Atlant.build Case Study: How To Set Up Efficient Advertising to Sell Apartments

Results: Five-fold growth in conversion.

Real estate is a complicated niche for advertisers. The peculiarities of this niche impose constraints on marketers when developing an advertising campaign strategy and setting up ads.

In most cases, people take at least several months to think about buying an apartment. When choosing an apartment, the customer often considers several factors including the residential compound, its infrastructure and apartment arrangement.

This means that a specialist won’t be able to analyze the statistics and modify ads in just a few days.

At Netpeak, we believe that the constant optimization and experiments are crucial to profitable advertising campaigns. Therefore, we decided to test how dynamic remarketing would work in real estate advertising. After all, even niches with high-margin products and services require reminders. The question is how often to remind and what methods to choose.

Interested in the results of the experiment? Keep reading and you will find out whether this marketing pattern is worth applying in niches with a high average check.

How to develop an advertising strategy for the “real estate” niche

The Atlant building company approached Netpeak to launch an advertising campaign.

(We apologize for the screenshots in Russian, there is no English site version) 

All said and done, we promptly launched an advertising campaign and quickly drove traffic to the site.

But what’s next? Atlant then set a goal to increase the number of leads. There were several ways of contacting the real estate developer via the website — but all of them ended up in communication with a manager who would advise on the most appropriate apartment for a customer.

Having analyzed the site and its usability, we made a sketch of the customer journey map. The availability of advanced filters was a great advantage. They simplified the search process and the advertising campaign setup.

So, our specialists developed the residential compound promotion strategy based on several types of campaigns with different goals.

1. Search advertising to show an offer to the potential customers when they’re googling something like “apartments in Kiev from a developer”.

2. Display advertising to acquaint a potential customer with a brand and to vividly show the peculiarities of a definite residential compound.

3. Remarketing — properly set remarketing helps these advertising campaigns achieve a meaningful complex effect.   

Carefully considered remarketing is focused on the decision-making stage. Therefore, every stage of a sales funnel requires remarketing lists with different ad delivery durations and messages for specific groups of customers.  

So, how do we precisely set remarketing and drive target leads?

Results of dynamic remarketing for apartment planning in 2D format

We asked the client to prepare a feed for the dynamic remarketing campaign. This feed type requires images.

We decided to use ordinary apartment planning 2D sketches with total area, windows placement and partition walls.

Advertising campaign results from June 26 to July 2, 2018:

• 2 leads;
• conversion rate of 0.31%.

Comparison to other GDN campaigns (Display Network advertising).

The average conversion rate of search campaigns (excluding branded campaigns) was 2.43%.

We weren’t satisfied with such results and tried another approach.

Results of dynamic remarketing for apartment planning in 3D format

Having analyzed the results of the previous advertising campaigns, we asked the client to replace 2D images in the feed with 3D ones.

We realized that showing photos of the residential compound and black-and-white sketches didn’t work well. A client needs a realistic planning picture. It’s not just about showing design, it’s about making the customer feel like they are already there, in their own new apartment. Vivid pictures free the imagination; they help customers understand how to furnish their apartment, and where to put packages from the supermarket or even a cat house. These details affect the conversion.

Atlant prepared the 3D images and immediately added them to the apartment planning description.  

It didn’t take long to see the results. The following report provides data on the advertising campaign for the period of July 3 to July 9, 2018.

During the same period, the results of other GDN campaigns were unchanged.

The conversion rate of search campaigns was 2.58%. Search campaigns were still working very well, especially considering the high level of competitiveness in Kiev and the region.

Testimonials

Alexander Pavlov, CCO of “Atlant”:

The project team

• Dmitry Samoilov — Middle Project Manager;
• Iryna Buyukli — PPC Team Lead;
• Eugene Glazyrin — Middle PPC specialist.

Conclusions

1. Use dynamic remarketing in the real estate niche — it truly works.

When buying an apartment, the customer journey map in the sales funnel is quite long. After visiting a site, the target user will see several types of remarketing:

• display remarketing (banners);
• dynamic remarketing (if a potential customer opens the “product card” - a definite flat);
• search remarketing (if a client is still searching for a flat in the search engine).

Customers can take a long time to think about buying an apartment. Therefore, while creating the advertising campaign, the maximum period of the remarketing list was set to 180 days.

2. Prepare a feed with 3D images of the apartment for a dynamic remarketing campaign.

While this can be quite difficult to do, it will definitely help your business.

Think like a customer. When choosing an apartment and considering various options, a customer doesn’t need a building plan, they just want to understand whether this apartment is comfortable for them.