Real Estate Digital PR Case Study – Muval Index 2025 Growth Study

The Challenge

Muval approached us to enhance their backlink profile through Digital PR, aiming to secure high-authority, top-tier backlinks to boost their SEO presence. Their objectives were to increase organic visibility, drive referral traffic, and establish the brand as a trusted leader in the removalist industry. Muval is an online platform that helps people moving homes easily compare, book, and manage local or interstate removalist services; all in one place.

The Campaign

Muval has been publishing The Muval Index, an annual index analysing internal move request data to map migration trends across Australia, for the past four years. Previous versions were dense and difficult to interpret, limiting their media appeal. Therefore, our strategy focused on reworking Muval’s complex internal data into accessible, newsworthy insights that we could leverage for digital PR. 

We adapted the Index to create a property-focused campaign with strong hooks for national, metro, and regional titles, while adjusting it to appeal to more journalists and encourage backlinks. We revamped both the methodology and narrative around national talking points: cost of living, housing, and the economy. These themes connected Muval’s migration data to national conversations, ensuring both relevance and shareability. To ensure national and regional cut-through, we ensured full regional data coverage so the story could be tailored to national, metro, and local outlets.

The Data

Previous campaigns were difficult to interpret, with visuals that were hard to understand and limited data, offering only a few angles. Knowing that journalists need a strong, easy-to-digest landing page with multiple angles to hook to, we introduced a new methodology.

In collaboration with population geographers at the University of Queensland, we analysed over 400,000 de-identified move records geocoded to the Australian Statistical Geography Standard. We replaced the internal “MuveRank” model with two clear, intuitive metrics:

1. Inbound-to-outbound ratio – moves in vs. moves out per region.
2. Net migration rate – change in population per 1,000 residents.

These simplified measures allowed journalists to quickly identify high-growth or high-exodus regions and connect the findings to the national housing conversation.

We also updated the graphics to interactive designs, including bar charts, maps, and chord diagrams, allowing users to engage with the data more easily. These were embeddable for journalists and included a link to Muval, so if a journalist used the designs, the piece would automatically link to the campaign page. Examples of data visualisations can be found below. 

The Outreach

To maximise coverage, we prioritised online news publications, focusing first on securing placements in large, high-authority outlets. Once these were achieved, we expanded our outreach to regional and niche property publications. We also engaged lifestyle media, highlighting the key factors Australians value most when searching for a new home.

We specifically focused on:

• Real estate and property reporters and journalists
• Property publications
• National and regional journalists
• Hyper-localised publications & journalists within specific geographical areas related to the campaign
• Lifestyle journalists

The Results

• 69 pieces of online coverage, including: 7 News, RealEstate.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun, The Canberra Times, Yahoo News, TimeOut, View.com.au, The West Australian and PerthNow.  
• Print coverage in publications such as The Canberra Times, Courier Mail, The Chronicle and NT News.
• 63 average Domain Rating
• 104 brand mentions
• +8M estimated audience
• 8% increase in clicks to the website compared to the previous quarter 

Digital PR coverage examples: