Located in more than 1,200 locations across the U.S. and Canada, The Home Depot Rental offers a comprehensive rental solution and is a leading provider of tools, trucks, trailers, and large equipment such as trenchers, skid steers, and mini excavators. The primary audience for The Home Depot Rental is professional contractors (Pros), with a secondary audience of Do-it-Yourselfers (DIYers). The Pros, ages 25 – 49, tend to be the decision-maker of general contractor small businesses or mid-size specialty trades like landscaping, electrical, plumbing, or HVAC. The DIYers typically consists of first or second home buyers empowered to complete indoor and outdoor renovation projects. As the largest home improvement retailer in the U.S., DIYers are core to every aspect of The Home Depot business.
As the pandemic continued, homeowners tackled more DIY renovations, and professional contracting jobs began to pick back up after a dip in 2020. The Home Depot Rental found itself in a unique position to cater to the demand for tool, truck, and large equipment rentals. However, there was still low brand awareness among customers that The Home Depot Rental offered a complete rental solution for these products at their local Home Depot stores. To meet demand while also solving a pressing challenge, The Home Depot Rental tasked Brunner with developing an integrated marketing campaign to increase rentals and highlight its “one-stop shop” value proposition to key audiences.
Raise awareness of The Home Depot Rental offering and drive more people to rent equipment for their home improvement projects. Brunner and The Home Depot Rental created specific media plans per channel at key times throughout the year that coincided with The Home Depot’s busy seasons. This approach accounted for the needs and frequency of Pro and DIY rentals, including regional and behavioral factors.
Since the needs and frequency of Pro rentals are influenced on a regional level, Brunner determined a regional strategy could impact key markets. This approach already showed annual success with SEM and social and could be expanded to additional channels, such as Display and OTT, to drive greater impact.
For core channels, like SEM and paid social, we implemented an always-on approach with fluid media spend and messaging based on seasonality. For additional channels, to determine campaign flighting, Brunner leveraged seasonal and timely trends, evaluated sentiment, and factored in media weight. As the pandemic continued, research showed a continuous surge from 2020 in DIY home improvement as individuals used some of their extra time to complete projects. Additionally, Pinterest cited a 5.5x increase for “home project DIY” searches vs. a pre-pandemic world. Keeping seasonality and the change in behavior top of mind, the team capitalized on these behaviors to inform the content approach and plan campaign flights.
Brunner team held three shoots ahead of and during the brand’s busy season to develop high-quality video and image creative for both the Pro and DIYer audiences. To determine the creative that appeals to both audiences, the team storyboarded specific concepts before the shoot that would result in 20-, 15-, and 30-second video units. The creative included both brand and category-specific key messages while showcasing the variety of products available to rent. We produced content to maintain activity on several channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Display ads, OOH billboards, OTT videos, and TikTok.
To support all media flighting, Brunner developed five customized landing pages to which all digital campaigns drove users. Two of the pages were brand-focused – one for the Pro audience and the other for the DIYers – highlighting key brand value propositions and differentiators. We dedicated another page to Pro-specific products available to rent. A fourth page focused on storm response and disaster rentals used during hurricane season and catastrophic weather events. Lastly, we built a project-specific landing page for the DIYers that provided various outdoor and indoor seasonal projects that homeowners could take on. The page included step-by-step blog instructions, how-to videos, and project material shopping checklists.
To evaluate the impact of the campaign, Brunner quantified how many individuals saw the content (increase in awareness), interacted or engaged with the content (increase in consideration), and, most importantly, rented from The Home Depot as a result of the content (increase in conversions).
By creating dynamic content coupled with a comprehensive channel mix and media plan that reached the target audiences, Brunner helped The Home Depot Rental successfully achieve and surpass its objectives.
