pr Archives - Threshold Agency

5 Brand Awareness Tactics for Digital Real Estate Marketing

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.

Why You Should Streamline Your Apartment Marketing

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.