viewers (Google) and is used by over 70% of U.S. adults (Pew Research Center). It’s no secret that YouTube is an incredibly popular marketing channel. So why aren’t more marketers incorporating YouTube into their marketing strategy?

The Problem

There is a long-standing belief that in order to succeed in video marketing you have to have expensive equipment and a team of videographers, actors, and editors. When faced with expensive video production costs and time constraints marketers become too intimidated to add YouTube to their strategy. According to a recent study by Social Media Examiner, only 14% of marketers are advertising on YouTube. Paralyzed by the expectation that a YouTube ad has to be as highly produced as a TV commercial, over 80% miss out on YouTube advertising.

Asking the Right Questions

What if this long-held assumption wasn’t actually true? What if you could produce a video ad without high production assets? Would it perform as well? We analyzed a sample of apartment YouTube ads to find the answer to the question, “Does video production quality have an impact on YouTube ad performance?”. We looked at two types of video ads, highly produced videos, and professionally edited slideshow videos comprised of images, music, copy, and call to actions. Here’s what we found.

High Production Videos Don’t Perform Better Than Professional Slideshow Videos

Communities that spent thousands of dollars on highly produced video footage did not have markedly better ad performance than communities that spent less than $300 in editing fees on professional-looking slideshow video content.

Slideshow Video Results vs. High Production Video Results

View Rate

View rate is the percentage of people who are presented with your ad and watch your entire ad, watch more than 30 seconds of your ad, or engage with your ad. The view rate for slideshow video ads was only 22% lower than the view rate for highly produced videos. If you stopped here and only looked at view rate you might think highly produced videos performed slightly better than slideshow videos. It’s a good thing we didn’t stop here. When we dove deeper and studied the rate of clicks and leads these ads generated we saw a different story.

Click-Through Rate

CTR measures the percentage of people that saw your YouTube ad and clicked on the ad to visit your website. Click through rates on slideshow videos were 3% higher on average than highly produced videos.

Cost Per Click

CPC measures the cost for every click on a YouTube ad. Slideshow video ads had a 17% cheaper CPC than the highly produced videos in our sample.

Goal Completion Rate 

Goal rates measure the percentage of website visitors that came from your YouTube ad and then took a lead generating action on your website (scheduled a tour, clicked to call, claimed an offer, filled out a form, etc.). The rate of goal completions coming from slideshow video ads was 2% higher than highly produced video ads.

What does this mean for Communities?

You can run a successful YouTube ad campaign without spending thousands on video production.

The factors that determine YouTube ad performance have more to do with targeting decisions and platform management than they do with the production level of your video content.

While the view rate for slideshow videos was 22% lower, the areas of ad performance that matter most (ad clicks and leads) revealed better performance for slideshow videos at a lower cost per click. If a community has less than $300 to spend in editing fees they can promote a professional-looking slideshow video and see even better costs per click and goal completion rates.

Does your community have high-quality image assets and a website? You have the key ingredients to get started with YouTube advertising.

Finally ready to give YouTube advertising a try? Speak with an experienced multifamily marketing professional today.

The post High Production Video Ads vs. Slideshow Video Ads appeared first on Conversion Logix.

At one point, ideas like conversion software, analytics-driven marketing, and dynamic video advertisements were innovations that apartment marketers saw coming on the horizon. Headed into 2020, these ideas and others have established themselves as necessities for those in the apartment marketing space. So which trends do you need to know about in 2020?

1. Live Chat as the Gold Standard of Communication

One key trait that your prospects share with other consumers in the digital age is their desire for instant gratification. They’re browsing through your website quickly, and as questions pop up, they’d like answers as quickly as possible regardless of the time of day.

According to a study by EConsulting, 50% of customers are expecting businesses to be open 24/7. This means that incorporating live chat becomes critical to generating those all-important leads, and not allowing all those visitors to slip through the cracks as they visit your site outside of regular business hours. Moreover, live chat has a 73% satisfaction rate, compared to phone calls (44%) and emails (61%).

For a more in-depth analysis regarding the benefits of live chat juxtaposed with chatbots, see this post.

2. Video Ads Go from Important to Critical

It’s no secret for marketers that using video advertisements positively contributes to KPI’s. Interweaving your services within an aesthetically pleasing visual representation of your brand makes a big difference between communities that are able to convert, and those who are not.

Video usage in conversions have increased from 25% to 37% in 2019, per Rocketium. This clearly displays the importance of both incorporating videos into your funnel as well as the direction that the market is headed towards.

With the slow death of cable television, American adults are spending more time than ever on video content online with the increased popularity of platforms like YouTube. In 2019, users spent a weekly average of nearly seven hours watching online videos, which represents a 59% increase from just three years prior in 2016 (Limelight, 2019).

On YouTube alone in the past couple years, viewers are spending over 7,300 hours on apartment related video content, so incorporating videos into your advertising budget becomes all the more important. To learn more about the most effective and practical ways to put video ads into practice on YouTube, check out this blog post.

3. Conversion Software for Qualifying Leads

Another key trend in the apartment marketing space is the utilization of conversion software. With only 22% of businesses being satisfied with their conversion rates (EConsultancy), it’s clear that everyone wants to convert leads at a higher rate. Emerging as a solution to this problem, communities are now implementing conversion software to automate tour scheduling, deliver compelling offers, and filter for qualified leads.

Tour Scheduling

In the area of tour scheduling, the usual process involves filling out an application or contacting the community via phone, email, or an in-person visit. This process causes delays in the scheduling procedure, leading to unwanted drop-offs.

Conversion software cuts through those extra steps by being present on every page, allowing prospects to view available tour dates, and self-schedule tours at their own convenience.

Compelling Offers

Many communities that are promoting offers on their sites are following a sub-optimal, outdated strategy. A potential lead visits your website, a pop-up offer comes up, and before having any interaction with the site’s content are given an incentive to close the offer because the only way to view the information they’re seeking is to close the offer entirely, never to see it again.

Using the right conversion software allows your site to deliver prospects value and relevant information, while keeping compelling offers on each page in a non-intrusive manner. These offers can be conveniently minimized without removing them from sight completely, as well as quickly swapped out with other offers without any development expertise.

Qualifying Leads

Filtering out unqualified prospects was once an arduous task that leasing teams spent hours upon hours on. But now, by using markers like income, desired floor plan, and number of residents, leads can automatically receive an email informing them of their qualification status, resulting in a tremendous amount of saved time.

With potential leads being pulled in a myriad of directions, the need to filter them and quickly progress them down the sales funnel becomes of great importance.

The Conversion Cloud specializes in qualifying and converting multifamily housing leads, offering these innovations and others. Check it out here.

4. Refining Social UX

One of the timeless elements of marketing has always been user experience. At it’s core, UX measures the quality of interactions between users and a given brand. An improvement in UX will make for a higher quantity of conversions and overall customer satisfaction.

Within social audience targeting on Facebook, UX has become of increased importance recently. The social media giant reports that there are presently 7 million advertisers on the platform, up from 4 million in 2016. With this uptick in competition, standing out through optimized and personalized ads has become all the more important to generate leads.

Facebook has stated that there are three primary dimensions for evaluating the performance of ads including visual quality, engagement, and conversion which need to be optimized to refine UX.

Visual Quality

Practical steps to improve visual quality in your ads include avoiding things like putting too much text, using sensationalized language, and withholding key information.

Engagement

For improving engagement, there are a number of heuristic methods that are available. Using vertical videos, adding multiple images using the carousel format (if you have an abundance of quality images), and adding movement through animation are all options to consider.

Conversion

A pragmatic approach to increasing your conversion rates on your ads is to make them more engaging through the avenue of an improved call to action and post-click experience.

Navigating through the ins and outs of creative software for creating eye-catching visuals and high quality ads can be a tall-task for many communities. For assistance in maximizing ad quality, schedule a call today.

Conclusion

Headed into 2020, ideas like conversion software, analytics-driven marketing, and dynamic video advertisements and others have now firmly established themselves as necessities for those in the apartment marketing space. Looking for help getting started? Schedule a call today.

The post Four Apartment Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2020 appeared first on Conversion Logix.