Real Estate Lead Generation That Puts More Listings in Your Pipeline

Paid search and social advertising are the two most effective alternatives to cold calling for real estate agents. Google Ads captures homeowners who are actively searching for an appraisal or researching selling in their suburb right now. Facebook and Instagram build awareness with homeowners who are not searching yet but match the profile of someone approaching a property decision – through life event targeting, suburb-based audiences and retargeting campaigns. Together they create a consistent pipeline of warm vendor enquiries without a single cold call.

They target different stages of the decision cycle and work best together. Google Ads captures vendors and buyers with immediate intent – people actively searching “sell my home”, “property appraisal [suburb]” or “real estate agent near me”. Facebook and Instagram reach people earlier in the journey – future vendors who are thinking about it but not yet searching, and buyers who are browsing lifestyle content and property interest groups. Google Ads typically delivers faster, higher-intent leads. Meta delivers a larger, cheaper pipeline of early-stage prospects that convert over a longer nurture cycle. Most agencies we work with run both.

The average cost per vendor lead on Facebook for Australian real estate is around $48, based on industry benchmarks. A starting budget of $1,000 to $2,000 per month is enough to generate a meaningful volume of vendor and buyer leads for most suburban markets, provided the targeting and creative are well-structured. Higher-value suburbs and more competitive metro areas will naturally have a higher cost per lead. The key metric to focus on is not cost per click but cost per appraisal booking – because that is what leads to a listing and commission.

Meta allows you to run completely separate campaigns for each audience. Vendor campaigns use homeowner interest targeting, life event signals (recently married, expecting, new job), suburb-based location targeting, and lookalike audiences built from your past vendor list. Buyer campaigns target people with active property search interests – Realestate.com.au and Domain audiences, first home buyer interest groups, investment property interests and relevant life stages. Separate ad creative and landing pages for each audience means your message matches exactly what each person is looking for rather than a generic agency promotion.

Yes – and appraisal leads are one of the highest-value conversions a real estate Google Ads campaign can generate. Keywords like “property appraisal [suburb]”, “free home valuation”, “what is my home worth” and “sell my house [suburb]” attract homeowners actively considering listing. These searches have strong commercial intent and convert well to appraisal bookings when the landing page matches the search and includes a clear next step. We build dedicated appraisal landing pages for each suburb campaign rather than sending traffic to a general agency homepage.

Portal leads and shared lead platforms sell the same enquiry to multiple agents simultaneously – so you are competing with three or four other agencies the moment a vendor submits their details. Better Leads builds campaigns that generate leads exclusively for your agency, in your specific suburb areas, with your branding and your messaging. You own the audience, the data and the relationship from the first touchpoint. Combined with no lock-in contracts, one agency per area exclusivity and direct access to the senior strategist managing your campaigns, it is a fundamentally different model to buying commoditised shared leads.