by threshold | Jan 11, 2022 | Digital Marketing, Marketing, Tech/Web
Out of all the digital real estate marketing strategies available today, it can be hard to determine which strategies will best help move the needle on your leasing and sales results. After all, you’re not just choosing from the wide variety of advertising platforms out there, you’re also sifting through many different types of ad campaigns those platforms offer—so how do you make the right choice for your real estate brand?
Answering that question comes down to your marketing priorities and the results that are most important to you right now. For those who are launching digital marketing for a new development or getting the word out while occupancy rates are already stable, brand awareness tactics should be at the top of your list. Brand awareness tactics help you reach potential residents during the Awareness phase of their digital renter journey, sometimes before they’ve even begun their housing search.
Brand awareness tactics aren’t focused on getting quick conversions so much as they’re focused on, well, making people aware of your brand. That means impressions and views are the name of the game more so than clicks and conversion actions. So when focusing on brand awareness, you’ll want to select digital real estate marketing tactics that optimize for impressions and views rather than skipping straight to the click-driving, conversion-oriented tactics like lead generation ads or retargeting ads.
Here are some of the top-performing digital tactics for real estate marketers looking to drive impressions and views that increase awareness among your target audience.
Video Ads on YouTube
Since views and impressions are the name of the game with brand awareness, YouTube ads are an excellent place to start. Video ads on YouTube can be targeted to a wide audience in your area based on a variety of targeting characteristics. With an average view rate of 31.9%, YouTube ads are a great way to get in front of your audience at any stage of their renter journey, including before they’ve even performed a housing search.
Video ads are also a great awareness tactic because they are engaging and informative—far more so than a static display or search ad tends to be. You can feature more photos, value propositions and qualifying details in a 30-second video ad.
If you’re early in your development process and have limited photography or renderings to include in your video ad, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Supplement your visual assets with lifestyle footage, which can be found on platforms like Adobe Stock and Shutterstock.
Social Ads on Facebook & Instagram
Social ads for apartments on Facebook and Instagram offer similar targeting capabilities compared to YouTube, giving you the opportunity to reach your audience on some of the digital spaces where they spend the most time.
There are a variety of ad types you can run on these platforms, but to reach prospects in the awareness phase, we recommend Traffic ads on Facebook and Instagram. Traffic ads are focused on driving traffic to your real estate website, so those who do click are given the opportunity to learn more about your property. When optimizing for brand awareness, we particularly recommend opting for carousel ads over single image ads because they provide a fuller glimpse of your community and provide a way for users to engage with your ad (by scrolling through the images) even if they’re not ready to click through to your website and really dive in. This provides a fuller opportunity to become intrigued and commit your brand to memory.
Addressable Marketing & Geofencing Ads
Targeting specific households, businesses, hotspots, or competitors in your area can help you raise awareness among a highly specific audience who is most likely to resonate with your brand. Addressable marketing and geofencing ads both rely on virtual “fences” drawn around specific locations within which users may be served your ad. Typically, a conversion zone is also drawn around a physical location such as your leasing office in order to measure offline conversions, but you can also measure online conversions from these ads when a targeted user visits your apartment website.
When a prospect enters the fenced location (e.g. their home address), they will be targeted with your ads on their mobile and desktop devices for 30 days. When the customer enters the conversion zone (e.g. your leasing office) with their mobile device after being served your ad, the conversion zone recognizes the prospect and attributes their visit as an offline conversion. Or, if a prospect converts online by filling out a contact form, that action is measured as an online conversion.
Addressable marketing campaigns allow you to target prospects based on household location, income level, home equity information, number of household members, and a variety of interests, contributing to highly qualified online and offline traffic down the road. By raising awareness among a highly qualified audience, you increase the chances that awareness eventually turns into action when your prospects are ready to start or continue their housing search.
One addressable marketing tactic we recommend is CTV (AKA Connected TV) ads, which allow video ads to be served to Smart TVs while your target audience is using a TV app like Hulu and other streaming services. Like YouTube video ads, these ads are more engaging than static display ads and reach prospects while they’re going about their day-to-day lives, so they’re aware of your real estate brand when it comes time for them to search for housing.
Here’s Why Addressable Marketing Campaigns Should Be Part of Your Real Estate Marketing Plan
Google Display Ads
Though video ads may on platforms like YouTube tend to be more engaging, Google display ads are also a great way to increase brand awareness among your target audience. Whether you create an animated ad or keep it simple with a static image, Google serves display ads over a vast network of partnered sites, targeting users across many of the same parameters you’ll find on YouTube ad campaigns (Google owns YouTube, after all).
Display ads are a strong choice for brand awareness because they reach users while they’re going about their normal online browsing activities, but also link directly to your website so that impressions can easily turn into traffic. And even if a user doesn’t click through when served your ad, just getting their eyes on your brand makes them more likely to convert later when they are ready to conduct their housing search and learn more about some of the options in their area.
With many different ad sizes available, you can choose a variety of placements, but the 300×250 size tends to get the most impressions and clicks.
by threshold | Sep 1, 2020 | Digital Marketing, Marketing, Thought Leadership
We get this question often: “Can I pause my digital marketing now that I’m 100% leased?” It’s a reasonable question. You might be thinking now is a great time to save money by cutting back on ad spend or completely pausing digital marketing altogether. But ultimately, we don’t recommend this strategy when it comes to digital marketing for apartments. In short, it won’t benefit your apartment marketing plan as much as you think.
Why? Well there are a few reasons. In fact, there are enough factors involved that we decided it was time to put it all together in an easy-to-reference blog post. Whether you’re one of our digital clients or a real estate brand looking for marketing advice, we hope this can answer one of our most frequently asked questions.
Awareness Marketing Never Rests
The primary reason we don’t recommend pausing your digital marketing when you’re 100% leased is that your digital marketing plan should find ways to reach prospects at every stage of their buyer journey, and that includes the awareness phase. In fact, being 100% leased presents the perfect opportunity to scale back your other strategies (like retargeting and lead generation) and focus more of your attention and spend on awareness tactics.
Put simply, now is the time to make your audience aware of your brand before they even have the immediate need to find a new apartment. Building that awareness among your audience allows you to enjoy better results later on, as more people will move into your sales funnel further down the road when availability opens back up.
We’ll tell you more about how you can implement awareness tactics in the “What To Do Instead of Pausing Digital Marketing” section below.
You’ll Rob Yourself of Optimization Potential
You’ve heard that practice makes perfect, and it’s true for marketing too. Any good apartment marketing plan includes room for learning: learning about your market, your audience, and what works for your brand.
Marketing is most expensive at the beginning, and that’s partly because the best digital marketing for apartments engages in continuous optimization. Your goal isn’t to get it exactly right from the very beginning; it’s to start smart but get smarter along the way as your KPIs deliver valuable insights.
And the learning never stops. User habits, market trends, local competition, and a thousand other factors will keep you on your toes. Especially during times of change, it’s important to stay abreast of how your marketing strategy is performing. Even under normal circumstances, pausing your digital marketing and then trying to pick up where you left off once your occupancy starts trending downward again is harder than you might think. That brings us to the next point:
Momentum Loss Means Higher Costs Later
You may have heard that it’s energy-efficient to maintain a relatively stable temperature in your home even while you’re not there. This is because your HVAC has to work much harder to bring your home to a dramatically different temperature than it works to maintain a consistent temperature over time.
The same basic concept is true when it comes to digital marketing for apartments. After all, another reason that marketing is the most challenging at the beginning is that you’re starting from zero: zero brand awareness, zero brand loyalty, zero brand trust. The best marketing results emerge once you’ve gotten over the awareness hump to earn a little cultural currency.
In other words, your marketing campaigns have to do the most heavy lifting when you’re starting from a standstill. Though pausing campaigns may not have negative short-term effects, in the long-term, you’ll lose the progress you once made in terms of building awareness, recognition, and trust within your market, and the next time you start, you’ll be starting fresh, subject to those higher start-up costs as you once again lay the foundation you need for better results.
Put in technical terms, before it has a chance to normalize again, your Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Conversion will initially rise, likely to the degree that it will offset any money you saved by putting your campaigns on pause.
Continued Momentum Means Lower Costs Later
If lost momentum means higher marketing costs later, then the converse is also true, and not just because you’ll benefit from continued optimization and stable brand recognition. You’ll also benefit from other advantages that can only be built over time.
As brand awareness and loyalty build with continued marketing over time, so too do SEO rankings and brand reputation. These elements give you a stronger foundation to draw from later so your paid marketing isn’t pulling as much weight; you’ll be enjoying organic traffic and providing great reasons for prospects to convert without paying as much to get your message in front of them.
Plus, if you continue generating leads now, you’ll have a larger lead base to start nurturing when availability returns. Imagine having an eager audience waiting to hear that you have apartments available for move-in. In fact, that leads us to our next section:
What To Do Instead of Pausing Digital Marketing
Instead of pausing your digital marketing entirely, we recommend switching your focus to the digital marketing strategies that help you out most in the long-term. Since you don’t need to put as much spend toward short-term strategies that earn quick results, you can redirect that spend to set yourself up for reliable results when you need them again.
Specifically, focusing on awareness campaigns, SEO, and reputation management is a great apartment marketing strategy when you’re 100% leased. As far as ads go, focus on awareness tactics highlighting your key differentiators like stand-out amenities and desirable location. Facebook campaigns, YouTube campaigns, and geofencing can be useful awareness tactics to employ during this time.
Beyond that, we also recommend establishing a Wait List (or “VIP List” if you want to get fancy) collecting the information of leads that come through right now. This way the conversions you get now can still help you later on when you need to sign new leases. This is especially useful for senior housing communities—whose prospects often have flexible moving timelines and may wait months to find the perfect place—or student housing communities where pre-leasing is the norm and turnover season is predictable.
Conclusion
While pausing your digital marketing may seem tempting once you’re 100% occupied, continuing your digital marketing efforts can actually save more money and earn better results in the long run. If you’re thinking about scaling back your digital campaigns, consider redistributing spend to awareness tactics, SEO improvements, and reputation management efforts that can promote long-term growth.
As always, if you’re looking for professional advice concerning which tactics you should be using while 100% leased, you can always reach out to our marketing experts for a free conversation—no strings attached.
by threshold | Dec 10, 2019 | Digital Marketing
Internet Listing Services (ILSs) have long been a major part of the marketing strategies of real estate brands, and it’s not hard to see why. These online listing sites like Apartments.com, Apartment Finder, and Zillow help real estate brands ensure their properties show up in Google search results, driving clicks and conversions while freeing up the property management to focus on concerns beyond digital marketing strategy.
However, ILSs may not be the best marketing option for real estate brands today, and a shift away from these services is already beginning within the real estate industry. There are a few key reasons for this, which we’ll discuss, but the main takeaway is this: internet listing services simply aren’t worth the money real estate brands spend on them—at least, not when relied on as heavily as they traditionally have been.
So what should real estate brands be doing instead? Well, the answer is complex, and we’ll get into it, but the short version is that these brands should be diversifying their digital marketing mix. Let’s talk about why and how.
Internet Listing Services Are Easy But Not Efficient
We’ve already touched on why real estate brands have been putting their marketing dollars into ILSs: it makes things simple. It is a truth universally acknowledged that most property managers have enough on their plate without worrying about how to optimize their digital marketing strategy. Many real estate brands choose to let ILSs worry about that stuff for them, knowing they can benefit from the strong SEO and SEM of established ILSs that prospects already recognize and use.
However, real estate brands are beginning to understand that they’re not getting as much bang for their buck this way. While ILSs do bring in leads, brands are likely to pay a much higher cost per lead than they would on other digital marketing strategies like paid search or retargeting ads. Not only that, but ILSs could be delivering less qualified leads, resulting in fewer lead conversions, which brings us to our next point….
Internet Listing Services Can’t Verify Conversions
In other words, ILSs can’t prove their worth or provide you with analytics that help you make smart decisions about your marketing spend. That’s because when a user lands on an ILS after searching for housing, your property appears along with competing properties in the area, and users often click through several listings as they peruse their options. That means that ILSs attempting to track conversion rates by either a first-click or last-click attribution model can easily provide an inaccurate or incomplete report of your conversions from their site.
So, unless these prospects take a tour, start an application, or otherwise reach out to property staff, you may never get a chance to verify where that lead came from and how much value ILSs are really adding to your marketing strategy. And with unclear analytics, you miss out on the opportunity to evaluate and optimize your strategy along the way.
Relying Solely on ILSs Means Missing A Big Opportunity for Growth
In addition to missing out on the opportunity for continuous optimization, relying solely on an ILS for your digital marketing means limiting your brand’s marketing potential in other ways.
One of the shortcomings of ILSs is that they don’t do a good job of making your property stand out from the competition. Instead, they lump you in with your competitors and provide easy opportunities for your prospects to shift their attention to properties other than your own as they search. Other digital marketing strategies like PPC ads and SEO give you more opportunity to stand out from your competition and make a strong first (or second, or third) impression.
Speaking of making more than one impression, another shortcoming of ILSs is that they only allow you to intervene at one step of your audience’s buyer journey. Every prospect goes through a number of different stages as they search for housing, and using an ILS tends to be one of the earlier stages in the digital buyer journey. Being able to reach your audience early in their journey is great, but reaching them more than once is better. If you limit your digital marketing to just ILSs, you’ll miss out on opportunities to stay top-of-mind and catch your prospects at later stages of their journey when they might be more likely to convert.
Another way ILSs fall short is that they tend not to create strongly qualified leads when used alone. Again, that’s because the ILS user experience places your property alongside your competitors’ and limits your opportunity to wow your audience. Spending your marketing dollars to instead create a website experience that is both conversion- and search-optimized allows you the opportunity to connect with your prospects through compelling branding, provide your audience with reasons to trust, and deliver all the information a prospect needs to convert.
So What’s the Answer?
We actually don’t recommend that you stop using ILSs entirely. ILSs are currently a useful way to reach prospects at a key part of their housing search. However, there’s a lot more you could be doing.
That’s why we recommend diversifying your marketing mix. Keep ILSs in that mix if they’re helping you, but consider allocating some of the spend you’d normally put toward an ILS to other digital strategies that are cost-effective and provide more opportunities to reach your prospects and stand out from the competition.
Creating a conversion-optimized website with strong SEO is a fantastic start. Consider also launching search ads through Google Ads as well as retargeting display ads that help you stay top-of-mind for prospects who have already encountered your property through their online housing search.
If this is sounding like a lot, we get it. You can’t become a digital marketing expert overnight, and many folks in the real estate world simply don’t have the time to devote to it. Still, there’s a cost-effective way to incorporate better marketing strategies into your budget. Can you guess what we’re going to say?
If you guessed, “work with a marketing agency,” you’d be correct. Better yet, work with Threshold! We specialize in the real estate industry and we have experience working within your budget to create great marketing results. Best of all, we’ve got a team of expert digital strategists who can help you launch effective marketing strategies and optimize them as you go, so you’re always getting the most effective marketing for your spend.
If you want to learn more about digital marketing with Threshold, chat with a team member today! We’d love to get you started.
by threshold | Mar 22, 2017 | All, Marketing
Why Combining Content Marketing and PR Strategies Is a Good Idea
To achieve business success in today’s digital environment, it’s always best to have content marketing and public relations help on staff.
Until very recently, both teams had similar agendas, yet worked separately from one another.
Things are very different now and content marketing and PR teams now seem to be working together more and more. Especially since most are remote workers, it’s easy for them to work together on modern approaches.
This makes sense since they both work in a similar fashion to achieve additional exposure online.
Each one of these teams can deliver the goods as far as online exposure is concerned. But when they work together, their efforts are magnified and together they achieve much greater heights.
Are you thinking about integrating your PR and content marketing teams?
We feel this is a no-brainer, but maybe you haven’t come to the same conclusion.
To help you better understand why these team should always work together from now on, we will share a few different reasons to help you finally see the light.
Putting Everyone’s Head Together Makes Idea Generation a Snap
Whether you’re trying to gain media attention for a hot new restaurant, an app, or a website focused on tech solutions, it’s never easy to come up with story placement ideas that meet the latest trends.
Separately, both of these teams had to find out precisely what bloggers and journalists wanted to publish online. And they also had to discover precisely what their target audience wanted to know more about.
Working together, both teams have the ability to stay far ahead of the curve. They can brainstorm ideas together, research together, and ultimately get better publication placements by working together as a group.
As each team figures out what to expect with placements, the content marketing side will achieve better results because they will target their audience correctly and share relevant content that everyone wants to read.
PR teams will also improve by working with content marketers because they can use all resources to find better placements, better story ideas, and keep the brand message consistent at all times.
Working Together Helps Amplify the Reach of Your Content
Content marketing is specifically focused on creating blog posts, webinars, articles, and other brand identification materials.
On the other hand, public relations work well because they have personal connections with the biggest influencers in your market.
By utilizing these connections, they can get better story placements and additional exposure during product launches and other times when they need an extra boost.
The combination of both of these teams creates an influential and powerful way to touch base with your target market. With every successful product launch they will be able to repeat the successes in a new mission.
But there is one other amazing benefit that you get when you combine PR and content marketing.
Sure, you’ll definitely find your target audience a lot faster. And that’s a great thing that everyone should strive for.
Guess what?
Combining PR and content marketing also makes it possible to reach a new, broader, hungrier audience as well.
Most companies are already investing in PR and content marketing.
By combining both of these avenues of outreach, you’ll have a better chance at increasing your ROI since both teams are already working toward the same objective.
Achieving Brand Message Consistency
Finally, having your PR and content marketing team working together means your brand message is always going to be on the same page.
Why is that?
Well, both teams always know what the other is doing.
By having access to this information, they can share similar stories and focus their content in a similar way so that their message is clear at all times.
Conclusion
As you can see, having content marketing and PR teams working together is definitely a great idea. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should give it a shot and see the amazing results for yourself.
Author Bio
Wendy Dessler
Title: Super-Connector at OutreachMama
Wendy is a super-connector with OutreachMama and Towering SEO who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition.
by threshold | Mar 13, 2017 | All, Culture
Name: Haley McCarley
Title: Digital Marketing Specialist
Haley takes apartment marketing ideas and turns them into dynamic social media campaigns, effective PPC ads and a whole lot more. Her student housing marketing knowledge helps the entire digital team get a leg up on the competition, keeping CTRs high and spirits even higher.
Get to know Haley below!
What are 3 words you would use to describe Threshold?
Organized, Excited, Inventive
If you had an office nickname, what would it be?
“The lone female on the digital team”
What is your favorite line from a movie?
“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
If you were stuck on an island, what three things would you bring?
Paddleboard, Dos Equis, and The Harry Potter series
What is the title of your autobiography?
How Haley Got Her Groove Back
What is/would be your motto or slogan?
Hook ’em horns m/
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Flying, so I wouldn’t ever have to drive or park in Austin again
What is your hidden talent?
I am pretty awesome at doing makeup, even though I rarely wear it ;P
If you were famous, what would it be for?
Longest Netflix binge in the world
Favorite Austin eats?
Homeslice Pizza and Hopdoddy Burger Bar
