Zillow’s Beverly Jackson on bringing real estate marketing closer to home

The Current Podcast

Zillow’s Beverly Jackson on simplifying the housebuying process through its marketing, and why working at the company has special importance for her as a Black woman.

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

Damian: (00:01)

I'm Damian Fowler.

Ilyse: (00:02)

And I'm Ilyse Liffreing.

Damian: (00:04)

And welcome to this edition of the current podcast.

Ilyse: (00:10)

This week we sit down with Beverly Jackson, the VP of Brand and Product Marketing at Real Estate Company Zillow with

Damian: (00:17)

Over 212 million average monthly users is the country's number one real estate app and a website. In fact, Zillow is becoming a housing super app designed to help people find the home of their dreams.

Ilyse: (00:31)

Beverly is an award-winning marketer with two decades of experience managing global campaign for companies, including the Recording Academy where she delivered record breaking social engagement for the 54th Grammy Awards, Yahoo, MGM Resorts International and at Twitter before it became X.

Damian: (00:50)

We started by asking her about this impressive career journey

Beverly: (00:58)

As I still like to think that I am always sort of new and fresh faced to digital marketing 'cause I tend to be a digital first storyteller and a digital first brand person. I always think about two things. What is the brand looking to achieve and how are we thinking about growing? And then I think about how does that connect to culture? And so whether it was the Grammys or Yahoo or MG M resource as a hospitality brand or a sports betting band or something like Twitter, it's always about what is the connection to the customer? Is it digital first? How does it play in transforming or growing the brand or the business or its role or impact. Share a voice, share a wallet in the industry vertical. And then the connection to culture. I think it's very important how a brand connects to its customers through culture is such a powerful way to tell brand stories. That was important for all the work that I've done previous and it's certainly the way I think about my role here at Zillow.

Ilyse: (01:58)

Would you say that was basically the opportunity that Zillow kind of created for you that was so compelling on your end?

Beverly: (02:06)

The idea that Zillow helps consumers more and more consumers get home and that's what we're sort of working towards. There's not a, not a bigger brand moment in a consumer's life than sort of helping them to figure out what home means. 'cause it's such a personal experience and, and with Zillow sort of being the destination for the real estate industry, it's a beacon for all consumers. And it's sort of getting them from that idea of like idea dreaming about what home they want to actually getting into a home. So the brand is transforming, it's culturally relevant, it's significant to a specific population and to others it makes so much sense to me. So like when we think about like millennial, the millennial consumers, it was not an opportunity that I could easily ignore or walk away from.

Damian: (02:52)

Now Beverly, I wanna ask you, you know, buying a home has always kind of been a complex process. To what extent would you say that the tech has speeded things up or maybe simplified that whole process?

Beverly: (03:02)

The idea is that buying a house, especially your first house is gnarly. Like it's so intense, it's so intense, it's so many moving parts, it's so confusing. But then we have this large generation of sort of digital first consumers that expect consumer tech to be a utility. The tech has to be easy and it has to demystify the complicated process. It has to serve the customer's needs to their ultimate goal, but it has to meet them where they are. Zillow as a consumer tech company, as a financial tech company, as a real estate company is making it easier, which is why we're so well situated for this idea of a housing super app where a consumer, regardless of where they are in the process, can come into the Zillow ecosystem and find a way to answer the questions that they need and help guide themselves through the process. 'cause the goal is not just to help them search for a great home or to talk to real estate agents before they find the perfect agent for them, but you've gotta tour a lot of houses. The housing super app concept in addition to financing and figuring out what you can afford and then financing it and then closing the deal, signing all the papers and actually getting into your home. Zillow is ideally situated to do that.

Damian: (04:22)

Just to break that down a little bit further, you know there are other property search engines out there, but Zillow goes above and beyond that. What is the differentiating factor at Zillow? And you mentioned some of those just now

Beverly: (04:34)

Customers are a north star without question. So the idea of customers being the driving force behind what we do and how we serve information back to them, meeting them where they are, offering them real tangible tools, techniques, information and solutions that meet their needs. And then also our partners having access to some of the best real estate agents in the business. The people who are the best of Zillow.

Ilyse: (05:02)

Now, how would you say like home buying reflects what's going on overall in society? I know right now for instance, interest rates are really high. It's, it's pretty expensive to buy a home. The data must, you know, really tell a story of what's going on overall in the US and around the world. How does Zillow tap into basically that culture too of like home buying?

Beverly: (05:24)

I think for me, this goes back to sort of the origins of Zillow. What Rich Barton our founder wanted to do was make sure that information was available to everyone. That there was transparency in how the listings were available, who could see them, how, how much a house was being sold for or how much a house was worth. Using transparency and information and access to information to empower consumers to help them better understand what we're doing and to help actually create a seamless, frictionless system for them to get home. I think that's the magic combination that is important to consumers. Whether interest rates are 2.2% or whether they're 8%, unfortunately

Ilyse: (06:12)

Now with all that going on is now the right time to buy?

Beverly: (06:17)

I think now is the right time for the right consumers. We have so many economists and data scientists on staff and they're always looking to monitor the markets to understand what product offerings are right and get that information back out to our customers so that customers are empowered and they can decide for themselves. And then when you partner them with a great agent and you can help get them the best financing for their situations, it becomes more likely that more people will find it the right time for them.

Damian: (06:52)

I'm curious, you know, there must be some interesting insights into what people want, you know, weird homes, homes with bowling alleys, I think you've talked about. Could you talk a little bit about what the data tells you and why it's fundamental in a way to the way you market? Zillow,

Beverly: (07:07)

Our latest consumer housing trends report shows that half of the buyers are doing it for the very first time. They need lots of information. And so it's about creating product and information for them. But we also know that the median home buyer in the US are partnered or married. They have at least some college education and they're most likely to buy a home in the southern part of the United States. So making sure that we have the right information and the right tools for those consumers wildly important. But we also know that half of those people have kids under the age, age of 18 and most of them are under the age of five, which means that they need room for those families. And so we have a sense of like the kinds of homes that are going to come up in their search and creating personalized options and search options for them is important. There are no homes with bowling alleys in New York currently on the site that I'm aware of, you know, , but, but I think that there are some bowling alley homes out there.

Damian: (08:10)

You mentioned your brand campaign. Could you talk about the concept behind the latest one?

Beverly: (08:16)

It was really a lot of fun for the team at Zillow to lean into this idea that Zillow is a verb and that people are always Zillow and they're on the spot. I mean people spend, I think it's close to like 40 minutes on the app and on the website dreaming and being aspirational. And so the idea was how could we in a fun way, in a disruptive manner, use culture and culturally significant moment to connect people to their dreams and help it become a reality. And so the campaign spends a lot of time of breaking through barriers and noise for consumers about, they're not alone. It's super complicated, it's a complex experience, but Zillow can actually help you do all of these things that you need. And what you can count on us for is finding a weird home with a bowling alley or a wall of uh, , a fish tank and a wall.

Beverly: (09:14)

But it's also that you're gonna need to figure out what you can afford. You're gonna need to get pre-qualified. You're gonna need to get approved. You need to be able to, on your schedule, find an opportunity to tour the home, um, without having to talk to 15 people when you wanna be able to do it, when you wanna be able to do it. And so bringing that all together and that was making this a digital first storytelling experience and that's how the campaign came to life. Like there's lots of big iconic, thoughtful moments about changing the way consumers think about the concept of Zillow, but also presenting them with a suite of end-to-end solutions. Breaking that up and making it accessible to them. And then I think the piece that I'm super excited about that I was most excited about, about the campaign is how we're showing up in culture in unexpected places. And whether it's the NBA finals or in a movie premiere or through partnerships or your favorite podcast, but it's going where our customers are and having a conversation with them in a way that's meaningful to them. But it breaks through and it sort of disrupts the expectations of who we are and what they want from us.

Damian: (10:32)

I wanted to ask you off the back of that, you know, about the channels that you're exploring. 'cause clearly, you know, the customers are everywhere from connected TV to social media, to retail media even. So how do you think about those channels as a marketer? And a second part of that is, you know, who are you reaching? Who is your target audience?

Beverly: (10:52)

This campaign was really targeted at first time home buyers, right? And for them we think about that as a very millennial centric audience. And so we know that millennials are multicultural. We know that they're rooted in purpose. We know that they're mobile, so we know lots of things about millennials. We want it to be in places where those consumers were, right. And so we thought about connected television, we thought about uh, podcasts, we thought about movie premieres, we thought about sports as culture drivers and music as culture drivers. The other thing that's important to this as a concept is not just being national, but being local. I think people were super surprised to see us show up in a big way in a lot of our important local markets. Because remember, home buying and the real estate market is a national concept, right? And technology makes it accessible to everyone, which is Rich's first sort of democratizing information and making it accessible to everyone.

Beverly: (11:50)

But buying a home is a neighborhood experience. It's a local experience. People move street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood from one dog park to one school district to another. And that's very much a local experience. And so having the content and the creative and the storytelling go from top of funnel awareness to transaction and conversion at the bottom of funnel, and then having it go from national to local to neighborhood where your agent who knows the most about your community can help get you home. That was a really unexpected part of the campaign, I think for most people to see Zillow show up.

Damian: (12:30)

I also wanted to ask you, as you look across the United States, is there a prime buying season for real estate? And the reason I ask that is because I was looking around the Tri-state area and people were saying, oh, all the houses come on the market in May because people wanna move out of the area once their kids graduate high school and suddenly there's a surge of houses on the market. I wanted to find out if this is anecdotal or whether this is a reality, you know, in other words, , is there a moment in the year when real estate kind of booms?

Beverly: (13:02)

I think it's not completely anecdotal. There are definitely buying seasons. Um, no one, I'm from Chicago originally. No one wants to move in December. I think. Um, it's the idea of, uh, being in a walkup and having to carry down, uh, a very heavy dresser or an awkward sofa seems, um, not ideal. And if you live in Phoenix, you probably don't wanna move when it's 120 degrees, but people move when it's appropriate for their lives. There is definitely a buying season. And that's why for us, this campaign work that we're doing was so important. That's why it's really important that this work be bold, that it stand out, that it interrupt, that it disrupt so that people see it and know that Zillow is there to help them. And so we've, we've taken every step that we can take to make the cyclical nature of home buying as easy as possible.

Ilyse: (13:57)

Now let's end by putting, uh, this spotlight back on you a little bit. Um, you put purpose at the center of everything you do. Um, how does this role basically align with your values?

Beverly: (14:09)

The idea and the very promise of Zillow as a brand to help get more and more consumers home resonated with me at a very deep and meaningful level. Like we do great work, we have access to great data. We're a leading iconic bespoke brand. But as a woman of color and for someone who knows the importance and the significance of home ownership as a way to create generational wealth, as a place to feel safe, as a place to build something significant and rewarding for your life, you want that to be free of discrimination. You wanna have access to the homes that best meet your needs. That's in the core of who Zillow is. It's in their DNA. And so for me it was so personally significant and in addition to that, it was really important for me to want to be a part of evolving this brand.

Beverly: (15:04)

And I couldn't be more honored and more humbled by the opportunity to lead this brand and to lean into our brand promise. I love the idea of using consumer tech to help make it easy for people. I'm excited about the role that evolving Tech will help. The idea of building a housing Super app and creating an end-to-end connected experience for consumers that need access to information, couldn't be more excited to be a part of that. Um, it is the honor of a lifetime, quite frankly, for somebody like me who lives in a purpose-based marketing environment.

Damian: (15:43)

And that's it for the current podcast. Stay tuned because next time we'll be speaking with Marissa Solis, the SVP of Global and Consumer Marketing for the NFL.

Ilyse: (15:53)

It's a really good lesson for marketers. Culture happens at the speed of light and you just have to be ready. You know, we like to say or think we create culture, but culture is organic and embedded. Culture just happens and we just happen to be ready at the moment. The current podcast is produced by Wonder Media Network. Our theme is by love and caliber. And the current team includes Chris Leyer and Catie. And remember,

Beverly: (16:20)

It's going where our customers are and having a conversation with them in a way that's meaningful to them. But it breaks through and it sort of disrupts the expectations of who we are and what they want from us.

Damian: (16:35)

I'm Damien and

Ilyse: (16:37)

I'm my lease. And

Damian: (16:38)

We'll see you soon.