Waterford Place Expansion – Digital Ad Campaign

Sunset Senior Communities (aka Sunset Retirement Communities) a Christian-based nonprofit, is expanding its Waterford Place campus in Jenison, Michigan, to include 82 additional independent living units – 62 apartments and 20 villas. Sunset approached DVS to create and execute a strategic marketing plan with a variety of tactics including a robust digital advertising campaign.

Waterford Place project card

Tactics & Management

The digital campaign began with keyword research and planning along with the creation of a website landing page specific to the expansion (waterfordplaceexpansion.org). Additionally, modifications were made to the Sunset Senior Communities main homepage to include an announcement about the expansion (sunsetcommunities.org).

waterford place expansion

Once the keywords were identified, we developed advertising content (copy and visuals) and set up pay-per-click (PPC) search, display & video campaigns on Google, Microsoft, and Facebook inputting the audience and geographic parameters (West Michigan). We also set up retargeting (a form of advertising targeted to consumers based on their internet actions) on the website landing page and on Facebook. We implemented a service called CallRail that provides unique, trackable phone numbers as another method of measuring ROI in the campaign. And, we identified key UTMs to help in tracking the effectiveness of each campaign.

Each platform was monitored daily for performance, to ensure budget spend, and the most effective optimization for ROI.

DVS Portfolio - Waterford Place Billboard
DVS Portfolio - Waterford Place Printed Materials
DVS Portfolio - Waterford Place Banner Ads

Results

To track the success of the campaign on each platform, we closely monitored conversions (when a lead becomes an interested customer) and the conversion rates (those interested / clicks). During the first year of the campaign, amidst a global pandemic, we reached nearly four million people in the West Michigan area through paid and organic content and drove more than 27,000 people to the website landing page. Each platform performed close to or above industry average conversion rates.

Campaign Performance

Google Search

11.3%

conversion rate

Microsoft Search

4.3%

conversion rate

Reach

3.8

million