The short answer
Advertise into the employer's home markets before the movers land
Run brand ads into the metro areas the employer is hiring from, starting the moment the expansion is public. Those households start researching neighborhoods, schools, and commute times long before the move date, and that's the window to make your name familiar. By the time they start house hunting here, you're not a stranger they found on Google. You're the name they already recognize.
Treat the expansion announcement as a marketing event
A relocation wave doesn't start when moving trucks show up. It starts the day a company announces it's opening or growing an office in your town. That memo is public, the wave of households it creates is predictable, and almost nobody in real estate treats it as a marketing trigger. Most agents wait for these buyers to call, or to get handed off through a corporate relocation package. By then they've already been introduced to somebody else.
Your job is simple to describe even if it takes some homework: know the big employers in your market, watch for expansion news, and treat each one as a start date. The households an employer is moving here are already Googling neighborhoods, school ratings, and commute times before they've even accepted the job. That's the window you want to be in.
Where the ads should actually run
The ads belong in the metro areas the employer is hiring from, not just in your own backyard. Brand ads through Hugo can run in those specific home markets, so your name shows up while those households are still researching, weeks or months before they start touring homes here. That's a very different posture than running ads only in your own metro and hoping relocating buyers find you once they've already landed.
This is brand-ad territory, not listing-ad territory. A Growth or Scale package builds your name recognition across a market over time, which is exactly what you want in front of a household that's still deciding between neighborhoods and hasn't started looking at specific homes yet. Listing ads work well once a buyer is actively house hunting. Brand ads work earlier, while they're still forming an opinion of the town and, without knowing it, forming an opinion of you.
Setting this up without turning it into a research project
You don't need a data team to do this. Keep a running list of the big employers in your market and check in on their news every so often. When one announces an expansion or a new office, that's your cue to talk to HugoBot about pointing a brand-ad package at the markets that employer is pulling from. The package runs quietly in the background while the households you're trying to reach are still in the research phase, so by the time they start touring homes, your name isn't new to them.
You can track how that awareness is building over time through The Pulse, which shows you how many people in those markets are seeing your name each month. And once buyers from that wave actually start working with you, everything else about their search, showings, offers, and updates, lives in Hugo Hub the same way it does for every other client. The brand ads are just the head start.
What actually triggers this kind of advertising?
A public expansion announcement, full stop. When a company says it's opening or growing an office in your market, that's a public signal that a wave of households will need to relocate here. Almost no agent treats that announcement as a marketing cue, which leaves the entire research window open and unclaimed. The agent who moves first owns that attention.
Where should the ads actually run?
In the metro areas the employer is pulling employees from, not just in your own market. If a company is relocating staff from another city, brand ads pointed at that city put your name in front of the exact households about to start house hunting here. Running ads only where you already work misses the people who haven't arrived yet. Go to where the movers are.
How is this different from waiting for a relocation referral?
It's proactive instead of reactive, full stop. Waiting for a relocation referral means competing with every other agent already on that employer's list. Running brand ads during the research window means your name is already familiar before any referral list gets made. You get there first.