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.

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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.

“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.

Facebook and Instagram steal a lot of the spotlight in the advertising world. But they aren’t the only powerful players in the advertising game. Google’s social media frontrunner, YouTube is now the most used social media platform in the country. More U.S. adults use YouTube than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter.

They aren’t just watching cat videos all day either. American adults are watching thousands of years of apartment video content. In the past few years, YouTube viewers spent over 7,300 years of watch time on apartment and home tour videos (YouTube Advertising).

We know most U.S adults watch YouTube, and we know that they are watching apartment content, but are they watching ads?

On average, one-third of people who are presented with one of our client’s apartment ads actually views (watches or engages) with the ad. (Google defines a view as someone who watches 30 seconds of your video, someone who watches the duration of the video if it’s shorter than 30 seconds, or someone who interacts with your video.) These views aren’t expensive either. It only costs an apartment advertiser $0.05 per view (on average) to reach apartment seekers in their local area.

So what is holding so many communities back from advertising on YouTube? Many communities don’t know much about the advertising options that exist on YouTube or what to include in the video creation process. In this blog post, we share five best practices communities can use to overcome those hurdles and successfully advertising their community on YouTube.

1. Run 30-second or longer in-stream video ads

Over the last few months, we’ve been testing a variety of video lengths for apartment ads on YouTube. We’ve tested 6-second bumper ads, 15-20 second in-stream ads, and 30 second or longer in-stream, ads. We’ve found that in-stream video ads that are thirty seconds or longer receive better ad engagement rates than their shorter counterparts.

Bumper ads had the lowest click through and post view rates when compared to 15 seconds, 20 seconds, or 30-second ads. These short, six second ads, don’t provide enough time to successfully introduce apartment communities on YouTube. While these short ads aren’t the best for building brand awareness, they can be helpful as a reminder retargeting ad for someone who has already visited a community’s website and are able to recognize the brand from a quick video ad.

2. Highlight the location of the community

Location. Location. Location. This is one of the most important things to an apartment seeker. If you leave out your location or fail to present it prominently at the beginning of your ad, people will skip or ignore your ad. It’s critical that your advertisement is relevant to the viewer. Even if your targeting options only encompass your local area, you still need to make it clear that you are an apartment community located in “X” area at the beginning of the video. It’s even more helpful to the viewer when you describe where your community is in relation to landmarks or well-known neighborhoods.

3. Give prospects a tour of your community

Apartment ads that feature a tour have higher click through and post view rates than apartment ads that only feature lifestyle content. Our previous research found that combining both tour and lifestyle content leads to even better ad performance.

Apartment seekers want to see your community. They want to know what the units look like and they want to see the amenities in action. Make this tour content even more engaging by showing someone using the apartment unit or enjoying the community’s amenities. To learn more about tour vs. lifestyle video best practices, check out this blog post.

4. Use affinity targeting and custom intent targeting

YouTube runs on Google’s ad platform, and Google has been making many of the features that are available in search ads, available within YouTube. One example of this is custom intent audiences. Communities can now target people on YouTube who search for apartments in their local area. We’ve found that non-brand local apartment campaign keywords work really well for keyword targeting on YouTube (think “apartments near me”, “apartments located in (city)”, “apartments near (city)”).

Advertisers can also use affinity audiences (these are similar to Display or Facebook audiences) to target people on YouTube. These audiences allow advertisers to target people who are ready to move, people who have been searching for apartments, and a variety of interest-based options like people who like pets, people who like fitness, foodies, etc.

5. Segment ads by floor plan

If you want to get the most out of custom intent targeting, consider creating video tours of different apartment units. Then present these ads to apartment seekers interested in specific floorplans. Blend affinity audiences and custom intent audiences so that every time someone in the market for an apartment in your local area searches 1 bedroom floorplans, they see an ad for your community’s 1 bedrooms. This strategy is especially helpful for communities who end up with a lot of vacancies for a specific floorplan and need to get the most qualified traffic possible.

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