Case study · Real Estate · Canada

Real Estate Case Study Canada: +100% Leads

Name: Marketing & Lead Expert
Address: IN
Price range: $$

How an agency with 6 sales agents in Ottawa grew appraisal requests 100% and cut cost per lead 46% in 6 months with GEO, CRM Follow-up and Email Marketing.

Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market.

Real Estate · Canada

Realty

An agency with 6 sales agents in Ottawa, selling and leasing homes across the wider Ottawa area. Most seller leads came from Realtor.ca and referrals, so the agency was competing with every other agent for the same vendors. The goal was to win more vendor appraisals directly, cut dependence on portal lead products and turn more appraisals into signed listings.

Results After 6 Months

Appraisal requests

+100%

Cost per lead

-46%

Marketing-sourced revenue

+142%

Return on marketing spend

8.4x

The challenge

Where the business was stuck

Portal leads are shared with every agency in the area, and portal fees keep rising.
Seller and landlord leads are worth far more than buyer enquiries, but most marketing attracts buyers.
Agents spend hours on enquiries that were never going to list, buy or rent.
Peak season (spring is the busiest listing season, with a smaller rise in early autumn) was not being planned for, so budget ran out when demand was highest.

The approach

Three services, one goal

We focused on GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), CRM Follow-up & Remarketing and Email Marketing, the three channels with the best cost per listing for real estate agencies in Ottawa. Every call, form and chat was tracked to a booked outcome from week one, so every decision was based on revenue, not clicks.

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What we did

The technical work behind the numbers, service by service.

Service 1

GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)

Created a consistent entity profile: the same business facts across the website, Google Business Profile, directories, LinkedIn and review sites.
Published 60 citation-ready answers on costs, timelines, regulations and brands, written in the formats ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity quote.
Earned mentions on 30 trusted third-party sites (industry bodies, local news, comparison articles) that AI models draw from.
Tracked 60 buyer prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews every month to measure citations and share of voice.

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Service 2

CRM Follow-up & Remarketing

Connected every form, call and chat to a CRM pipeline with automatic SMS replies inside 60 seconds.
Built a 5-step quote follow-up sequence by SMS and email for quotes that had not been accepted.
Launched remarketing audiences on Google and Meta for site visitors and quote recipients, with job-specific ads and reviews.
Added missed-call text back and reactivated 2,700 past customers with a service reminder campaign.

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Service 3

Email Marketing

Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the sending domain and warmed it up, taking inbox placement from 58% to 96%.
Segmented 5,300 past customers and quote recipients by job type, area and last service date.
Built 5 automated flows: welcome, quote nurture, post-job review request, annual service reminder and win-back.
Sent a monthly campaign with seasonal offers for seller leads and home evaluations and related work, A/B testing subject lines and send times.

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The numbers

Before and after

Metric	Before	Month 6	Change
Appraisal requests per month	19	38	+100%
Cost per lead	C$400	C$216	-46%
Cost per listing	C$3,725	C$1,656	-56%
Appraisal-to-listing rate	11%	13%	+2 pts
Website conversion rate	2.9%	4.3%	+48%
Marketing-sourced revenue / month	C$37k	C$90k	+142%
Share of leads from portals	78%	15%	-63 pts
AI answer citations (tracked prompts)	0 of 60	26 of 60	+26
Median speed to lead	216 min	60 sec	instant
Email open rate	18%	45%	+27 pts

Lead growth

Appraisal requests per month

Marketing-sourced revenue went from C$37k to C$90k a month, measured from booked listings won in the CRM.

Optimisations That Moved The Numbers

01
The business is now cited in 26 of 60 tracked AI prompts, up from 0.
02
AI assistants started sending referral visits within 8 weeks, and those visitors convert 27% better than average.
03
Replying to new enquiries in under 60 seconds raised lead-to-booking rate from 11% to 13%.
04
Email flows now bring in C$108k of repeat and referral work a month from customers who were already on the books.

The 6-month timeline

From tracking to scale.

Weeks 1 to 2
Audit, tracking and baseline
Call tracking, conversion tracking, CRM connection and a full audit covering GEO, CRM Follow-up and Email Marketing.
Weeks 3 to 6
Build and launch
GEO, CRM Follow-up and Email Marketing live for vendor appraisals.
Months 2 to 4
Optimise
Weekly search term, call and landing page reviews. Budget and effort moved to the jobs that close.
Months 5 to 6
Scale
Expansion into Edmonton and nearby areas, plus new services with proven demand.

Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market. Your results depend on your market, budget, capacity and follow-up. We share realistic forecasts in your free audit.