ExploreFMWB Organic Homebuyer’s Campaign

Hometown pride and shareable content yield valuable data

Welcome Home to FMWB

Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo is experiencing a buyer’s market – a rarity in Canada’s hot housing market. Home prices are about 50% below their peaks even though household incomes are still more than twice the national average.

FMWB is also experiencing a tight labour market. Roles for customer service positions, skilled trades careers, health care, and more are vacant. Welcoming new residents to our community is a priority.

An organic social media campaign was developed to support a broader campaign through spring 2024. The paid campaign tightly focused on the Calgary market. The organic campaign was rolled out to help identify target markets for future campaigns, activate local networks, and generate positive sentiment in our channels. Data from the geographic reach of the posts would help to ensure future paid campaigns are focused on receptive markets.

YMM is where it’s at

In the first two weeks of the organic campaign we achieved almost 10,000 post engagements across our @ExploreFMWB Facebook and Instagram channels. This was almost five times higher than our baseline metrics. Sentiment was incredibly positive, too. Comments and shares included messages of pride, community values, and endorsements for their network to move to FMWB. One of our favorites: “YMM is where it’s at”

Website metrics from a dedicated landing page also met our objectives. Geographic data has identified two key markets for upcoming campaigns. Demographic data will help us to target our ad dollars to the most receptive audience.

Unwelcome heat in the market

In early May a wildfire near Fort McMurray triggered evacuations from some neighbourhoods. The campaign was paused and resumed three weeks later. However, the volume of news stories about the evacuation and wildfires remained a top search result through the end of June.

To address concerns of wildfire risk for potential residents we are developing new messaging before our next campaign. The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo has been a leader in adopting FireSmart practices. Amplifying the value of these projects and other initiatives to reduce wildfire risks will be critical to assure homeowners.

A proactive public relations strategy will also help to address this challenge. As a small marketing and communications team new to the organization, much of our PR efforts have been in responding to inbound queries. We created biweekly pitch sessions to develop headline-worthy stories to share with our network of media contacts. Growing the volume of positive stories of our region can counteract less helpful narratives.

A community of friends and family

Our organization had access to Environics PRIZM data on the distinct segments in FMWB. We saw that young families with a sport-centred lifestyle were the most frequent group to move into the region over the past decade. Career growth, quality amenities, and diverse communities were their priorities. We used this to create posts that would resonate with our audiences – and encourage them to share. What better ambassadors to encourage people to relocate to FMWB than trusted friends and family?

An encouraging first step

Our Homebuyer’s Campaign was a success. By creating attractive, photo-rich content that would resonate with our target audience we saw a five-fold increase in our social media engagement. Over a month after the campaign concluded we are still seeing engagement on these posts, and our dedicated landing page continues to attract significant traffic.

The data from this campaign was our primary goal. FMWBEDT had not previously conducted a homebuying campaign. This pilot campaign delivered important information about our audience, markets, and messages that will inform more robust future campaigns.