In the first quarter of 2023, our Digital Advertising team drove nearly 325K pieces of traffic to our clients’ websites. Each quarter and year, we look back on social ad performance to ensure we continuously surpass industry standards. Before we dive into the stats from Q1, here’s a key to the terms we’ll be using throughout this analysis:
Glossary
In analyzing all of our client ad accounts, we identified some interesting trends in Q1. Our average CPC came in at $0.52, while the industry average is $1.81, and our average CTR was 1.85%, while the industry average is 0.99%*. As seen below, the most expensive and least clicked ads come from the same image types: Lifestyle, Student and Gym photos. We see a paralleled result for our least expensive and most clicked ads, all coming from Living Room, Building and Balcony photos.
SK Average CPC in Q1: $0.52
Least Expensive | Most Expensive |
Living Room: $0.52 (0%) | Lifestyle: $1.59 (+205%) |
Building: $0.48 (-8%) | Student: $1.00 (+92%) |
Balcony: $0.41 (-29%) | Gym: $0.95 (+83%) |
SK Average CTR in Q1: 1.85%
Highest CTR | Lowest CTR |
Balcony: 2.89% (+56%) | Gym: 1.11% (-40%) |
Living Room: 1.98% (+7%) | Student: 0.84% (-55%) |
Building: 1.83% (-1%) | Lifestyle: 0.51% (-72%) |
While these image types perform in a particular way on a large scale, we do see a variance within specific client accounts. Based on the property, region and audience, we see periodic deviations from the averages listed above.
Next, our team dove into how each image category performed in the first quarter of the year. By far, our highest-performing image type for website traffic was Interior photos. Nearly half of all website traffic driven — 45.8% to be exact — came from various types of interior photography including living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and clubhouse photos.
We broke that traffic down further and found that 38% of total website traffic driven in Q1 came from Model images which include photography of living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms. Nearly half of the traffic from Model photography came specifically from living room photos, making that the clear winner of Q1. Overall, Model photos perform slightly better than Interior amenity photography with a 1.8% CTR compared to 1.6%. This difference might not seem like much, but over the same budget, using amenity photography can lead to roughly 25% less website traffic.
Further Image Analysis
Even within our top-performing categories, there are specific factors that make our client’s images most effective. Take Exterior photography as an example:
While Exterior building shots drove 28% of our total website traffic in Q1, these images did not perform quite as well, with a CPC 20% higher than our average of $0.52 and CTRs about 35% lower than our average of 1.85%. In short, both images cost more and resulted in fewer clicks. Prospects respond better to wide-shot building images that give a clearer idea of what the community looks like, as shown in the two images below.
These Exterior shots that show more of the buildings perform around 27% better than the close-up building or signage photography.
Wide shots don’t just perform well for Exteriors, they are also top drivers for Interior photography.
These are a couple of examples of top-performing living room photos. They are bright and clear and show multiple walls within the space. Some of our living room shots that don’t perform quite as well are closely cropped to details like furniture or include only one wall in the photo.
How It Applies To Your Community
It is clear that not all property photos are created equal when it comes to driving website traffic through your social ads. From this Q1 analysis (and our past quarterly evaluations), we know a few things are true: Prospects like clear and bright images, real photography outperforms digitally rendered images and the more your prospect can see of your community with more variety in the imagery, the better.
When your community is planning a photoshoot — whether it’s your first one in a new lease-up or a refreshed look at a stable property — be sure to include the following in your shot list for your photographer:
High-resolution photography with crisp, bright lighting
Wide shot exterior photography, capturing as much of your building as possible from all angles
Interior photography that shows multiple walls and windows when possible
Get the most out of your social ads by updating your photography using these tips and partnering with Social Kapture to go above and beyond industry standards.
Sources:
* Industry averages from Wordstream, by LocaliQ (Irvine, 2022)
Irvine, M. (2022, November 10). Facebook ad benchmarks for your industry. WordStream. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2019/11/12/facebook-ad-benchmarks
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