Apartment Marketers Investing More in Short-Form Video Production

Apartment marketing budgeting directed at short-form video channels such as TikTok and Instagram grew significantly last year – a trend that has continued in 2023, according to a panel at National Apartment Association’s Apartmentalize conference last week in Atlanta.

Consumers agree, as 54% said recently that they want more videos from the brands they follow.

Delany Duke, director of digital services, Landmark Properties; and Brooke Atsalis, director of marketing and leadership development, The Management Group; spoke to these trends and how to optimize this medium with moderator Martin Canchola, co-founder, ApartmentSEO.com.

The short-form video runs generally 30 seconds or less and Duke said marketers should aim for 21 to 34 seconds in length.

Atsalis said filter-free videos that incorporate trending songs draw the most engagement and that including text with keywords as part of the video help to drive traffic to the “right” audience.

She said including emojis is another way to increase engagement. Her property “The Wren,” for example, includes a bird emoji. Shooting the video in .5 and insisting on consistent lighting is another smart strategy.

For interesting examples, SODO Duluth apartments in Duluth, Ga., does a great job with short-term video, Atsalis said.

YouTube and Reels are mediums that compete with TikTok. Although Facebook and TikTok convincingly lead in the number of users, Instagram, as the third-largest platform in the social media space, is the most rapidly evolving. Instagram’s user growth has been consistent over the past years and shows no signs of slowing any time soon, according to data presented by onlyaccounts.io.

The Instagram photo and video-sharing social networking app is expected to hit a massive 1.33 billion users in 2023, 86 million more than a year ago. By 2027, the number of people using it is expected to grow by another 17.2% and hit 1.56 billion worldwide.

Canchola said that short-form video is a relatively untapped market for apartment marketers.

“Because apartment living is not using short-form that much, those who do will receive better search results,” he said.

Duke said these short-form video platforms operate in much the same way, “so it’s not like you have to learn a brand-new platform if you want to use more than one of them.”

She said, ideally, these videos can contain interviews with residents about what they love about the community, which will provide the much sought-after “social proof” that marketers aim for.

Other short-form videos can mimic traditional video advertising, but with the right song and by inserting some “fun” and “humor,” they will be effective, the panel said.