Australia’s fast-growing property portal, Homely.com.au, has launched its new brand positioning ‘More than real estate’ with a multi-channel campaign via a number of key media partners.
The national campaign went live across multiple channels earlier this month, including out-of-home through oOh!media, radio with Nova and ARN network, and online through Mamamia.com.au.
The portal also launched paid social, programmatic and direct display campaigns across the country.
Homely.com.au, the largest industry-backed portal, also produced a number of YouTube and pre-roll videos to highlight its value proposition: to make the home buying process easier for people looking to find their perfect place to call home.
The portal has a number of product offerings that support this, including suburb and street reviews from real locals, local community discussions and a local agent finder.
The portal also produced bumper videos promoting its new alerts and collections features; the latest in a range of new digital products designed to help people find relevant listings faster, as well as rate and share their favourite properties with loved ones.
Homely’s Head of Marketing, Amanda Kramer, said there had never been a more exciting yet daunting time to buy property in Australia.
“The process of finding that ‘perfect’ home isn’t always easy for myriad reasons,” Ms Kramer said.
“We know that women tend to make more than 90 per cent of the home buying decisions.
“When you look at the online and offline processes that unfortunately tend to be harder than they should be, plus overlay everything else that’s going on, the mental load is real for many people with a lot on their plates.
“What sets Homely apart in the industry is something we love singing about: our business is genuinely designed to help make it easier for people to find their perfect next home.
“Our site is ad-free, clutter-free and beautifully simple to use; we offer suburb, street reviews and local Q&A discussions that help make it easier for people to find information about the neighbourhoods they’re interested in, before they inspect properties.”
Homely is the largest industry-backed real estate portal in Australia and provides much-needed competition when it comes to the online real estate industry.
As the portal continues to grow quarter on quarter, consumer awareness is key.
“We’ve been operating since 2014, but we’re a new brand when it comes to our property-seeking consumers,” Ms Kramer said.
“Our goal for this campaign was to kickstart some momentum through impact, reach and frequency.
“Firstly, we made our brand assets more distinctive, then we worked with some fantastic media partners to find high impact opportunities that reached our ideal audience segment as often as we could.”
With most capital cities in lockdown during the industry’s busiest time of the year, the traditional spring selling period looked very different around the country.
In Victoria, one of Homely’s largest territories, inspections were not permitted at all, while in NSW inspections were restricted to one-on-ones only.
Homely used this state-based fragmentation to trial out a bolder media strategy, underpinned by a digital investment to drive awareness for those stuck at home.
Queensland emerged from lockdowns earlier and so was selected for out of home media and radio partnerships to capture people on the go.
“This campaign was designed to hit the right audience at the right time, and we put a lot into our targeting to do this,” Ms Kramer said.
“We worked closely with our media partners to achieve the results we were after. We’re already seeing great results including increases in enquiries, earned media and an uplift in user generated content submissions on the site.
“Nationally, we worked to a targeted, relevant digital approach that erred on the side of native and matched our audience needs. Our content partnership with Mamamia was an example of this working particularly well.”
Adam Spencer, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Homely, said he was excited for the next phase of growth in the business.
“Our proposition is strong and we have a number of products in the pipeline to continue to support our position as a force for good in the industry,” he said.
“Our new positioning ‘More than Real Estate’ is a proud reflection of our value proposition, our enduring commitment to our customers and users, and ultimately is what pushes us every day to constantly challenge the industry standard. We’re just getting started.”
