Case Study: Reviving a Legacy Brand with Modern Social Strategy in the Competitive Kansas City Market

Photo by Tom Rumble on Unsplash‍ ‍

Background/Challenge

Kansas City Homes is a brokerage under the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate brand, which is, in turn, part of the Better Homes and Gardens umbrella. I was thrilled to get a position working for such a well-known legacy brand, not only in the Kansas City area, but for a brand recognized nationwide. 

They are a long-established brand with roots in the KC housing market. But, despite brand recognition, their digital and social presence had become outdated and less effective in communicating with buyers, sellers, and most importantly, other real estate agents the brokerage was hoping to recruit. 

Agents at Kansas City Homes needed more hands-on help from the Marketing department to help them stand out as much as possible, which was initially a difficult task with a small internal team. 

The challenge I faced when I joined the team was refreshing the brand’s social media pages to increase engagement, retention, and recruitment, all while maintaining the nationally known brand identity. 

Objectives

My objectives as Social Media Manager (and eventually Marketing Manager) were to modernize the brand's social voice, all while staying true to our legacy reputation. We needed to create campaigns that supported both brand-level marketing as well as individual agent promotion in order to generate a stronger sense of trust and collaboration between the marketing team and our real estate agents.

Strategy & Approach

We started with a brand voice refresh. We shifted our messaging from purely transactional (“buy now,” “sell now”) to more lifestyle-driven storytelling. We found a great balance between professionalism, warmth, and community connection. 

We also made an effort to generate as many agent support initiatives as we could. I consulted with agents regularly to answer specific social media questions and helped them build sustainable social strategies. I was as hands-on as they needed me to be. 

We also worked to create classes for agents to attend, specific to social media and other marketing tactics. For example, we had a third-party come in and teach our agents social media basics through a series of beginner-level classes. We also created a class specific to Instagram Reels, Canva, and emerging AI tools.

To support agents, we launched an Agent Spotlight series to highlight the personalities and experience levels of our agents. We also featured their listings, got them on video, and tagged them in our content to get the engagement up on their pages as well. 

The creation of several different campaigns also helped us boost social performance (as well as agent morale). Since my time at Kansas City Homes began close to the end of the pandemic, agents were just getting back into open houses, and many had never even held one in the first place. We wanted to boost their confidence around open houses as well as boost attendance. So, the Mega Open House Weekend event was born! Not only did the Kansas City Homes team walk agents through how to hold an effective open house, but we were able to market them all at once on our social channels (organic and paid) and offer rewards to the public for attending. This event did so well that it was repeated multiple times.

We also had several seasonal campaigns like ‘Summer Home Tips,’ ‘Distinctive Collection,’ and ‘National Homeownership Month,’ which aimed at not only showcasing incredible listings in the KC area, but also offered educational tips for the public. These posts were all created with the idea in mind that the agents would be able to re-share and re-purpose that content in whatever way they felt would be effective for their audiences. 

It was also very important to showcase local lifestyle content, so we showcased several Kansas City neighborhoods (short-form video) and created a monthly event for agents called ‘Paint KC Green’ that highlighted different local businesses across the area. 

Execution/Tactics

In order to make all of those things possible, I had to stay organized. Included in a comprehensive social media strategy that I created was a daily posting schedule across all channels (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and occasionally Pinterest) that was built out as much in advance as possible (typically monthly, but several things would always roll in at the last minute). 

We also introduced a larger use of video to humanize the brand and all of our agents (as well as to keep up with algorithm preferences across platforms). We had a videographer we worked with frequently, and we were able to shoot some more informal pieces on our phones. We had a blast with both, and we even built a media studio in the office for agents to use.

We also introduced highly engaging content. Our graphic designer created word searches and spot-the-difference games that we shared regularly. They performed really well on social amongst our own agents as well as customers. 

Present the solution and results

We saw such high-impact results from these tactics. We had a higher participation rate amongst agents in all marketing efforts. We were meeting with several agents a week, conducting several classes, and visiting offices weekly to meet with everyone personally. We became a trusted resource among consumers for real estate-related content. And we spent time showcasing our agents, showing that we were a trusted and desired place for other agents to hang their license.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a modernized brand voice with the introduction of lifestyle content can revitalize a legacy brand’s social presence. Giving our agents the right tools and spotlight opportunities for them greatly boosted our brokerage morale and the reach of the marketing team/efforts. And lastly, our community-focused storytelling builds stronger local brand affinity than transactional posts alone.