Judge your marketing in profit, not leads
A full inbox feels like success. In luxury real estate it often isn't. This is how I think about marketing that actually pays.
For most of my career I've sat between marketing and the people who run the business. The conversation always comes back to the same question: is marketing working?
The easy answer is leads. They're visible, they go up when you spend more, and they make a good slide. But I've seen agencies with more enquiries than ever and less profit than the year before.
Leads are an input, not a result
A lead is someone who raised a hand. It says nothing about whether they can buy, whether they'll buy from you, or what it costs your team to find out. Unqualified leads aren't free. Every one of them takes an agent's time, and agent time is the most expensive thing an agency has.
The goal was never a pretty website or a busy inbox. It's more sales and more profit from the same or lower spend
Measure what the owner cares about
When I work with an agency, I start by agreeing what success means before we touch a single campaign. It usually comes down to a few questions:
- Which channels bring clients who actually close?
- What does it cost to win a listing, not just a lead?
- How much of the business comes from people who found us directly?
- Where does time leak between the first enquiry and the signed deal?
The answers live across marketing, sales and finance. That's exactly why most agencies can't see them: each department measures its own part.
Direct beats rented
The strongest marketing asset an agency can own is direct demand: people who come to you by name, through your own website, your content and your reputation. Rented attention from portals and paid channels has its place, but it gets more expensive every year and it's never really yours.
Building direct demand is slower. It takes a brand with a point of view, content that helps before it sells, and a website that works as hard as your best agent. It compounds, though. It's the difference between buying growth and owning it.
One system, one truth
None of this works if the data is scattered. If marketing can't see which enquiries became sales, it will optimize for the wrong thing. Connecting marketing to the CRM, and the CRM to the numbers the owner reads every month, is the unglamorous work that makes everything else measurable.
Get that right and "is marketing working?" stops being a debate. It becomes a number you can read.