Is your brand working against you in the search engine? When your prospects search for you by name, are you the first brand they see? If you aren’t the number one listing for your community’s brand you might just have a brandjacking problem. You wouldn’t be the first community to experience this, even marketing agencies like us experience brandjacking attempts. We know being brand jacked can be a frustrating experience, but rest assured, it’s a battle you can win. By the end of this article, you’ll know how to overcome brand jackers and reclaim your rightful place in the search engine.

What exactly is brandjacking?

Brandjacking is when a company or individual, shows up when people are looking for your brand, impersonates your brand, or targets customers of your brand.

It’s important to note that brandjacking isn’t always a deliberate attack on your brand by your competitors. Brands with names that contain common phrases or location terminology are often brandjacked unintentionally.

Where can you be brandjacked?

The most common form of brandjacking that apartment communities experience is in search engines.

Bigger brands can be brand jacked through Facebook and Instagram advertising but apartment brands are rarely if ever, a targeting option in the Facebook ad platform. The closest someone can get to brandjacking you in Facebook is to target people within a one-mile radius of your community.

How can I be brandjacked in the Google search engine?

Your brand can be overrun in the search engine organically and through advertisements.

While it is not unheard of for people to use organic search engine optimization to brandjack competitors, it isn’t as prevalent as brandjacking through paid advertisements. If your community is brandjacked organically, it’s probably the result of your brand name including a common phrase or location. It is harder for competitors to rank well for your brand name organically in the search engine because a lot of organic SEO is dependent on how relevant their landing page is to the brand name keyword they are targeting.

Intentional Brandjacking

If you are being brandjacked intentionally it’s because your competitors have bid on keyword searches in Google that include your brand name. While Google takes keyword relevancy into account when ranking ad campaigns, they also factor in how much companies bid for a given keyword. This means that if someone is spending more than you in Google ads for your brand, they can rank above you in the search engine and steal visibility away from you when prospects and residents are trying to find you online.

Unintentional Brandjacking

It is also entirely possible for other brands to target a broad match keyword that accidentally overlaps with your brand name. When someone bids in Google ads for a broad match keyword, Google presents their ad when synonyms or other variations of the key term are searched. If your brand name includes a city name or a common apartment descriptor like “luxury” or “modern”, it could also be possible that other communities are deliberately trying to bid on what they consider to be relevant terms for their community.

What can I do to overcome brandjacking?

One way you can protect your brand from brandjacking is to bid on keywords that reference your brand. These brand-specific Google ad campaigns can help you rank above competitors bidding on your brand. The good news is that your website will be better optimized for your brand keywords than your competitors on Google. It will be cheaper and easier for you to capture your brand terms than competitors because Google takes into account landing page relevance and ad relevance among other things. Your brand campaigns are more likely to rank higher and get better cost per click rates than competitors bidding for the same terms. Once the cost rises for your competitors to bid against you in the search engine, many may look elsewhere for targeting opportunities.

Brand Campaigns in Search

Regardless of brandjacking, it’s a good idea to bid on your brand name in Google. It’s the way the most interested prospects are searching for you online. On average, brand campaigns have higher click-through rates than non-brand campaigns and brand keywords have lower costs per click.

Another reason communities should bid on their brand is to capture those people who are searching for their brand after seeing a brand awareness campaign. If you are running display or social ads, people are likely to come back to Google to look for your community after seeing the ad. Ensuring you show up at the top of the search engine is a good way to make sure you don’t lose the leads you generate from other marketing efforts.

Conclusion

Companies and communities are both intentionally and unintentionally targeting brands on Google. Communities that bid on their own brand can rank for the top position in Google for less than it costs the competitors trying to brandjack them. By bidding on their own brand keywords in Google, communities can deter brand jackers and ensure they are the only beneficiary of their branding efforts.

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Do you know what students type into Google when they search for an apartment? Do you know why some student housing ads get more clicks and impressions than others?

Most multifamily professionals know search marketing is an important component of a student housing marketing campaign, but they don’t know how student housing search marketing campaigns differ from general apartment search marketing campaigns, or what communities can do to stand out from others in the search engine.

By the end of this article, you won’t be like most multifamily housing professionals. You will have a better idea of how students search for apartments and what types of search ads they click on. You will know why some student housing search campaigns perform better than others and how your student housing community can use paid search campaigns to generate more traffic.

What do students look for in an apartment?

The best search marketing campaigns start with a clear understanding of the searcher and what they are looking for in a community. Many communities focus on flashy amenities and community spaces when they market to students. While these are great ways to stand out in the market and capture attention, we’ve found that more often than not, the best way to appeal to students is to focus on addressing their fundamental apartment needs.

A recent study conducted by For Rent University found that students look for practical amenities when they are searching for an off-campus apartment. The most important amenities to students are high-speed wi-fi, in-unit washer and dryers, parking, gyms, and computer/printing stations. Most of the amenities that students care about are centered around convenience.

Students are looking for a community that meets their basic needs at a price they can afford. The one apartment feature that stood out to us from this study was pet-friendly. Pet-friendly apartments have risen in popularity across general apartment communities and we found it interesting that this trend has also spilled into the student housing market.

How students search for apartments

Keywords

We’ve found that a majority of student housing searches are university-specific. It can be difficult for communities to rank organically for these types of terms which is why Google advertising plays an important role in a comprehensive student housing marketing campaign.

Some examples of commonly searched university specific keywords include:

• apartments near [college name]
• [college name] [city]
• [college name] apartments
• student housing near me
• [brand name] [city]
• [college name] student housing

Over the past five years, searches for “student housing near me” have increased in popularity which indicates more location-based mobile searching is occurring. This is why location-based targeting can be a valuable strategy to include in student housing paid search marketing campaigns.

Who is doing the Searching?

It’s no surprise that 18-24-year-olds saw the most student housing ads among our student housing clients’ search campaigns. But what we did find interesting is that more 45-54-year-olds were searching for student housing than 33-44-year-olds or those 55+. This indicates that in 2018 both parents and students were actively searching for student housing. There were also a lot of 25-34-year-olds who searched for these communities which may represent older undergrad students or grad students, another key segment that student housing communities might be overlooking.

Our Strategies

Targeting

Through location targeting, we are able to adjust budgets between campaigns and target searchers in the locations that are most likely to lead to website visits and conversions. Student housing campaigns differ from general apartment search campaigns in that more searchers are living outside of the city or state of the community.

We’ve found that non-brand keyword search campaigns targeting searchers located within the community’s state or within the nation received more ad impressions than non-brand local search campaigns and brand based campaigns.

We also found that ad engagement (measured by click-through rate) was higher for state and national brand campaigns than local campaigns. Out of state students, in-state students that aren’t from the local college town, and their parents are more likely to search for and have a need for student housing options, which is why campaigns targeting these locations generate more visibility and engagement.

Ads

The most important thing to include in the copy of search ads are the keywords you want to rank for. Google uses ad relevance to determine if you’re ad will be presented in the search engine. After incorporating relevant keyword copy, we’ve found that a few topics outperform others within student housing campaigns.

Ad descriptions and headlines that focus on how conveniently located the community is to the university, receive higher click-through rates and are more likely to be related to popular keywords. 50% of students believe that after price, proximity to the school, nightlife, and restaurants is the most important factor they look for when selecting an apartment.

When communities offer fully furnished units, we’ve found that highlighting this feature also leads to more ad engagement. Fully furnished units offer convenience and cost savings, two things that students really care about during the apartment selection process.

Concessions within ad descriptions also lead to more ad engagement. Students are price sensitive and we’ve found that including offers within paid search ad copy is an effective way to catch their interest in the search engine.

Ad Extensions

Ad extensions that appeal to the needs and desires of the student housing market lead to more ad engagement and website traffic. Structured snippet extensions and call out extensions are the extensions we typically use to highlight apartment amenities and features in Google ad campaigns.

Structured snippets and call out extensions give advertisers an additional line of copy under an ad’s description. These are some examples of structured snippet extensions that performed well for our student housing clients.

Notice how this ad extension focuses on some of the popular convenience based amenities we discussed earlier in this blog post. Through ad extensions, your community can convey its unique selling points and signal to students that you offer the features they are looking for. Ad extensions are also a great way to generate calls, share your location, showcase great review ratings, and qualify students with floor plan pricing.

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