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

Voice Search

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

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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

Chatbots

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

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

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

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

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

Self-guided Tours

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

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

Influencer Marketing

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Where to Begin/Budgeting

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

Types of Videos

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

Tour Videos

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

Event Videos

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

Promotional Videos

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

About Us Videos

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

Where to Place Videos

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

Your Website’s Homepage

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

Social Media

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

YouTube

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

What is DOOH?

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

Benefits of DOOH:

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

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

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

How Are Metrics Collected?

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

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

How do you Keep Track of Conversions?

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

Why Invest in DOOH?

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

Conclusion:

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

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

The American Pet Products Association’s 2017-2018 National Pet Owners Survey found that 68% of U.S. households own a pet. Last year, RentPath revealed research claiming that 66% of renters are pet owners. In an effort to cater to this growing renter base, many communities have adopted pet-friendly pet policies. Most of these policies allow renters to have up to two pets and they require additional pet rent and a pet deposit. 

While much of the pet market is pet-tolerant, not as many communities encompass the true definition of pet-friendly. If your community embraces this pet demographic, there are many ways you can signal to pet owners that your community is a good fit for them. Here are some pet-friendly apartment marketing ideas your community can use to get the attention of pet owners.

Search Engine Marketing

We know that there is a demand for pet-friendly apartments, but are renters actually searching for apartments this way in Google? Emphatically, the answer is yes. Over the last five years searches for “pet-friendly apartments near me” has grown significantly in popularity. This Google Trends report nicely illustrates this growth.

Our Google Trends research also found that popularity for this search term was the highest among the following regions.

Popularity for pet-friendly apartment searches was the greatest among metros in the Midwest, New England and Los Angeles. If you happen to be marketing a community in one of these areas, this is a rental segment you don’t want to miss out on!  

How can communities capitalize on the rising demand for pet-friendly apartments in their search strategy? Create pet-friendly ad sets. Our paid search experts include a robust set of pet-friendly keywords within a pet-friendly community’s campaign. They also create a set of paid search ads with pet-friendly headlines so that prospects searching for pet-friendly apartments are presented with a relevant ad. Ensuring the ad headline includes pet-friendly also increases the chances that Google will favor the ad in pet-friendly searches, which leads to a higher search ranking.

Ad Extensions are another way to show off your pet-friendly status in search ads.

Our team typically adds “pet-friendly” in callout extensions and lists pet amenities (ex: Pet Spa) in structured snippet extensions (referencing the sample ad above, the callout extensions are under the description copy and the structured snippets are in the line below the callout extensions).

Ad extensions that incorporate pet-friendly features are set to run across all of your ads, so if there are searchers who have pets but are searching for communities using generic search terms, i.e. “apartments near me”, they still have the potential to see your pet-friendly callout and structured snippet extensions. To get a better understanding of how ad extensions work and which ones are right for apartment communities, check out this blog post.

Social Ads

Incorporate your pet amenities in your social campaigns. Carousel ads on Facebook and Instagram are a great way to present pet-friendly services and features alongside your other apartment amenities. You can highlight the amenity or service using a headline and an image. If pet owners make up a significant portion of your target market, you may want to use targeting options in Facebook that present your ad in front of pet owners in the rental market within the geographic radius surrounding your community. These two examples below showcase how two different pet-friendly communities used pet amenity carousel cards within their Facebook and Instagram ads to better appeal to pet owners.

Facebook Carousel Ad:

Instagram Carousel Ad:

Do you film video content to advertise your community? Have the pets in your apartment complex make a cameo appearance. You can use the footage you film as a part of an overall community video tour or break up the pet-friendly clips and use them on your website, organic social media or for short video ads on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram targeting pet owners.

Need an idea of what to film? Try interviewing happy pet owners about why they like living in your community with their pet. Show them in action using your amenities or walking their dog.

Website

Make sure your pet policy and pet-friendly amenities are listed on your community’s website. On many apartment websites, finding the pet policy can be a trying task. If a pet owner came to your community’s site through a pet-friendly search or social ad, they are going to be interested in reading your pet policy. 

Consider creating a landing page on your website that houses the information pet owners care about in one place. Include any pet deposits, pet rent, and pet restrictions in your pet policy. Bring this page to life using pictures of your pet-friendly amenities and testimonials from pet owners. This webpage can also serve as a relevant landing page for any pet owner specific marketing campaigns you might want to run in the future.

Pet-Friendly Amenities

Are you interested in targeting pet owners but don’t feel that your community is currently offering a competitive and compelling pet experience? Consider implementing some of these amenities to make life more convenient for pet owners.

Dog Parks & Dog Runs

One of the things dog owners crave the most is more green space for their fur children. Most dog owners wish they had a yard to let their dogs run around and expel their energy. Dog parks and dog runs give residents a place to play with their dog, meet other pet owners and let their dogs socialize. Is your community cramped on outdoor space? Some communities are using indoor dog areas that are covered and lined with fake grass to replicate the dog park experience while providing pet owners with the added benefit of a weather protected area to walk their dog.

Partner with Pet Service Providers

Partner with dog walking, pet grooming, and pet sitting services to make your residents’ lives more convenient. A NMHC 2018 Consumer Housing Insights Survey found that convenience was one of the most important benefits a community can offer renters (92% of renters stated that convenience was an important factor for them). Communities can go as far as providing these services as built-in amenities, charge an additional monthly fee, or give residents a list of recommended pet walkers, vets and sitters upon move in. In any case, giving pet owners the resources to make their lives easier with needed pet services will help you attract and retain residents.  

Pet Spas

Make it easy for pet owners to wash their pets with a pet washing station. This can be as simple as adding an outdoor pet bath or as involved as creating an entire indoor pet spa space. While this definitely can become a luxury amenity, even just an outdoor wash space can be helpful for pet owners looking to wash their pets off before they enter their unit and prevent pet hair from clogging their bathtub.

Pet Parties

Host resident pet events so that pet owners can get together and bond over their mutual love of their pets. Pet owners love to talk about their pets the same way parents love to talk about their children. By hosting a pet event you create an environment where everyone at the event has something in common and increase the likelihood that residents will make friends, stay engaged with the community, and continue to renew their lease.

Treats at the Front Desk

This is a simple yet effective way to win over pet owners. Keep pet treats at the front desk and use them as an opportunity to surprise and delight residents. If your community isn’t able to invest too heavily in pet amenities but want to add a meaningful touch to the pet renter experience, this is a great small step your community can take to show residents you care.

The post Pet-Friendly Apartment Marketing Ideas appeared first on Conversion Logix.