TikTok Ads Drive 22% Lead Growth in Seattle

The Situation

A modern lease-up in Seattle wanted to combat the seasonal traffic slump properties in the area experience from fall to winter. The community team sought out a strategy they could launch in August to build brand awareness and drive website traffic toward the end of peak leasing season.

The Solution

The Conversion Logix® team recommended launching a TikTok advertising campaign.

The community was already leveraging a robust video advertising strategy across YouTube, Connected TV, and Instagram throughout the summer months, generating 16,287 website sessions from their May to July video campaigns. The Conversion Logix team saw an opportunity to maximize the reach of their video assets by repurposing the community’s existing Instagram Stories campaign on TikTok.

Within one month, this single change generated an increase in website traffic from organic, paid, and direct brand searches in Google and a 22% increase in website leads.

The Strategy

We observed a trend among multifamily clients running TikTok advertising. They experienced a lift in branded search traffic, indicating the strategy’s effectiveness in building brand awareness. We also found that communities were underutilizing the video assets they had already invested in. Since the assets we needed to launch a mobile video ad existed, we were able to bring their campaign to life quickly, generating an immediate boost in results without requiring the client to make an additional video production investment.

Ad Strategy

The community is located in the International District of Seattle, with close proximity to the core downtown area and trendy restaurants and shops. Renters in this area come from a diverse range of backgrounds and are attracted to the area as it’s located near a variety of large corporations and within walking distance of popular social spots.

In the ad, we highlighted the message “Limited-Time Rents + Up to 6 Weeks FREE!” to capture this audience’s attention with a time-sensitive offer. We then promoted their studio, one, and two-bedroom apartments before touting the community’s location next to downtown while positioning it as commuter-friendly.

The dynamic and fast-paced nature of video enabled us to communicate several key messages to prospective renters while showcasing the community’s visual assets.

The TikTok Audience

While it’s projected that 43% of TikTok users are 18-24 (Source: DataReportal), they aren’t the only power users on the platform. The app has over two billion downloads (according to CNBC), and its second-largest audience is reported to be between the ages of 25-34 (Source: DataReportal).

New research from eMarketer forecasts that Millennials and Gen X spend over 45 minutes a day on TikTok, well above the average time this audience spends on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat. This is a higher-income audience with average post-tax incomes ranging from $84,563- $102,512 (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics). This makes TikTok a valuable platform for urban lease-ups looking to expand their reach among a wider age range of high-income renters.

The Power of TikTok Advertising

TikTok has become well-known for its intelligent learning algorithm designed to determine which video content users are likely to respond to. Our ad operations team utilized TikTok’s powerful machine-learning capabilities to optimize campaign performance throughout the life of this client’s campaign. We found that the platform became better at identifying the target audience over time, observing an increase in impressions from October-January, and a hike in clicks in the month of January following the Q4 seasonal lull.