Instagram Stories was introduced back in 2016 and since then it has taken off to become one of the most used features on Instagram. The Facebook-owned, 15-second format has allowed businesses to create engrossing and powerful advertising for a wide audience. Before jumping straight into brainstorming your quarter-minute masterpiece, let’s go over the 5 things you need to know about creating Stories ads for your apartment community.
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You have an amazing website, you have a great sales team, and you are providing leads with a compelling way to engage with your community online, but your units are still sitting vacant. What’s missing and how do you fix it? It’s at this point in the process that leasing teams turn to internet listing sites to bring in traffic. They look to these listings as a solution to their vacancy problem. After all, this is where people go when they look for an apartment, this must be the best place to get leads, right? So you make sure your community posts listings across popular listing sites and then you wait for the leads to come in the door.
If you’ve tried this and aren’t getting the leads you were hoping for or paid way too much to advertise across these sites without great results, know that listsings aren’t the only way or the best way to target apartment seekers online.
Gone are the days of reaching everyone in your social network on Facebook and Instagram. It’s not uncommon for businesses to reach only 2-4% of their fans on Facebook with each organic post. Businesses looking to extend their reach on the world’s most popular social networks have two choices to get their message in front of potential customers: boost posts or run Facebook Ads campaigns. While boosting posts might be a great solution for social media influencers and bloggers looking to build up engagement rates or get more blog post views, most businesses are looking for a greater return on investment from these networks. If you’re a business looking to use social media to generate sales, you should be running Facebook Ads, here’s why.
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College-aged students live on their mobile devices. Most spend their time watching videos and using social networking sites. Student housing communities have a variety of choices when it comes to marketing on social media video sharing platforms. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat all have a share of this market’s attention.
Each of these platforms has its own purpose and communication style. In this blog post, we show you where your target market is engaging with video content, the opportunities, and limitations that these platforms provide student housing marketers, and strategies for getting the most out of these communication channels.
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Facebook is always working towards creating the best online shopping experience for its users. Facebook’s newly-launched Collection ads create a shopping experience within the news feed, that encourages product discovery and sales. Collection ads allow buyers to see multiple products that you’re selling and spend some time browsing before they make the next step in the purchase journey.
What are Collection ads?
Collection ads link eye-catching images and videos with your real-time product catalog. A Collection ad will appear in a user’s news feed highlighted by a large image or video above four catalog-style product photos sourced from your real-time inventory lists. You can select the four products to feature or leave it up to Facebook, which will decide based on which products in your list are most popular or that it thinks will appeal to the individual seeing the ad.
How do they work?
Clicking on the Collection ad from the news feed will open a catalog of up to 50 items that Facebook will pull from your uploaded list featuring popular products that a person is most likely to buy. Facebook will feature a photo and description for each item appearing in the catalog. After opening up the product catalog, people can click on an individual item in the Facebook-hosted catalog to pull up its corresponding product page on your site. One click on the Collection will not take the user to the advertiser’s website since the inventory is housed within Facebook. It’s only if a user then clicks on an individual product that they’ll click through to your site.
What are the benefits?
Increased exposure: When a user clicks on a Collection ad and opens your product catalog, your exposure increases. Users have instant access to your inventory and will inevitably look at multiple ads at one time in one place. Buyers can browse, looking at all you have to offer before deciding to buy.
Increased conversions: Due to a better user experience which provides more information and generates greater brand recall, these shoppable ads create a better chance at increasing conversions.
Detailed metrics: When a user opens a Collection there are two opportunities to click. The first is the initial click on the news feed ad that opens the catalog and the second click takes users to the specific product page on your site. Facebook combines these click counts when reporting to advertisers which makes it difficult for brands to gauge how successful these ads are at converting searchers into customers. Facebook will test separating those clicks into their respective categories. You’ll know how many users are just browsing your product catalog and how many click-through to your website.
We have the tools and expertise to help you develop a comprehensive social ad campaign that will quickly move your inventory. Contact us today.
Relevant, effective digital ad campaigns are data-driven. Implementing a data-first strategy is key to ensuring return on investment on local campaigns. A recent report by SweetIQ shared the importance of using data to learn about who your consumers are, how they found you, and the products they’re interested in. What sort of data should you gather from different platforms including Google My Business, Facebook, Foursquare, and Bing to successfully execute your marketing strategy?
Google My Business: Google handles about 3.5 billion searches per day. With so much search activity, Google provides a wealth of information. You can discover how consumers are finding your business (local listings, paid, or organic search) and what location-specific action or conversions consumers are completing. Knowing insights on a per-location basis allows you to develop highly targeted marketing campaigns.
Data to gather and analyze: conversion clicks against in-store visits to assess which stores are drawing customers in, which listings are gaining the most views
Facebook: Facebook users spend an average of 40 minutes on Facebook per day, making it a prime place to advertise. Your Facebook ads need to be engaging, relevant, and accurately targeted to reach your audience. Facebook’s competitive landscape makes evaluating your analytics even more important. Understanding demographics and ad engagement are critical for successful local marketing.
Data to gather and analyze: audience demographics, post reach, shares, visits to page, and audience response.
Bing: Google may garner the most attention, but don’t neglect this search engine. Bing captures over 30 percent of the US search market and its users are ready to spend money (stat: ). Your competitors may be discounting the value of this platform, which means you can occupy a greater space for less ad spend.
Data to gather and analyze: user demographics, volume of impressions
Foursquare: Foursquare has 50+ million active monthly users and over 2 million businesses are listed on the app. You can gather insight into local search behavior and capture traffic of users who are looking for something quick and local. Leverage data to launch location-based campaigns and market to nearby consumers with special incentives and offers.
Data to gather and analyze: total and average check-ins per each location, number of new vs returning visitors, busiest hours, and demographics
Online car research and shopping creates ease and convenience for the buyer, but can pose a challenge for dealerships. As consumer behavior changes, you need to shift your strategy to deliver relevant ads to high-quality prospects. What is the best way to reach consumers online and deliver a compelling ad that drives traffic to your site?
Facebook Marketing Science and Oracle Data Cloud recently analyzed 64 auto campaigns, evaluating the quality of audience and scale across a variety of publishers. The study found that auto advertisers should use their data to create high-quality audiences and then execute highly-targeted campaigns to achieve the quality of audience and scale that delivers results.
According to the study findings, advertisers were able to reach more car buyers on Facebook than through most other publishers. In this analysis, Facebook’s audience was above average on the quality index and was particularly strong in delivering auto buyers at scale. Facebook ranked in the top 10% of publishers in these studies and first on 25% of the campaigns analyzed. Combining quality and scale resulted in the best performance for Facebook compared to other publishers.
What strategies can you implement to reach more car buyers on Facebook?
Lookalike audiences: Lookalike targeting gives you the ability to find more qualified prospects by leveraging the data from your existing campaign, reaching people who have not yet expressed an interest in your business, but more than likely are interested in what you have to offer.
We can pull lookalike models directly from the pixels we’ve placed on an advertiser’s website for your specific retargeting campaign and then use that data to target similar Facebook users.
Custom audiences: Creating custom audiences within Facebook enables you to deliver a relevant and effective message to known audiences, increasing efficiency in your marketing campaigns. With custom audiences, you can define groups of existing and prospective customers and serve ads to these targeted groups who have already expressed an interest in your brand.
Dynamic Facebook ads: We offer a relevant, highly-targeted advertising option with our Facebook dynamic ad campaigns. This tool reaches active car buyers by sharing your real-time inventory with them. Our Facebook dynamic ad campaigns show your inventory to the best prospects on Facebook by driving traffic right to the Vehicle Detail Pages (VDPs) for your cars. Dynamic ads are relevant, maintenance-free, and shown to buyers who are lower on the purchase funnel.
By implementing these strategies, you can increase your ROI by targeting in-market shoppers who are looking for cars you have on your lot. Contact us today and we’ll get your social media advertising campaigns working for you.
Since its launch just six months ago, Instagram Stories have become wildly popular with users. Over 150 million people interact with Stories on a daily basis and now, you have the opportunity to display ads to this engaged audience. Capitalize off of Instagram and Facebook’s powerful connection by creating ads that reach users within Instagram Stories.
With Instagram Stories, people and businesses can share multiple photos and videos in a slideshow format without overloading their profiles. Photos and videos will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on their profile grid or in feed. Stories appear in a bar at the top of users’ feed from Instagram accounts that they follow. Your ad image or video can be placed between Instagram Stories.
How to Create Facebook Ads for Instagram Stories
After connecting your Instagram account with your Facebook ad account, it’s relatively easy to insert an ad. Within either Power Editor or Ads Manager, create a campaign using the reach objective, a strategy that delivers your ad to the most people your budget can afford. On the ad set level, you will see the option to create ads for Instagram Stories. The new format will allow for a single image or video (no longer than 15 seconds). There will be no standalone links or text, including titles, messages, or descriptions.
Benefits of Facebook Ads in Instagram Stories
You are somewhat limited with your ad because you can’t promote a link or text that would drive traffic back to your website. Instagram plans to allow links or call-to-action buttons in the future, but there isn’t that capability just yet. Although you can’t directly send traffic to your website, this ad format can still work for you. You can:
Lear more about Facebook advertising here, or contact us today!
When you post on Facebook, it might be tempting to click the “boost” button to increase your reach and exposure, but hold on a second! The “boost” button is not the most effective way to reach your audience. This tool lacks the options available to advertisers who deliver ads to new and existing customers. Still need help making a decision?
Here are three reasons why you should avoid boosting your posts:
1.Limited Posts: You can only boost one post at a time, eliminating any opportunity to test different posts to see which is performing best. You miss out on refining your audience targeting to make sure you’re getting the right message in front of the right people.
2.Limited Targeting: With boosted posts, there are essentially two groups of people you can promote to: “fans and friends of fans” and interest groups.
3.Increased Expense: Without the ability to properly test posts and using vague audience targeting, you spend more money for less engagement than an ad that reaches your target market.
Skip the boosted posts and share your message through a Paid Social campaign. Using the following three tools, we deliver your ads to a relevant, engaged audience.
Optimized Bidding: We can optimize your bids to reflect what you want to achieve with your ads. First we determine your campaign goals (e.g. brand awareness, lead generations, and clicks to website), and then we can define optimization goals, bidding strategies, and ad formats that will reach your audience and compel them to take the action you want. Depending on your objective, you can choose to get charged for different actions, including impressions, page likes, and post engagements. By determining objectives and bids, you can efficiently extend your reach and maximize every ad’s potential.
Custom Audiences: Creating custom audiences within Facebook enables you to deliver your message to known audiences, increasing efficiency in your marketing campaigns. With custom audiences, you can define groups of existing and prospective customers and serve ads to these targeted groups who have already expressed an interest in your brand. Extend your reach and increase your ROI by delivering your ad to highly-qualified audience.
Dynamic Facebook Ads: We create an audience of people who are most likely to buy your products. After identifying a potential buyer’s intent, we serve the most relevant ad to that person. This ad pulls real-time inventory from your website’s data feed. We optimize the bid to bring the most traffic back to your site. When the prospect clicks the ad, they are sent right to the product page, creating the highest possibility of conversion. Compared to standard Facebook ads, businesses using our dynamic ads experience decreased bounce rate, increased time on website, and increased page views per session.
We have expertise and experience to help you execute a Paid Social campaign that reaches your target audience. Contact us today.
Facebook continues to evolve and develop new opportunities for advertisers and publishers. Most recently, Facebook started testing mid-roll ads in live-streaming and regular videos on its platform. This new feature aims to help media companies and the social network generate revenue from growing video audiences. How will this affect your video advertising efforts?
After a video of at least 90 seconds in length has played for at least 20 seconds, Facebook may insert a 15-second ad “break” during video content. Facebook will reportedly give publishers 55 percent of all ad sales, the same revenue split that YouTube offers. Facebook is rolling out these new ad slots to agencies.
The mid-roll ads will be enabled by default when you buy a video ad campaign on Facebook, but you do have some control. As advertisers, you can opt out if you don’t want your ads to run in the middle of publishers’ videos. You can also pick categories of videos (like DIY segments or sports clips) in which you want your ads to run. Conversely, you can avoid certain categories like, “live news,” controversial social issues,” and “political debates.”
These mid-roll ads are an effective way to reach a captive audience. Take advantage of these engaged audiences by sharing your message with consumers. How can you best utilize this 15-second video spot?
Tailor your story to your audience: People want to watch relevant, helpful ads catered to their interests. Customize your ad’s message to the people who see it.
Invest in production: Spend some time and resources to produce the best possible product within your allocated budget. Consumers will respond to well-crafted, professional video that renders properly on every size screen.
Get to the point: Bring your story to life quickly so you quickly grab consumers’ attention. Consider showing brand or product imagery in the first few seconds so it’s clear what you are promoting.
Focus on storytelling: Since you only have 15 seconds, you need to tell a clear and concise story. Use every second wisely to keep your audience engaged from beginning to end.
If you’re interested in learning more about Facebook advertising, or want to launch a Facebook video campaign, contact us today!
