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?
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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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Over 70% of U.S. adults watch videos on YouTube, a greater percentage than any other social media networking site. Of those in the 18-24 age bracket, the number jumps up to 94%, and still holds a majority among those 50+, with 56% of these adults claiming to watch YouTube (Pew Research Center).
Despite the allure of a large audience, it’s not enough to just post up an ad and hope for the best. Certain types of ads work better than others, and the right video
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.
The more personalized an ad is to its audience, the greater chance it will drive a consumer to act. Snapchat will soon deliver more personalized and relevant ads to its users, improving the user experience and connecting buyers with brands.
Partnering with Oracle Data Cloud, owner of data collection firm Datalogix, Snapchat will start targeting and measuring ads on its platform based on what people buy outside of Snapchat. The list of approximately 100 categories takes Oracle’s data tracking people’s online and offline purchases and organizes them into un-branded segments including in-market shoppers in the automotive, retail, and service industries.
The focused targeting options apply to all ads bought directly from Snapchat or through a third-party API partner. Facebook and Google have successfully executed similar agreements with Oracle to use data to improve targeting. Using offline data to specifically target users will help you achieve even more effective campaigns. View Snapchat advertising success stories here.
These ads:
Snapchat, which filed its IPO in November 2016, plans to go public this year. By offering enhanced targeting options, the social platform hopes to generate more customers for its advertisers in the same way that Google and Facebook have.
Do you advertise on Snapchat? Contact us today and we’ll help you develop a comprehensive social media marketing campaign that reaches your target audience.
You’ve heard you should be advertising on Facebook and we now have even more evidence as to why it’s a good idea. A new study says that Facebook users engage with promoted posts the same way that they react to organic content. According to L2’s Promoted Posts report, emotion reactions on paid posts are nearly the same as reactions to organic posts1. Facebook users actively engage with promoted posts as much as organic posts, proving the effectiveness of serving Facebook ads to target audiences.
Knowing that users will respond and engage with your ads is a huge benefit to advertising on Facebook. If that isn’t enough to convince you, consider four other compelling reasons why to advertise on the social network:
With 1.49 billion members worldwide, and 22 billion ad clicks per year, Facebook is providing businesses with the largest advertising opportunity since search. Your Facebook audience is waiting for you to reach out with targeted advertising.
The days of reaching fans with organic posts are gone because with Facebook’s algorithm, those posts aren’t appearing in their newsfeed. Getting traction from organic activity on your business page won’t yield results, so you need to advertise. A dollar spent on Facebook ads goes much further than other advertising platforms. You can run a focused, cost-efficient campaign with minimal effort.
The level of targeting you can get with Facebook is exceptionally focused. Choose audiences by behaviors, interests, demographics, age ranges, or locations. Try remarketing on Facebook through Custom Audiences. This strategy targets an audience that has already visited your website, and therefore is more likely to be interested in your dealership. Custom Audiences enables you to deliver a relevant and effective message to known audiences, increasing efficiency in your marketing campaigns.
Facebook offers multiple ad formats for you to use, including these three popular options:
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