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Design tips to create great visual posts on social media

Reading Time: 10 minutes

With thousands of brands vying for attention online, it is essential for companies to have a personality that cuts through the crowd and capture their target audience. A brand personality is a set of human characteristics that are attributed to brands in a way that they look, feel and interact with their audience. It is important to note that the personality should be an extension of the core values of the brand – and not conflict with it. For example, a luxury company may not find the greatest success littering their social feeds with memes, and a more fun brand may not be able to connect with its audience through stark and minimalist ads.

With more and more businesses going digital, and having a diverse social media offering, there is a strong correlation between a well thought-out brand personality and success. From designing online ads to creating a mobile responsive web design, having a compelling digital personality has many benefits, pushing brands to shift from print to digital media. A few of the benefits are discussed below:

  • Digital touchpoints amplify the ability of a brand to communicate with its customers in comparison to Brick and Mortar and offline activations. There are a multitude of opportunities for a brand to be able to extend its personality across these touchpoints in increasingly unique ways, providing a seamless visual experience.
  • It defines the brand in a way that purely offline activations cannot. Websites are no longer just a place to find your nearest store location (in the case of a product company) and have evolved to telling company stories, supported with rich media and some truly great user experience.
  • It creates a cohesion for online/offline communications
  • It forms an emotional connection with the users through exhibiting personality traits that they themselves would want to imbibe. Thus, it forms a bond of trust and authenticity.

In all this, the heart and soul of a digital personality comes down to one thing – design. The bare minimum of any successful communication that a brand puts out is good graphics, proving that design helps tell a brand story. Here are 10 tips to ensure that your brand voice is distinctive and visually arresting:

Establish your identity through visuals

Creating a design system or a brand book is the first and most important step to ensure that you have a holistic vision for your personality. Your brand is a living, breathing organism and should be treated as such!

Many companies prefer for their image-based communications to have subtle (or heavy!) branding on them, to ensure that it is associated back to their brand. It could be adding a simple frame, an adapted logo or even a specific filter to the image that is used throughout a campaign. It gives a lift to an otherwise simple image.

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Featured above are the social media posts by House of Hiranandani. Since the brand specializes in premium and stylish living, their use of visual marketing ideas bursts with personality and originality, done in a creative and subtle way.

Think about Typography

Typography, or the art of arranging type, is a powerful element of visual communication. Gone are the days where we relied on Comic Sans or Papyrus to get our points across. Brands are now restricting themselves to using a few signature fonts in their style sheets – either using previously existing ones, or creating new ones, especially for their communications. Fonts communicate a variety of emotions and each type group is often associated with a certain kind of brand or industry. Brands that show restraint in font usage in their communication have much more focused messaging than those who get a bit too experimental with mixing type.

Tifara – New Quote – Chanel Inspired-from-Nature.-Perfected-for-You

In the above examples, the serif fonts have been used to communicate a classic, timeless style that is usually associated with fashion. The brands featured here, Tifara and Zaamor, tend to favor these styles in their imagery as it best aligns with their tone and personality.

 

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Before – These TVS creatives do not show strong brand characteristics. As an energetic automobile brand, the fonts used to not communicate this through their imagery.

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After – After establishing a font palette with visual hierarchy of text, the creatives look as though they are part of the brand. The font choice (Euromode) pleases the eye and suggests movement, speed and progress.

Choose the right palette

The term ‘Colour Psychology’ has been around the marketing space for a while, as studies show that certain colours affect online consumer behaviour. Along the same lines, businesses are realising that using a specific set of colours in their digital communications (be it their website, Google ads, infographics or social media posts) creates retention in the customer’s mind and links the graphic back to their brand. These could even be colours that are used in a product’s packaging. We’ve seen this many times with the classic Cadbury purple, the Tiffany Blue or the McDonald’s red and yellow. There is a strong association with these colours to their corresponding businesses and products, which let the RGB and CMYK take on a whole new meaning!

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Sundaram Mutual, one of our clients in the financial sector, uses tones of blue and white in their social media creatives to bring about brand recall.

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The above examples illustrate perfectly how a recognizable color palette can make a graphic distinctive without the need of a logo. It goes without saying that these are made for Google.

Motion graphics and cinemagraphs

Motion graphics are proving to be more and more popular when pitted against their static counterparts. They stand out from our newsfeeds and demand a second look.  Brands are getting increasingly creative when it comes to using subtle motion in design. Cinemagraphs are the latest trend in this area – a post where only one aspect of an image is in motion in contrast to a static background.

GIFs are being redefined as more than just a grainy set of images on loop, found on 9Gag. They are quirky, clever representations of concepts that could otherwise not be depicted by a single image post. They are also easily shareable across multiple social media platforms. Companies are able to create a personality through these small clips. Brands are no longer thinking in terms of just static images, they are thinking and communicating in terms of stories.

Storytelling through video content

Videos are the most heavily consumed form of content in the online space. Over half a billion people are watching video content on Facebook on a day-to-day basis. Weekly share of time spent watching TV and video on mobile devices has grown by 85% from 2010 to 2016, according to a report by Edelman. Because of this, brands have intuitively funneled a lot of their budgeting into video content for brand storytelling, promotions and ultimately, conversions (95% of a message is retained when it is portrayed through video versus text).

However, not all videos are created equal, and brands are becoming increasingly intuitive of this point. As the newsfeed develops more and more into an online billboard, it is essential to craft content to best suit the platforms. Square videos are consumed the most, as they take up 78% more space on Facebook’s newsfeed and get more engagement than horizontal ones.

The kinds of content routes that companies take are also varied – but they all stay true to the brand message. This just goes to show that one brand can have many facets to its personality – ranging from a lively, engaging side shown through Vox pop to a ‘strictly business’ side though branded videos. Whatever said and done, video content is here to stay – whether it is low-cost videos to tell a brand story or optimized YouTube videos for customer engagement.

Be mindful of what shapes communicate

Shape, or form, is another visual element that holds a lot of importance. Social media marketing has allowed brands to communicate with their customers like never before – and in extremely creative ways. Some even have a specific style of graphic art that is so distinctive, that the viewer immediately knows which brand it came from. Different shapes, willingly or unwillingly, mean different things. Organic, soft and rounded shapes give a friendly, relatable and pleasing feel.

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For example, in the Dr. Mohan’s graphics above – the emotion of stress has been personified into a fun character to communicate to people how to be more aware of letting stress take over your life. The tone is light, to get across a more serious point – thus trying to get into the mind of the customer and make them relate to the creatives on a personal level rather than giving them complex medical advice.

HOH – IPL – Field HOH – IPL – Room

Sharper, geometric shapes communicate a bold, clean and prestigious outlook. In the creatives done for House of Hiranandani, the tonal vectors used have a minimalist feel which is to communicate the perfection and luxury of their interiors, while still keeping it relevant to social media.

Knowing what your brand intends to communicate should line up with the shape and form of the elements used in all communications to ensure consistency.

Microinteractions

There are hundreds of tiny interactions that users face, a majority of which don’t even get noticed. Through brilliant user experience, there are subtle motion design decisions made by developers that try to influence behaviour and make the process or task simpler. These are microinteractions and if done well, shouldn’t even be on the radar of the user. For example, the pull-to-refresh option on Facebook is something that we subconsciously do over other apps as well – and expect the same result. A brand that is fully aware of the spectrum of its interactions with the customer, and is focused on making the purchase funnel or journey as smooth and easy as possible, gains legitimacy and trust. 

Illustration styles (Flat vs Sketches)

Flat design and vectors were predicted to be one of the graphic design trends of 2018. Brands are hiring graphic artists to create beautiful flat illustrations to increase lead generation through their landing pages. Tech companies, real estate and even large conglomerates alike are going with this approach instead of a traditional full-width hero image banner. It adds a fun element to the page and certainly draws the user in. Corporates are no longer trying to make their communications stuffy and pompous. This works well especially in the case of businesses with heavy processes or complex offerings – it simplifies it and makes it much less intimidating for the viewer, improving the quality of leads in the process.

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Customising the design style for each platform

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube – Chances are, your company has at least two, or even all of these, active. Each one has a slightly different target audience, although many overlap. It is essential to rework the visual communication for each one, so that it is the most effective for that particular platform. Companies that do this certainly get a nod of approval for social media savants – as merely resizing a creative does not mean that it is ready-to-go for a certain platform. Rearranging the copy, the caption, the graphic, ensuring that the Call-To-Action is at the most optimal place – all these are important factors to keep in mind.

 Adding regional accents to design

The Indian digital space is extremely diverse – and there is a growing need and appreciation for regionally targeted content and design. Companies in real estate, B2B, finance and FMCG, to name a few, have realised that using the same communication all across the country does not speak to every consumer – not just in terms of the base translation of copy, but the design and graphics as well. By using regional touches and local nuances to the design, the same ad can penetrate the tier 2 and tier 3 market in a much more effective way, and engage with India’s next billion Internet users. It also rouses a sense of pride amongst the customers as they feel represented.

This can be done by changing the color palette to better suit the aesthetic that a certain city is known for (like pink for Jaipur), include nods to monuments and local figures in that region (like Ranjikanth or temple architecture for Chennai) or even film dialogues woven into the creative copy.

This shows that the company is not only invested in the citizens of a certain area or state, but is willing to go the extra mile to build a relationship and start a conversation with them. You can read our case study on how a multilingual approach got a brand 90% growth in leads to understand the reach of regional design.

 

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A modern brand is an entity of many moving parts – some tangible and visible, but others are just a result of good design decisions made, that make a world of difference. As the points above lay out – it is extremely important to pay attention to not only the messaging of your brand, but the way that it is being depicted for communication and consumption. Providing your brand with a strong personality and voice is the best investment in the short and long term!

You can also check out our case study on how a redesign strategy helped a brand increase social engagement for more insights.

For further information, here’s our Creative Head – Panisa Shah to take you through design tips to improve social media ROI.

Should brands switch to YouTube ads from traditional advertising?

Reading Time: 7 minutes

From downloading low-quality music videos on Napster to watching the latest shows in HD on Hotstar, the data consumption pattern of online users has come a long way since the advent of the Internet. Today, the personal-is-the-new-premium approach presented by YouTube has pushed brands to allocate their marketing budgets to the second most-used search engine in the world and rethink the immeasurable mass reach offered by traditional TV ads.  The truth remains that, the screen doesn’t matter as long as consumers have the power to choose what they want to watch. With 100 million Indian users every day and 225 million average Indian users every month, YouTube is the new game-changing element in every marketer’s agenda.

Breaking the habit

Do you reach out to your mobile phone when your favourite TV show breaks for a commercial? You are not alone! According to a recent survey, 87% of TV viewers have another screen in front of them while watching TV. It is also estimated that by 2025, nearly half of the current TV viewers will unsubscribe to paid television services. This only proves that the days of watching irrelevant commercials on the idiot box are over as consumers have shifted to video platforms like YouTube where they have the power to exhibit a fluid behaviour.

YouTube is where primetime entertainment lies! This platform has the most-engaged database of a whopping 1.3 billion users who are watching 5 billion videos every single day. It is time brands adapted their media plans to where their consumers are engaged the most, making Youtube ads a clear winner to where your marketing dollars need to go.

Brands showcase TV ads based on the Gross Rating Point (GRP). This measure determines the frequency at which you want your ads to be played and the reach of the ad depending on the time when it is played. But the biggest question of the hour is that who are the people you are playing your ads to? Did the ad influence their consumer patterns? By marketing your brand through YouTube Ads, you have better control over the advertising process.

YouTube ads – a game-changer in every marketing strategy

Let’s take a look at the reasons why brands should leverage the power of YouTube ads and adapt to the fast-changing viewing habits of consumers.

Track results

By optimizing AdWords for video ads, you can easily track the results of your YouTube ads. With simple steps in place before launching your video ad campaign, you can make the most of your marketing budget and generate higher ROI. You can track the number of views your YouTube ads have generated and the amount of engagement caused in the form of likes and shares, to begin with. You can also measure the performance of your YouTube ads with the View-Through-Rate (VTR). This metric reflects the rate at which consumers have viewed your ad and will be high if your ad is doing well. You can also track the number of leads your ad has generated depending on the goals you have set based on your brand.

Reach the right audience

Unlike TV ads, you can hand-pick the audience you wish to target with your YouTube ads. There are a plethora of factors you can use to screen your target group. Few of them are discussed below.

Demographics: You can filter your audience based on their location, age, gender, income, relationship status and much more.

Interests: Targeting people who are interested in what you offer is a great way to advertise your brand. Reach out to a niche audience who already has your attention to improve the quality of your leads.

Keywords: Make your ads play only to the viewers who have typed in the keywords related to a popular video on YouTube.

Behaviour: The targeting provided by YouTube ads is so extensive that you can also play your ads to the viewers who have visited your website, as a re-targeting technique.

For more tips on how to rank your videos to reach the right audience, read our in-depth article: YouTube SEO Tips: The Secret Sauce to Ranking Your Videos in 2019.

Types of YouTube ads

There are a number of options to choose from when it comes to YouTube advertising, catering to different target segments. From 6 second ads to longer versions, which are skippable, YouTube has it all making it a more powerful tool than traditional forms of advertising.

YouTube ads are divided into three broad categories.

TrueView ads

TrueView ads are the most common type of YouTube ads that play before a particular video. Marketers can choose from skippable TrueView ads that can be anywhere between 12 seconds to 6 minutes and non-skippable ads that cannot cross more than 20 seconds.

True View

TrueView ads are charged only when viewers watched them for more than 30 seconds, until the end of the ad if the video is shorter, or if they click on a call-to-action. These ads are further classified into the following:

In-Display Ads: In-Display ads show up on your YouTube home screen and also in search results, just like the ads that appear in a Google search. They also appear in the related videos section while watching a particular YouTube video.

TrueView indisplay

In-Stream Ads: In-stream ads appear before the video of your choice begins to play. They have the option to be skipped after 5 seconds and can also display overlaying text as a call-to-action based on the brand being advertised on YouTube.

Masthead Ads

Masthead ads provide high reach and awareness as they are displayed as the main banner on the YouTube homepage. This type of YouTube ads is charged on a day-to-day basis and come with a variety of key benefits. They are primarily used to create a buzz about your brand by reaching out to consumers in a wide range of demographics.

masthead ad

A masthead ad is much more cost-effective than a TV ad as it helps brands reach an approximate of 350 to 400 billion consumers at Rs. 70 lakhs – which is still lesser than how much brands pay for a primetime slot on the TV. Additionally, the frequency with which the ads will be displayed to the viewers is much higher, and the brands can also use the database to re-target the people who have viewed their ad.

Bumper Ads

Bumper ads are the shortest form of ads available at slots of just 6 seconds. They play before the YouTube video chosen by the viewer and are an excellent way to complement a larger video ad campaign. Since these ads are shorter, advertisers need to focus only on the primary aspect of the brand they want their audience to recall.

Case Study: How a real estate company leveraged the reach of YouTube ads

Asta Properties – one of the leading real estate developers in Chennai – used a media mix of print ads and YouTube ads to advertise the launch of their premium new property, Asta AVM. Instead of opting for the traditional approach of TV and print, they marketed their new development through YouTube ads and the results were outstanding.

We helped them run ads in both Tamil and English to tap into the potential of regional content online and engage with India’s next billion Internet users.  We were able to reach 17,52,661 users through YouTube with 3954 clicks on the whole. We targeted an audience within the age group of 35 to 54 years of age who are looking to buy properties and can afford an investment of Rs. 1.5 crores and above.

The biggest benefit with YouTube ads is the cost-effective approach they provide. A TV ad for the same campaign would cost a whopping Rs. 2000 per second on leading Tamil channels like Star Vijay with no means to track the performance of the ad or target the people who have seen your ad. A bumper ad, on the other hand, costs just around Rs. 1.20 for 1000 impressions, based on the sector of the brand.

Case Study: How a retail brand increased the number of store visits through YouTube ads

We used the detailed targeting methods of YouTube ads to reach out to potential customers for Specsmakers – a leading eyewear company in the southern states of India. We implemented the onion peel strategy to understand the buying pattern of potential consumers and leveraged those results in their marketing campaigns for enhanced lead generation. This survey-oriented strategy included reaching out to the target audience and asking them a set of questions that threw light on their online consumer behaviour. The audience was then categorised into primary and secondary circles and targeted better through YouTube ads.

The ads helped us increase the number of footfalls to their stores by a whopping 400 customers during the campaign period which was less than 20 days. The ad showcased an irresistible offer provided by the brand and was in the form of a bumper ad, creating the exact amount of excitement and hype.

The same ad on TV will cost around Rs. 6000 on prime channels like Colors during the peak hours of viewership, which is a strikingly high budget compared to the average Rs. 1.50 for 1000 impressions offered by YouTube ads. Furthermore, you can leverage a wide range of performance metrics to track the performance of your ad.

YouTube is the most underrated advertising platform, primarily because TV is the go-to medium when it comes to video marketing. However, times are changing now. The annual viewership of YouTube is growing by 40 to 50% every year, so if the traditional medium of television is still on your marketing agenda, it is time to revisit your strategy.

Whether you are from the finance industry, FMCG market or the real estate sector, switch to YouTube ads to bring out the true potential of your brand and attract potential consumers like a moth to a flame.

 

How in-app ads delivered 76.38% lower Cost per Lead

Reading Time: 3 minutes

A recent study by Nielsen and BCG revealed that India has a $100 billion opportunity for brands as the amount of time consumers spend on mobile and the number of digital transactions conducted increases. As 81% of users research their options on a mobile phone before actually making a purchase, reaching them through mobile platforms is becoming increasingly important. This is why, for digital marketers, in-app marketing has become one of the most important channels to drive customer awareness and generate leads.

Mahindra Lifespaces took advantage of this trend in their lead generation strategy. The phenomenal results they achieved proved that a mobile-centric approach might be the future of advertising for brands.

Background

Mahindra Lifespaces is one of India’s leading real estate developers with multiple projects spread across the country. They are the pioneer in developing environmentally sustainable projects and deliver premium living spaces to their customers. To match the company’s novel approach, they also needed an innovative digital advertising strategy to help them stay ahead of competing brands and expand their customer base.

Goal

For this campaign, the objective was to leverage in-app ads to drive more leads for Mahindra Lifespaces at a significantly lower cost per lead as compared to other targeting strategies previously used.

Approach

For the Mahindra Windchimes project in Bengaluru, we made extensive use of in-app ads to tap into a huge potential consumer base. In-app ads are placed strategically within selected apps, so customers are exposed to it while spending time on the app. With consumers today spending more time on essential mobile apps, reaching them through this medium has proved to be one of the most effective strategies. In-app marketing will also prove to be one of the biggest ways digital marketing will transform the real estate sector.

To do this, we implemented a three-step approach to developing an effective in-app marketing strategy.

Defining the Target Audience

The demographic targeted for this campaign was the 35+ age group as this would be the segment who were advancing their careers and looking to buy a home. All marital statuses and both genders were also targeted, however, males performed better.

Selecting App Platforms

After setting the target audience, we then needed to research into what kind of apps this segment would be most active on. Based on their interests, we targeted apps that belonged to the following categories:

  • Business – document editors/viewers, email management, job searches, etc.
  • Finance – banking, digital payments, financial news, ATM finders, tax calculators, etc.
  • Photography – camera and editing tools, photo management, file sharing, etc.
  • Books and reference – book readers, reference books, dictionaries, thesaurus, etc.
  • House & Home – house and apartment searches, interior decoration, home improvement, mortgage calculators, etc.

These apps would be the most effective ways to maximise reach among our target audience.

Utilising Powerful Images

As in-app advertising is a largely visual medium, the display creatives used needed to be catchy, informative and entice customers to visit the page. A mix of high-performing standard display creatives was successfully used to capture the target audience’s attention.

using powerful images

Results Achieved

With this advanced targeting strategy, we were able to generate unprecedented results for Mahindra Lifespaces. Utilising in-app ads helped us not only generate more leads but also led to higher conversion rates.  These ads helped us accomplish two major outcomes:

  • With in-app ads, we were able to deliver conversions that were 76.38% cheaper than other display targeting campaigns.
  • In-app ads also helped us increase conversion rates by 267.92% compared to previous display targeting campaigns used.

In a nutshell, in-app advertising helped us gain higher conversions at a lower cost. This proves just how effective platform apps can be for brands looking to boost their lead generation and conversion strategy.

With the Digital Marketing Industry Report 2018 stating that 40% of brands are looking for lead generation through digital marketing, implementing in-app ads could be one of the most important methods for them to achieve this goal. The faster brands adapt to this advertising strategy, the better equipped they will be to reach larger customer bases.

 

Marketing for Real Estate Companies: Time to shift from print to digital media?

Reading Time: 6 minutes

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In this age of new media marketing, digital marketing has proved to be a game-changer. While any proponent of an effective marketing mix model would suggest a healthy mix of conventional as well as unconventional modes, digital media certainly leads by a margin when you bring the ROI perspective into play for real estate industry. The advent of digital media has paved way for a marketing approach that now wants to track penny-to-penny spend on each marketing effort and the returns derived from it.

Digital marketing is predominantly being used by every firm out there and is proving to be an extremely successful means of spreading awareness and creating a brand value. The same is true for the real estate businesses.

The challenge is stiff competition in the real estate industry

The biggest challenge for real estate companies is that in this highly competitive space, the brands are looking forward to boosting their digital presence and generating leads. In order to enable the real estate companies to establish a digital identity and leverage upon it, they need foolproof innovative digital marketing strategies with lead generation at the centre-stage.

The website should be user-friendly & mobile responsive

There are a couple of things to be kept in mind while designing a website and implementing digital marketing strategies for real estate companies. First and foremost, it is the website that needs attention. The purpose of the website could vary from capturing leads to brand-building. A website must be user-friendly and must ensure “call-to-action”. Great content always helps in increasing visibility on the digital platform.

Creative usage of social media to build brand & generate leads

On social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, what matters is how creative your contents or posts are. The frequency is not an issue as long as your posts are able to garner enough audience engagement. Real estate companies need to project their unique strengths in the most creative manner possible on the digital space. A lot of online tools and applications are available nowadays that help in automated updates on the social media sites.

SEO to rank higher in search results

Social media follows SEO (Search engine optimization). Earlier, the pre-conceived notion was that just having a website is enough. But actually just having a website takes us nowhere. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing play a key role in the integrated approach towards getting traffic on the website and generating leads. SEO results give an imperative method of ranking on the digital space and the higher the company is ranked, the better chances of gaining leads from their websites.

While SEO is usually only associated with Google search, brands should not ignore YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world. For tips on how to rank your videos, read our in-depth article: YouTube SEO Tips: The Secret Sauce to Ranking Your Videos in 2019.

Print media v/s Digital media: Digital gives a better ROI

Traditionally, the real estate companies invest highly in print ads, but the returns they get on their investments is comparatively lower when compared to the Google ads. Our research in the space throws up a couple of interesting facts. The research results clearly show that on investing the same amount of money in digital marketing and the print media, the real estate companies are able to realize results which are at approximately 2.5 times better. The detailed statistics are as shown below in the table:

digital marketing for real estate *ROI comparison for Print v/s Digital media

A 1/4thpage advertisement in a newspaper costs about Rs. 7 lakhs, which is bound to target one million or more audience. However, the conversion rate is surprisingly low. One print ad worth Rs. 7 lakhs results in about 400 website visits, out of which about 130 leads are generated. In the end, the company gets only 3 to 4 buyers for the properties at an average. In comparison, Google ads, with the similar investment of Rs. 7 lakhs results in about 400 leads which convert into more than 10 buyers.

Leverage the power of YouTube advertising

If pictures speak a thousand words, it is safe to say that videos speak a million. Videos are the new bannermen of content marketing and advertising on video platforms like YouTube can be a tipping point for your brand. You can tailor-make your video campaigns for YouTube by displaying your ad when a potential home-buyer performs a search with relevant keywords. This will help you reach out to a hand-picked audience that is genuinely interested in buying a property – a feature which is still foreign in traditional modes of advertising like television, radio and print.

According to YouTube Brandcast 2018, seven out of ten viewers watch ads on YouTube with the sound on. This only proves that apart from detailed targeting, YouTube ads offer a plethora of other benefits, pushing brands to switch to YouTube ads from traditional media. Few of the key advantages are discussed below:

Track your performance:

You can easily link the video ads to your AdWords account and track the results of your campaign. From the number of views generated and the reach of the ad to the amount of engagement caused, you can track every level of the marketing funnel and make most of your allocated budgets.

Reach the right audience:

Unlike traditional media, YouTube ads give you the power to pick your audience for higher conversion rates. You can create a customised target group based on a wide range of factors like the demographics, interests, content consumption behaviour and the keywords used to search, to name a few.

Choose from a multitude of ad formats:

There are numerous YouTube ad formats to choose from, based on where you want your ad to be displayed, how long your ad is and the objective of your campaign. For instance, TrueView ads are the ads that play before a particular YouTube video. You can opt for skippable ads that can be up to 6 minutes in length or non-skippable ads that have a limit of 20 seconds.

The other common type of ads is the bumper ad which plays before the YouTube video but are only 6 seconds long. These ads are great to showcase the launch of a new property or an irresistible offer. Featured below is the bumper ad created for Asta Properties for the launch of their premium project – Asta AVM.

Get the most out of your marketing budget:

The best aspect of Youtube ads is the cost-effective approach they provide. A TV ad, during the main time slot, costs around Rs. 2000 per second, with no targeting options or tracking benefits. The same ad played in the form of a bumper ad on YouTube will cost just Rs. 1.20 for 1000 impressions. To add to that, you can also retarget the people who have viewed your ad or visited your website for a higher rate of conversion.

Widen your reach with regional ads

Advertising your property through regional content is a great way to break into the tier 2 and tier 3 cities of the nation and engage with the next billion Internet users in India. The free data plans launched by Reliance Jio and the drop in the prices of smartphones have sparked the growth of regional content in the nation. It is time real estate developers took this to their advantage and re-designed their campaigns in vernacular languages to widen their reach.

CG Miro regional ad

Casagrand – one of the leading real estate developers in Chennai – leveraged the reach of regional ads to showcase their new project. The ad helped in increasing brand awareness and generating high-quality leads, creating a win-win situation for the developer.

The way forward for real estate companies: It’s never too late

Most of the real estate companies currently, do not have a commendable social media presence but it’s never too late. There is immense potential in the digital media to leverage for the real estate companies. The efficiency & optimization control should be at the forefront of any decision by an organization. And when that decision has the potential to catapult the number of leads by 250%, then there is no reason why the real estate companies should not go digital.

If you have feedback or any comments, feel free to reply to this blog post. You can also read our complete guide for digital marketing for real estate.

Bidding adieu to AdWords: Google’s new simplified approach for advertisers

Reading Time: 3 minutes

As the saying goes, the only competition that matters is the competition you have with yourself – and Google is the best illustrative example of this quote. The world’s favourite search engine has crossed yet another milestone by outgrowing their primitive advertising and publishing platforms. Google AdWords, DoubleClick and Google Analytics 360 Suite will now be available in an all-new avatar to showcase the full potential of their services with upgraded solutions that make advertising and publishing much simpler for online marketers. This, in turn, will help in improving the quality of leads and increasing sales. Let’s take a look at what Google’s rebranding strategy has in store for us and how brands can benefit from it.

Google Ads

The integrated platform of Google AdWords has now been transformed to Google Ads with a new identity and an extensive list of digital advertising services. As the name suggests, Google Ads supports all the prevailing ad formats, from text and display ads to video and app installs. These ads can be showcased on a variety of platforms including YouTube, Search, Gmail and Maps, to name a few.

Google Ads logo

Google AdWords was launched 18 years ago as a platform to generate text ads on Search. Over the years, the tool has grown multifold with extensive types of ads available on various platforms. This paved the way for Google AdWords to be rebranded as Google Ads, with advanced features to create a flexible program for advertisers based on their marketing goals.

According to Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s head of Ads and Commerce, “With Google Ads as opposed to Google AdWords, it is moving the imperceptible default opinion that you get as an advertiser when you hear ‘Google AdWords’ … you think, ‘Oh, Words. Search.’ It’s basically a slight cognitive dissonance to all the other great things that we are doing in terms of both the format and surfaces these ads can show. And so, Google Ads, in our opinion, is a much more straightforward representation of what Google advertising can provide. It’s that simplicity and alignment of the core message from the first instant you hear the name, which is the goal.”

Google Marketing Platform

The second tool launched by Google in their rebranding efforts is the Google Marketing Platform which is an integration of DoubleClick advertiser products and Analytics 360. This tool will help online marketers analyse the performance of their pages and optimise the digital media spends on one single platform.

Google noticed the pattern in which marketers used both DoubleClick and Analytics 360 in their advertising strategies by consecutively using the two platforms. The advertisers who integrated both the platforms on their own witnessed better results with optimum usage. With the Google Marketing Platform, advertisers can now directly reap the benefits of both the tools to plan, analyse and optimize their media spends.

Google marketing platform

The Google Marketing Platform also introduced a brand new Display & Video 360 feature that combines a range of Google’s display advertising solutions. The products under this feature include DoubleClick Bid Manager (BDM), DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Studio and Google Audience Center 360.

Additionally, DoubleClick Search, which is used as a search management platform by enterprises, has been rebranded as Search Ads 360. The comprehensive platform also features an integration center for marketers to hand-pick the tools of their preference and integrate them, providing a tailor-made program for every advertising strategy.

Google Ad Manager

The third consolidated platform launched in the rebranding series is the Google Ad Manager. This platform acts as an umbrella tool which integrates DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX). Through Google Ad Manager, advertisers can leverage the ad-serving solution of DoubleClick for Publishers and sell advertising inventory through the solutions provided by DoubleClick Ad Exchange. This will lead to “AdX buyers” being referred to as “Authorised buyers” in the near future.

Whether you come from real estate, BFSI, FMCG or any other industry, the new integrated tools launched by Google will be a game-changer for digital marketers. These platforms are scheduled to be rolled out by the end of July with the common objective of simplifying the advertising process for marketers to maintain the pace, energy and enthusiasm with which digital marketing is skyrocketing in today’s world.

My Internship Experience – Sanjana Chordia

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As a design student, I interned at Social Beat for a month, and I am happy I decided to work here. I interned with the design team, and this is my first time working in an office. The office is at Social Beat is very relaxed, and my mentors gave me a range of tasks. Knowing just the basics of design tools, I was thought the various other tools and their uses. Social Beat enabled me to think outside of the box, and this made me come up with better ideas for the clients I worked with. I also got to interact with the Social Media team, and the Influencer team. My mentor Nithin helped me understand the tools inside out, which made my creative better. I would also like to thanks Purushothaman sir for always guiding me and stressing the importance of values in the workplace. Additionally, I also learned the importance of time management and being organised.

Although I was there for just a month, the entire team made me feel welcome and was friendly to me. I particularly enjoyed the games night that the team has and the chit-chat session, where we celebrate the work the all teams do. It is beneficial and helps you understand what is going on. I also got to be part of the training session. The first one was on Wa-Com, where I learned how to sketch and make, and the next was on the basics of After Effects, which was helpful.

This Internship was a valuable learning experience for me because it gave me independence as well as a sense of responsibility. Overall, my time at Social Beat exceeded my expectations and taught me various values. I couldn’t have done anything better this summer other than joining Social Beat, which let me prepare myself better for the future. As I leave, I want to thank everyone who helped me learn. It has been a great experience, and I am forever thankful to everyone who gave me their hand here.

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