Northgate Properties
Building an owned pipeline instead of renting portal leads
An estate agency spending heavily on portal leads built its own demand engine — and stopped losing buyers who weren't ready yet.
- Qualified enquiries
+0%
Qualified enquiries
- Cost per qualified lead
−0%
Cost per qualified lead
- Portal spend
−0%
Portal spend
Illustrative sample — client, figures and quote are not real. Replace before launch.
The challenge
Where things stood
Effectively all lead flow was rented from listing portals at a cost rising annually, and every lead reached competitors at the same moment. Buyers more than three months from purchasing were logged and never contacted again. Agents were spending their days on enquiries with no finance in place.
The strategy
What we decided to do
Build owned campaigns and landing pages to create a pipeline asset
Qualify on budget, timeline and finance before agents get involved
Nurture long-horizon buyers for months rather than discarding them
Reduce portal dependency as owned channels take over
Execution
How it was built
Owned demand generation
Area-specific landing pages and Meta campaigns built around neighbourhood guides and market data rather than individual listings, capturing buyers earlier in their search.
Qualification at enquiry
Budget range, timeline and mortgage-in-principle status captured on the enquiry form, with conversational follow-up filling gaps before anything reached an agent.
Long-cycle nurture
Buyers were segmented by criteria and timeline, then sent matched new listings, area updates and market commentary automatically for as long as they stayed engaged.
Progressive portal reduction
Portal spend was reduced in stages as owned lead volume proved itself, rather than cut all at once.
Results
What it produced
Qualified enquiries more than doubled while cost per qualified lead fell 38%. Portal spend was cut by more than half without any reduction in total pipeline. Most notably, 19% of completed sales in the final quarter came from buyers who had first enquired more than four months earlier — a segment previously written off entirely.
- Qualified enquiries
+0%
Qualified enquiries
- Cost per qualified lead
−0%
Cost per qualified lead
- Portal spend
−0%
Portal spend
A fifth of our completions last quarter were people we'd have deleted from the system a year ago. That changed how we think about a lead.
Services used
What this engagement covered
More work
Other engagements
Similar situation?
Let's see what's possible in your business
Book a call and we'll talk through what we'd do differently for you — starting with a free audit of what you have now.