What you need to know:

• REA Group’s customer excellence team has switched out a twoyear-old, product-centric B2B brand platform in favour of a new ‘Better is Big Deal’ approach anchored in customer value proposition and ROI benefits.
• The work was done in partnership with B2B agency, Green Hat, who was appointed to the agency roster in mid2024.
• It also comes after a shakeup of REA’s customer service model that replaced account managers with relationships managers and sales specialists who can tap into an internal specialist network aimed at lifting product utilisation and ROI for B2B customers.
• The first tranche of campaign work launched in late January and has already resulted in a 70 per cent increase in weekly engagement with REA’s Customer Marketing Centre portal.
• To test and refine the campaign and messaging, REA and Green Hat tapped its 500strong Property Panel, which it uses on a weekly basis to check in on what customers think about everything from campaign creative to new product features.

Putting the spotlight on customers was never the big problem, but REA Group GM customer excellence, Amy Read, describes the creative approach for its new brand campaign platform as a bold choice for B2B nonetheless. In its latest campaign play, REA flips out what had become a slightly stale, product-first brand platform, in favour of a ‘Better is a Big Deal’ proposition leveraging customers and staff verbatim on what better ROI looks like. And it appears to be working, with the real estate provider chalking up a 70 per cent lift in weekly B2B portal traffic three months later – a key indicator of engagement.

The B2B positioning rethink comes off expansion in REA’s product portfolio over last few years organically and via acquisitions plus investments. These include the purchase of CampaignAgent in 2023 for an undisclosed sum, the Mortgage Choice financial comparison platform in 2021, and a minority stake in 3D visualisation platform, Immersiv, last October.

“We needed to revisit what the overarching proposition would be that helps tie all those different products and services together and leans on the overarching benefit for our customers,” Read tells Mi3.  “The common thread all of our products have is that 12 million strong audience visiting realestate.com.au every month. Finding a way to articulate that in the simplest, clearest way, but that is benefit-led for our customers, was the biggest driver.”

A secondary trigger was a major change across REA’s sales organisation in response to a swelling products and services portfolio. In November, the customer service model switched from one individual account partner to relationship managers as the go-to REA contact, working with each B2B customer while tapping a team of specialists internally as required. The whole point is to help customers keep up with the two product or feature updates REA is making every week and better utilise products on offer.

“We now have a team of relationships managers, plus several specialist sales teams who parachute in to help educate, sell and train on particular types of products, then a customer success team. Relationship manager plays the role of conductor, bringing in specialists at the right time and depending on that customer’s needs,” Read explains.

“Having a consistent way of speaking to the value we have was more important that ever. That’s so customers receive a consistent brand experience.”

It’s also imperative when you are going further down the hierarchy in B2B organisations. In addition to speaking to the principal or business owner within a property agency, REA is increasingly connecting to individuals within the agency and build products targeting the property managers and agents. It’s also started to build out the Ignite SaaS platform, a self-service platform allowing customers to view and manage their property campaigns off the back of live data and insights on residential and commercial property listings, what types of audiences are engaging in which properties, competitive insights, case studies and resources, and so on.   

“Getting customers using those features is a core part of our strategy, as it helps accelerate the ROI they get. They need to do it through our people, teams and marketing channels in a really consistent way,” adds Read.

Out with the old, in with the new – and leverage the consumer brand while you’re at it

‘Get a Bigger, Better Result’ is described as an evolution of the ‘All Under One Roof’ campaign proposition which had been in the market for two years. But really, Read admits it’s a rethink.

“’All Under One Roof’ was an historic piece and early in our days of us acquiring new businesses and driving different types of value for customers. It was a bit stale, in that it spoke to the breadth of products we have, but it wasn’t really focused on that core customer benefit,” continues Read. “The evolution of that is  the ‘Get a Bigger, Better Result’ as the strategic platform.”

Kicking off the new CVP was a fresh campaign called ‘Better is a big deal’. Debuting in late January, it’s running across REA’s owned and paid channels including email, LinkedIn, YouTube and realestate.com.au’s Customer Marketing Centre. It’s heroed by a 60-second video featuring REA B2B customers explaining verbatim what the concept of ‘better’ means to them. It’s also peppered with a couple of staff. The aim was to get representation across gender, geography, development and commercial customers.

“It's definitely bold and different from a B2B perspective,” comments Read. “One of the things we’ve really tried to do with this campaign is bring across the humanistic nature of REA Group. Our consumer brand is one of the leading brands in Australia – it’s well respected and trusted. But there isn’t always the same permission to do that in the B2B space. We wanted to bring that brand essence through in a B2B campaign. It’s why we featured so many of our own people at REA, but really importantly, our customers, talking about the things that matter most to them, what better means to them, what a big deal means to them as well.”

The distinctive brand asset of REA’s red house is a common thread to both B2B or B2C work. “That will always be consistent in every execution we’re doing,” Read says.  

Since launch, REA’s Customer Marketing Centre has seen a 70 per cent increase in average weekly visits compared to average weekly visits in the last 12 months. “A 70 per cent increase to that site is something we’re thrilled with as it helps demonstrate customer engagement,” says Read.

Specialist B2B agency, Green Hat, who was appointed mid last-year to its agency roster ranks, helped produce the campaign platform.

“From the outset, we worked closely with REA to create more than just a new positioning – the brand needed a creative platform that could flex, engage, and reinforce their leadership in the industry,” Green Hat MD, Stuart Jaffray, comments. “‘Better is a Big Deal’ was built in partnership with REA's customer marketing team to ensure their customers don't just hear about value; they experience it in every interaction."

Selling in the B2B brand campaign nor approach were tricky, Read insists, pointing to REA’s overarching strategy of guiding consumer audiences; delivering superior customer value; and leveraging the data that powers both of those experiences. Nor was budget, she adds.

“We go through a rigorous budget process every year, it was just making sure we carved out enough money for this sort of thing. I wouldn’t say we underinvest in customers when it comes to marketing at REA. While it may not be the TVC spots like the consumer guys have, our event schedule for example is impressive.”

This includes the Ready25 event in Sydney in August attended by 1700 property professionals. This year’s headline act is Olympic gold medal gymnast, Simone Biles.

Results in mind

Measuring the short and long-term impact of the campaign work is clearly critical, however. One way is through REA’s Property Panel, a 500-strong customer panel it taps on a weekly basis. REA found the new CVP performed best on appeal, relevance, and fit, and that customers liked the new statement for its positivity, accuracy and promise of results. When ranking the existing pillars, access to the largest audience was most important, followed closely by property advertising solutions that move listings faster, and more ways to grow brand. 

These findings were also reflected in Green Hat’s broader market research. To the point about the former positioning, it was clear that while the pillars were presented with equal weighting through ‘all under one roof’, some resonated more strongly than others. Outside the Property Panel, there’s an annual piece of research to understand key drivers for customers.

“Consistently every year, the biggest driver of satisfaction is return on investment; Are our products best in market, are they delivering the best return on investment for customers? Because that’s the biggest driver of satisfaction and because we deliver on ROI, we wanted to make sure that was a key part of the CVP and campaign,” says Read. “We leveraged that as a key part of the campaign brief.”

“We’re in market in the moment with the research program and we’ll get a baseline on awareness of the campaign and look to build it over coming months.”  

Gauging campaign performance also filters into biannual surveys that test customer sentiment and product performance. The customer sentiment gap is an internal measure of how satisfied customers are with REA’s products and experiences compared to competitors in the market, and increasing that gap between the competition is another key metric for understanding campaign impact.

Read is also looking for an increase in overall ROI score and most notably, preference. “Preference is one way we consistently measure in the same way as the consumer team do,” she says. “Brand measures are less important than our sentiment measures. Awareness is absolutely not a thing, but preference absolutely is. The other things important to us are ROI and making sure people are extracting maximum value.”

Increased customer engagement with REA’s products and platforms, including visits to and engagement with the Customer Marketing Centre, plus customer utilisation of products, services, and tools, are all in this mix.

“Product utilisation is what we look at daily and is the lifeblood at REA of ensuring customers are using our products day in, day out. Whether we can link this brand campaign to overall product utilisation is probably a long bow to draw, but the CVP works its way through all those communications as well,” Read says.

The first phase of campaigning runs to the end of the financial year. At the same time, REA is out in market with new products, bundles and packaging.

“Then we’ll look to freshen up the campaign. But the overall ‘Better is a big deal’ will be with us for some time to come. There are so many ways we can be creative with that as the foundation,” says Read.