Following the completion of the first building in the iconic Barrio de Salamanca (2017), the digital channel aspired to become the primary player in meeting occupancy targets through the booking engine.
The company launched two new student residences on the market (2020 and 2021), with a capacity of more than 700 beds, consolidating its growth in this sector.
Following the success of the project, HUBR was recently purchased by a Belgian real estate fund.
Pressed by the need for bookings in record time, it was betting on a 100% results-oriented campaign, but lacking previous experience, it wanted to understand the investment scenarios, the strategies to follow, the metrics to monitor and other requirements to achieve the objectives. I needed a partner capable of carrying out this operation with solvency and a high degree of fulfillment of expectations.
The challenge was to meet the demand for national and international searches. And to give the final "push" through remarketing on several fronts, including social networks, so close to our target audience. For SEM, we had to optimize the web copies to compete in the best conditions.
The client had to be put in context. After an analysis of search demand and the market, several scenarios (optimistic/moderate/conservative) of investment, leads, bookings and CPAs were put on the table according to possible conversion rate behaviors, to be assessed by the steering committee.
As it was an unknown, I proceeded to test in different markets, in Spain and internationally.
At this point in the season (June), it was noted that international demand was converting at a much higher rate than domestic demand.
However, domestic demand tripled international demand.
A careful selection of keywords was made in several languages. As long as students explicitly expressed in the search engine their intention to stay in Madrid, they were considered searches with high intentionality, regardless of location and/or language. They were grouped by well segmented themes with relevant ads for each of these. Geographic priorities marked the rest of the campaign architecture.
The a/b tests I carried out allowed me to channel traffic to those pages that showed the best performance in terms of conversion. The data showed different results according to campaigns, with product pages not always being the best performing.
In agreement with the client, we tested up to four messages for each type of audience, students (residence hall tenants) and parents (rent payers). The data from the a/b tests revealed the most effective messages for each audience, and the ads were optimized according to the preferences of each segment.
To counteract the sudden drop in search demand in August, we experimented with Display campaigns segmented by a variety of audiences (purchase intent, affinity, locations, personalized, etc.).
Display managed to maintain a pace of international bookings generation that could not have been achieved through search campaigns alone, given the late season.
The remarketing campaigns - effective, but not intrusive - aimed to find the user again (certainly interested, as he had previously visited the site through a qualified search on Google) in order to convert (in the form of a request for information, a visit to the residence, a call or even a reservation).
Retargeting ads impacted users in search (RLSA), Display (classic remarketing), and social media (Social Media Ads).
Initiatives were put in place to get the best performance, taking care of aspects of the landings. The client made a serious effort to improve page load time, reducing it by 50%.
The optimization of copies in the landings allowed to align them with the SEM strategy, respecting the brand's own narrative.
Meta tags were also developed to dress up the SEO showcase of the different pages.
Good account performance (90% of words have qualities > 9/10) helps to minimize CPCs and gain competitive advantage, with high coverage rate and viable CACs.
The success inspires confidence to continue supporting marketing with PPC campaigns in the following seasons and also in the new residences opened.
Indirectly, content optimization and other SEO improvements help increase organic visibility (+100%) for a number of targeted keywords.
