Using YouTube video to educate modern home buyers
Problem
For our RE/MAX client, it’s important to educate modern home buyers about the value of an agent, especially as digital-only real estate services are expanding within the Canadian market. With Canadian Millennials making up half of the home buyers in the coming years, RE/MAX wanted to experiment with new communications channels to inform, educate and entertain this audience about the value of using a real estate agent.
For millennials, YouTube was the most used platform, with Canadian Millennials spending 8 hours a week, above watching live TV (4.1 hours), scrolling Facebook (7.3 hours) or binging Netflix (7.4). Millennials grew up with technology and were very aware of advertisements. They want control over their ads, with 69 per cent preferring “skippable” functions. To reach and engage with this audience, we knew we had to do it on the platforms they loved with people they watched and trusted.
Solution
Developed in collaboration with RE/MAX and APEX PR, we created a five-part content series to offer a behind-the-scenes look at real Millennial homebuyers in their very early search process. The series – hosted by YouTuber and social media personality Ashley Bloomfield, launched in October 2019 on RE/MAX Canada’s YouTube channel and was promoted via Facebook and Instagram.
Each episode focused on the beginning of the home-buying journey, as the featured buyers consider liveability factors and weighed them against other variables, such as price. “Liveability” is the satisfaction a homeowner gets within the context of a neighbourhood (such as proximity to public transit and schools) in addition to the home’s features (such as layout or number of bathrooms). Homebuyers featured included a range of narratives including newlyweds, moving close to work, new parents and first time moving in together.
#HomeGoals by RE/MAX depicts inevitable compromises and choices that real Canadians face when looking to begin the process of buying a home. The participants featured in the five-episode series discuss their decisions in the context of the neighbourhood, their budgetary constraints and their liveability goals. It offers advice from RE/MAX to assist on their journey.
Results
To drive video views and audience retention, this campaign leveraged YouTube and TrueView In-Stream Ads to highly target the home buying audience and ensure the right audience was receiving the right message, affordably and quickly. In the past, media channels like TV made it a challenge to reach a specific demographic quickly and cost-effectively. Overall, the #HomeGoals programming was able to reach out to the Millennial segment, earning over one million views (+ 500% of our benchmark) and saw an average watch time of 1:48 per episode.
See the #HomeGoals series here
Katie Boland is an Account Director at ruckus digital.
Read more of our favourite work from 2019.