When a developer asks us what a real estate marketing agency costs, the honest answer is a question back: what do you need it to produce? A fee on its own tells you nothing. Two agencies can charge the same and deliver completely different things, and the cheaper one can easily end up costing more per reservation.
This is what we tell developers and agencies in Cyprus and Greece before they hire anyone, including us.
The number that matters is not the fee
You are not buying posts, videos or ads. You are buying enquiries that turn into viewings, and viewings that turn into reservations. Everything an agency does should be measured against that.
So when you compare offers, ask each agency the same question: how will I know, every week, what my marketing produced? If the answer is reach, followers or impressions, you are paying for activity. If the answer is enquiries, cost per enquiry and how many of them became viewings, you are paying for results.
What a real estate agency should know that a general agency doesn't
A general marketing agency can run a good campaign for a restaurant or a gym. Property is different, and the differences cost money if your agency learns them on your project.
- The sales cycle is long. A buyer can take months between the first enquiry and a reservation. Your agency should plan content and ads for that whole period, not just launch week.
- Buyers speak different languages. A Greek-speaking buyer in Nicosia, an English-speaking buyer in London and a Russian-speaking buyer in Limassol need different ads, different forms and different follow-up.
- Off-plan needs its own playbook. Selling from renders, before anything is built, takes a specific sequence. We wrote about it in how to sell an off-plan development before construction starts.
- Lead quality is everything. A hundred unqualified leads waste your sales team's week. A good real estate agency builds the ad and the form to filter people out, not to inflate the count.
What you should get every month
The exact package depends on your projects, but a serious agency should cover these five things, or tell you clearly which ones you are handling yourself.
1. Content built around video. Property sells on video. Walkthroughs of finished units, progress films from site, the agent or the developer talking to camera, and for off-plan, films made from your renders. Photos and graphics support the video, not the other way round. See what goes into real estate video production.
2. Ads that run continuously, with qualifying forms. Not a boost when someone remembers. Campaigns split by language and audience, a form that asks budget and timing, and creative refreshed before it gets stale. This is the core of our Meta ads for real estate work.
3. Leads delivered the moment they arrive. To a sheet, a CRM or a WhatsApp notification, in real time. A lead called within minutes is a conversation. A lead called the next day is usually a voicemail.
4. A weekly report with real numbers. Ad spend, enquiries, cost per enquiry, and which ads and which projects brought them. Ideally also how many enquiries became viewings, which needs your sales team's input. A report you can read in two minutes on your phone.
5. A plan per project. What runs this month, what comes next, and what changes if the numbers drop. You should never have to ask what your agency is doing.
What drives the price
Agency fees vary a lot, and for understandable reasons. These are the things that move the number, so you can compare offers properly.
- Filming days. A crew on site costs more than editing footage you already have. Films made from renders sit somewhere in between.
- How many projects. One development is a different job from an agency with forty listings.
- Languages. Every extra language means separate ads, forms, captions and often separate videos.
- Social media management. Running your pages day to day, with a content plan and replies, is real work and is usually priced on its own.
- Ad spend. This is normally paid to Meta or Google directly and is separate from the agency fee. If an offer bundles the two together, ask for the split.
When two quotes look far apart, line them up against this list. Usually one of them simply includes less.
Red flags
When we audit what a new client ran before, the same problems come up again and again.
- Reports without enquiries. Likes and reach only. If leads are not in the report, nobody is watching them.
- The ad account is not in your name. Your ad account, your page and your lead data should belong to your business. If you leave, they stay with you.
- Long lock-in contracts for ads. A good agency keeps you because the numbers work, not because the contract says so.
- No property work to show. Ask to see real estate films and real campaigns, not a general portfolio.
- The same template for everyone. In a market the size of Cyprus, buyers notice when three developers' ads look identical.
- Guaranteed sales. Nobody can promise reservations. An agency can promise a process, a weekly number and honesty when something is not working.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What will you report to me every week, and can I see an example?
- How do you make sure the leads are qualified?
- Who owns the ad account, the page and the lead data?
- Which languages will you run, and will each have its own ads and form?
- What do you need from my sales team, and how fast should we call leads?
- What happens if the first month does not work?
The answers tell you more than any proposal deck.
Agency, in-house or freelancer
An in-house marketer gives you someone who knows your projects inside out, but one person rarely films, edits, runs ads and manages social media at the level each one needs. A freelancer can be excellent at one of those things. An agency gives you the whole system, with the risk that you become one account among many.
For most developers and agencies we speak to, the answer is an agency for the system and someone in-house who owns the relationship and the sales follow-up. That combination works better than either one alone.
How we approach it
We only work with real estate: developers, agencies, agents and construction companies in Cyprus and Greece. Over the years that has meant more than 300 real estate projects marketed, more than 1,000 videos produced, over €200k of ad spend managed and more than 10,000 leads generated. Every month starts from the same question: what did the marketing produce, and what do we change next?
If you are comparing agencies, or wondering whether your current one is delivering, message us on WhatsApp and book a strategy call. We'll look at what you are running now and tell you plainly what we would keep and what we would change.
