If you’ve found yourself in a conversation about social media trends in the last few years, chances are TikTok has been at the forefront of that conversation. Since 2020, the platform has continued to gain massive popularity and cultural relevance as social media moves into a video-forward era, influencing other platforms to follow its lead.
A New Medium For Marketers
In response to TikTok’s sustained growth and undeniable virality, marketers have joined the chat, moving their marketing efforts to the platform and transforming their campaigns into bite-sized video content packages. While it’s clear that organic content makes a huge impact on TikTok, paid content has also found noteworthy success on the platform. Though TikTok ads haven’t yet reached the same level of popularity as Facebook and Instagram ads, brands have capitalized on the potential of this new digital space to expand their reach to new audiences.
How It Works For Multifamily
Here at Social Kapture, we piloted our own TikTok Ads service in 2022 to see how the data could really play out for our clients. Our testing phase kicked off with a campaign for APEX Student Housing.
After 3 months of testing, we delivered:
900 ad clicks in just under 10 days (roughly 3x the clicks from Facebook or Google over the same period)
$0.51 average cost per click (just over our average CPC of $0.40 for Facebook)
1.07% average click-through rate (under our Facebook benchmark but well over the industry average of 0.99%)
From that data, we were able to dig a little deeper into the efficacy of TikTok ads. We observed that the click metrics they provide (cost per click and click-through rate) may be only a total ad engagement metric versus a true measurement of website traffic. We also found that Facebook and Google still generated more than twice as much traffic at about half of the cost, so TikTok ads might require a larger budget to reach the same results.
Maybe the most important piece of data we discovered in our pilot was that 74.5% of all clicks came from users ages 18-24.
For this initial test, the impact for the multifamily industry can be best summarized in this assessment from our VP of Digital Marketing:
“For student housing, [TikTok ads work] particularly well due to the demographics on the platform. We saw nearly 3/4 of all engagement from the student age bracket, compared to much lower numbers on Facebook. But Facebook still drives more qualified traffic.”
While any type of property can benefit from the exposure of TikTok ads, the results have proven to be particularly effective for student-focused properties given the main demographics on the platform. However, it’s likely that the opportunities for all marketers to succeed in this space will only expand over time. As TikTok’s growth continues, we’re continuing to explore and optimize our own strategies that allow our clients to take advantage of the reach that these ads offer.
Earlier this year, we rolled out a campaign for our client at Sage at Cypress Cay, with results that further displayed the power of the platform’s reach.
Results after one month:
524,897 impressions
$0.58 average cost per click
474,390 video views
2,593 video views at 100%
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Looking to explore the potential of TikTok ads for your community’s marketing efforts and learn more from our experts? Connect with our team at clients@socialkapture.com today!