How To Get the Most Out of Your NZ Property Campaign

The New Zealand property market is always changing, so it’s important as property marketing experts to always keep an eye on the trends that are emerging and phasing out. Monitoring these fluctuations is pivotal when it comes to achieving a high converting campaign, especially when the New Zealand market is so competitive.

Through working with some of New Zealand’s most well known property developers including Safari Group, North Ridge Living and Wilshire Group, we have been able to form key strategies that are almost non-negotiable when it comes to rolling out successful campaigns.

See below for our top tips!

Optimise for mobile traffic first

Now that our mobile devices do nearly everything that a standard desktop can do, we have seen that a large percentage of the New Zealand market prefer to use their mobile devices when searching for properties.

The increase of mobile phone usage has come down to how easy and convenient it is to search online, with everything within reach at any time, in any place. Through our NZ campaigns, we’ve seen as much as 80% of our audience using mobile devices throughout their customer journey. This is why it should be top of mind to optimise toward this customer behaviour, whether through targeting, copy or design.

So, how can you follow mobile first marketing?

Use mobile friendly ad formats

Unfortunately while landscape images might look appealing and ‘the norm,’ these don’t perform best on mobile due to the specs not being suitable for viewing on this device. This is where we recommend square ad formats, where the ad will fit the mobile screen perfectly and take up more visual space. This will minimise the risk of any important features of the ad being cut off and increase the likelihood of the user clicking through.

Clear and concise ads

When writing ad copy, we need to ensure that we stick to the recommended character limits specific to each platform. Sticking to these limits can increase click through rates and conversion as all ads will be easy to read on mobile and work well within the platform (e.g. no headlines cut off or truncation).

If we exceed these limits, consumers may need to scroll or click to see more which can impact their chance of converting and losing interest. The idea behind this is that it’s convenient for a person to receive all of the valuable information upfront, without having to go look for it, or perform another action.

What are our best practice character limits for Facebook?

• Primary text- 125 characters or less
• Headline- 40 characters or less
• Description- 60 characters or less

Video and animated content

Video content has proven to be a success across our New Zealand campaigns, with short yet informative newsfeed videos and Stories capturing the attention of our audiences.

The trick is to ensure that these videos provide purposeful information, so that prospects are given enough content to know how beneficial the product is. We want the audience to feel as though they resonate with the product and feel interest within the first few seconds.

Highlighting the key selling points is important for converting our audience, as this is exactly what they want to see and understand when making a big decision like buying a home.

Conduct split tests across both landing pages and ads

We run split tests across both ads and landing pages to ensure that we are aware of the design and copy elements that perform best with our audience. Conducting creative tests and optimisations help future campaign performance, as we gather a large amount of data that can tell us what is and isn’t working, and in turn this means that we can produce more efficient and effective campaigns.

What split tests can you do?

For instance, a common split test that we conduct at a landing page level would be around the value exchange. E.g. ‘Register Now’ and ‘Download Brochure.’

From our constant testing of this, we have learnt that ‘Download Brochure’ is often the higher converting CTA, as our audience knows that they’re receiving something tangible when clicking. This being a home design brochure, or a downloadable PDF with floor plans.

Split tests can be as small as changing a few words in the headline to shift the tone of the messaging, or as big as removing modules on a landing to create a shorter variant. Needless to say, split testing is a highly valuable process for understanding consumer behaviour and achieving a high conversion rate over time.

Align your ad and landing page

A key strategy for increasing conversion rate is aligning the messaging between ad and landing page copy.  This creates consistency for the campaign, as well as making it easier for the consumer to digest the messaging being advertised.

Without this alignment, it can cause confusion in what the campaign is trying to achieve, which results in confusion for consumers as well. Having this consistent narrative will better the customer experience and establish a sense of trust. The importance of this cannot be overstated, trust and authenticity is what consumers want when purchasing a property.