Industries / Real estate
Online marketing for real estate.
Neighborhood search, listing video, and a nurture system for people who will move in eighteen months.
Online marketing for a real estate agent, team, or brokerage is the work of being visible while someone is thinking about moving, and staying present through the months between that thought and the listing appointment. In practice it means neighborhood and market content that ranks and keeps ranking, a Google Business Profile and consistent profiles wherever people check an agent, paid campaigns built inside the housing advertising restrictions that limit how you can target, listing and neighborhood video that works in a feed, reviews and testimonials that answer the trust question, and a nurture system by email and SMS that keeps you in front of a lead who is not ready yet. CurrentAds runs that program end to end and your business owns every account.
The discovery path
How customers actually find you in this industry
01
Portals own the listing search, so compete elsewhere
The big portals dominate address and listing queries and they will keep doing so. The winnable ground is neighborhood, school, market condition, and seller intent content, plus your own name and reputation.
02
Seller intent shows up as a question
What is my home worth, should I sell now, and what do I need to fix first. These are the highest value searches in the industry, and they are answered with content and a valuation path rather than with a listing feed.
03
Social video does the introduction
Neighborhood tours, market updates, and walkthroughs are how most people first form an opinion about an agent. It is a familiarity channel, and familiarity is what gets the call when they finally move.
04
They check who you are before they call
Your name gets searched. Profile, reviews, recent activity, and whether the site looks maintained decide the outcome. This is a small amount of work that consistently gets skipped.
05
The gap between first contact and transaction is long
Many leads are six to eighteen months from a transaction. Without a nurture system, a lead captured in spring is a stranger again by autumn, and the agent who kept emailing gets the listing.
Priority order
The pillars that matter most here
We run the same ten services for every client. What changes by industry is the order they are built in and where the budget goes. For real estate, this is the sequence we argue for.
01
SEO
Neighborhood guides, market reports, and seller intent content that compounds. This is where an individual agent or local brokerage can genuinely outrank a national portal, because the portal cannot write about your streets.
02
Local and Maps
Google Business Profile, consistent name, address, and phone details, and profile presence wherever buyers and sellers look agents up. Reviews and profile completeness carry a lot of weight when someone is choosing who to trust with a large transaction.
03
Paid Media
Search on seller intent and neighborhood terms, plus social campaigns built to run inside the special ad category rules that apply to housing, where targeting options are deliberately limited.
04
Creative Studio
Listing video, neighborhood tours, and market update shorts. In a feed, production consistency does more for an agent brand than any single expensive video.
05
Email and SMS
Long cycle nurture, market updates by area, and saved search follow up. In an industry where the lead is often a year out, the follow up system is the business.
06
Reputation
Reviews after every closing and responses to all of them. A large transaction with an unfamiliar professional makes social proof unusually decisive.
07
CRO and Landing Pages
Valuation request pages, neighborhood landing pages, and forms that ask for the minimum. Real estate lead forms are famous for asking eleven questions before offering anything.
See all ten services and how they compound, or what it costs.
What we report
The metrics that actually matter
Live in your portal, not a monthly PDF. These are the numbers we commit to reporting for real estate, whether they moved in the right direction or not.
- Cost per qualified seller lead, kept separate from buyer leads
- Cost per listing appointment set, which is the real intermediate goal
- Lead to appointment rate and appointment to signed agreement rate
- Speed to first contact after an inquiry, measured in minutes
- Long cycle conversion: how many of last year's leads transacted this year
- Organic visibility for neighborhood and seller intent terms
- Video watch through and profile visits from social content
- Database engagement: open, click, and reply rates on nurture email
Where it goes wrong
Three ways this gets broken
01
Buying portal style buyer leads and calling it marketing
High volume, low intent buyer leads with bad phone numbers absorb the budget and the follow up time, while the seller side, which is where the durable value is, gets nothing.
02
Ignoring the housing targeting restrictions until an account is limited
Housing ads run under a restricted category with reduced targeting options. Campaigns built on ordinary demographic or tight radius targeting either get rejected or get the account limited, usually right after the budget was raised.
03
No follow up past week one
A lead who is nine months out gets three calls and then silence. When they are ready, they search again and hire whoever is visible that day. The database is the asset, and most agents never work it.
Compliance and practical notes
What we work around in real estate
Fair housing rules limit how you can target
Housing is a special ad category on the major social platforms, which removes or restricts targeting by age, gender, and detailed demographic options and limits geographic targeting radius. Advertising that expresses a preference or limitation based on a protected characteristic is prohibited under fair housing law. We build campaigns inside those constraints from the start.
Licence and brokerage disclosure
Most states require advertising to identify the brokerage and, in many cases, the licensee, and some require license numbers to appear. Rules vary by state and your brokerage remains responsible. We put the disclosures you specify into every ad and landing page template.
Listing content and image rights
Listing photos, floor plans, and listing data are usually governed by your MLS rules and the photographer's license. We use assets you confirm you have the right to use, and we credit and disclaim as your brokerage requires.
Text messaging consent
Real estate follow up leans heavily on texting, which requires prior express consent, sender identification, and a working opt out for marketing messages. We build that into the lead capture rather than adding it later.
General information, not legal advice. Rules change and vary by state. Your business stays responsible for the legality of its own offers, claims, and disclosures, and nothing goes live without your approval.
FAQ
Real estate questions
Can you target buyers by age or income on social?
No, and neither can anyone else. Housing advertising runs in a restricted special ad category, which removes those targeting options and limits geographic radius. Good campaigns in this industry win on creative and offer rather than on audience settings.
Are seller leads or buyer leads a better investment?
Seller leads generally carry more durable value per lead and cost more to acquire. Buyer leads are cheaper and require far more follow up capacity. We set the split from your team's capacity and your market, and we report the two separately so the cheaper one does not hide behind a blended number.
Do I need my own website when the portals rank for everything?
You need one for the searches the portals do not own: neighborhood detail, seller questions, market commentary, and your own name. That is also the content assistants can cite, which is becoming a real source of first contact.
How do you handle leads that are a year away?
With a nurture system rather than a call cadence. Market updates by area, saved search alerts, and periodic check ins keep you present at low cost. The measurement for this is long cycle conversion, which is why we set up tracking that can still attribute a transaction twelve months later.
Do you work with teams and brokerages as well as individual agents?
Yes. For teams and brokerages the extra work is routing, agent level attribution, and keeping individual agents from bidding against the brokerage. We set that structure at kickoff.
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Get the plan for your market
Thirty minutes, a senior operator, and a written plan you keep either way. Month to month, and you own every account we touch.