Christian Hellmann – Homeday

Christian Hellmann is Head of Brand at Homeday and manages the Brand Marketing department since 2018. Together with his team, he looks after, among other things, the real estate company’s marketing strategy, brand tracking, and media planning.

Founded in 2015, Homeday is a next-generation real estate company that operates nationwide in Germany. The company is growing dynamically and currently employs more than 230 independent partner brokers who are supported by around 250 Homeday employees working in marketing, product development, and customer service. Together they accompany property sellers and buyers across Germany through the entire buying process – from property valuation to contract conclusion.

the main Marketing KPIs

Next to the classic brand funnel metrics such as awareness, consideration and first choice, key figures that are closely linked to operational business are especially important when it comes to Homeday’s brand marketing.

Brand-induced website visits and leads are particularly valuable to the company, says Christian Hellmann: “The organic brand-induced visits are our growth drivers. Of course, the goal is that the proportion of brand-induced users grows and that over time we have to spend less and less on performance marketing. This is the only way to create a sustainable business model that withstands specific market conditions like media price inflation. Brand-induced means that a user approaches us out of sheer brand awareness. He wants to find out more about Homeday and our services because he knows the brand, connects to the brand or finds brand benefits attractive. What we observe with brand-induced users is that they show a substantially stronger intention and greater commitment along the entire funnel and thus have a lower probability of dropping out again. The advantages of Homeday are relatively apparent and clear to them beforehand.”

“What we observe with brand-induced users is that they show a substantially stronger intention and greater commitment along the entire funnel and thus have a lower probability of dropping out again.”

BRAND AWARENESS AS A GROWTH DRIVER

Building awareness and familiarity for Homeday’s services is one of the most important tasks for Christian Hellmann’s team: “We are a very young brand and there is still room for expansion with regards to awareness in Germany. In the last few years, it has grown significantly with the help of different media building blocks. We had a very successful TV campaign, for example, plus our principal sponsorship of the Bundesliga soccer club Hertha BSC. The growth in brand awareness is directly reflected by the growth in business figures. What at first sounds obvious to many is even more evident given our line of business where the decision-making process is usually lengthy and falls into the “highest involvement” category. People rarely or never sell a property. These are usually by far the largest private transactions in life. Consequently, brand awareness and trust play a major role in the selection of the right real estate brokerage partner.”

A data-driven company from the start

Unlike many companies that must initiate a complex transformation process to cope with the requirements of digitisation, Homeday started as a data-driven company, explains Christian Hellmann: “We have the necessary infrastructure and use some of the best tools in the market, for instance, Tableau for visualization and Snowflake for data aggregation. Our investors also attach great importance to the fact that everything is decided based on data. Right from the start, we set up an internal BI team that acts as a central point of contact and supports the various departments with analyses.”

For Christian Hellmann, this way of working is the standard: “I have always worked for data-driven companies. If I don’t collect any data about my business, my processes, and my campaigns, then I am going in completely blind and don’t know where I will end up. But collecting data is one thing, the real challenge is to interpret the data correctly.”

“Data is no substitute for empathy. You need both to make a good decision.”

The right mindset and a good understanding of the customer are crucial when interpreting data: “Data is no substitute for empathy. You need both to make a good decision. On the one hand the rational view on the available data and on the other hand the empathy for the target audience. Empathy is the basis for being able to interpret the data correctly.”

taking the JUMP

From experience, Christian Hellmann knows that many things remain in the dark and cannot be predicted upfront. That was also the case shortly before the decision was made to sponsor Hertha BSC. He finds that sometimes marketers just have to jump: “We don’t have reliable data for everything., and many find it difficult to make a decision anyway. In brand marketing, as in so many other areas, it is not possible to accurately predict the end result, especially with long-term goals and initiatives. So you need endurance and trust that it is the right step. In general, however: defining specific measuring points and KPIs in advance is the prerequisite for understanding whether the direction is right. Constantly going in blind is not an option.”

“Sometimes marketers just have to jump. (…) We don’t have reliable data for everything, and many find it difficult to make a decision anyway.”