Real estate marketing teams are under pressure. Digital ad budgets are rising, yet attribution across multiple property listings remains murky. Proving ROI to leadership, boards, or investors is often harder than generating the leads themselves. For PropTech firms and real estate marketers, the challenge is not just clicks, but connecting every impression to actual closings. Velocity explores how to move beyond vanity metrics and build a clear, data-driven line from ad spend to signed deals.
Covered in this article
Why ROI tracking breaks down in real estate
The hidden risks of poor attribution
Key elements of ROI visibility
Practical steps for PropTech marketers
How Velocity helps prove ROI
FAQs
Why ROI tracking breaks down in real estate
Unlike ecommerce, where a purchase is one click away, property buyers move through long, multi-touch journeys. A single buyer might:
- Click on a Facebook ad for one listing.
- Browse multiple properties on your portal.
- Switch devices to compare on a mobile app.
- Submit an enquiry on a completely different listing.
Traditional attribution models cannot connect these dots. CRMs without proper integrations fail to unify the journey, leaving marketing leaders unable to link ad spend with closed deals. The result is underreported ROI, budget cuts, and missed opportunities for optimisation.
The hidden risks of poor attribution
Difficulty proving ROI is not just a reporting headache; it has cascading effects that can stall growth and weaken competitive positioning in real estate and PropTech markets.
First, poor attribution leads to budget inefficiency. Without knowing which ads and channels are driving serious buyer interest, marketing managers end up funnelling spend into campaigns that may look active—high impressions, decent clicks—but never generate meaningful conversions. Over time, this erodes marketing’s ability to scale and forces teams into reactive spending rather than strategic investment.
Second, there is a loss of leadership trust. CMOs, revenue leaders, and marketing directors are under constant pressure to justify budgets in boardrooms and to investors. If ROI cannot be clearly demonstrated, it undermines confidence in marketing’s contribution to revenue and places future funding at risk. In markets where margins are tight, this can quickly result in cuts that further reduce marketing’s ability to perform.
Third, poor attribution creates fragmented strategy execution. Teams without reliable data default to chasing vanity metrics—traffic, clicks, and form fills—without clarity on which actions are moving deals toward closings. This encourages siloed campaigns across listings, rather than a coordinated, data-driven approach that aligns with revenue goals.
Fourth, there is the risk of delayed or missed growth opportunities. PropTech and real estate markets are highly competitive, with emerging players scaling aggressively through smart digital advertising. When attribution gaps exist, organisations miss critical signals about which listings, regions, or audience segments are performing best. Competitors that act faster on these insights capture market share and investor confidence.
Finally, poor attribution amplifies operational strain. Marketing and sales teams spend hours reconciling disconnected reports, arguing over lead quality, and questioning pipeline sources. Instead of focusing on optimisation and growth, energy is wasted on internal debates—slowing momentum and frustrating talent who expect to work with modern, data-driven systems.
In short, poor attribution doesn’t just make it hard to prove ROI; it weakens the entire marketing function’s credibility, efficiency, and ability to compete.
Key elements of ROI visibility
For PropTech and real estate marketers, ROI visibility is the difference between defending a budget line item and demonstrating marketing as a revenue driver. It requires more than just exporting ad reports—it calls for integrated systems, disciplined tracking, and actionable insights that can be communicated clearly to leadership and investors.
At the heart of this visibility are several critical components:
1. Unified CRM and ad data
When CRM systems are not connected to advertising platforms, marketers only see surface-level results such as clicks or impressions. By unifying CRM data with ad campaign data, every lead can be traced back to its originating ad, and more importantly, connected to its eventual outcome in the sales pipeline. This creates a direct line between spend and revenue.
2. Cross-channel attribution
Real estate buyers rarely interact with a single channel. They may start on Google, engage on Facebook, compare listings on a portal, and then respond to an email campaign. Without cross-channel attribution, much of this journey remains invisible. Advanced attribution models capture each step, ensuring that awareness and nurturing activities are given proper credit.
3. Lead quality scoring
Not all enquiries are created equal. Some may come from casual browsers, while others signal genuine purchase intent. Lead scoring—using behavioural signals such as repeat visits, listing saves, or time spent on key property pages—helps differentiate high-quality leads from noise. This allows marketing teams to allocate spend to campaigns that drive serious buyers.
4. Deal-to-ad linkage
One of the most powerful ways to prove ROI is to map closed transactions directly back to their first ad touchpoint. By tagging campaigns and listings properly, marketers can show which ad led to a booked viewing, an offer, or a final sale. This linkage shifts ROI conversations away from vanity metrics and towards real business impact.
5. AI-driven insights
Manual analysis can take weeks and still miss patterns hidden in the data. AI-driven analytics tools, like Breeze AI, uncover correlations between campaign performance and buyer behaviour at scale. They can forecast which ads are most likely to influence closings, identify underperforming spend in real time, and continuously refine attribution accuracy.
When these elements are combined, marketing teams move beyond guesswork. They can walk into boardrooms with dashboards that clearly show how specific ads, campaigns, and channels are generating qualified leads, driving conversions, and closing deals. This clarity not only secures budget approval but also enables smarter, faster decision-making in competitive PropTech markets.
Practical steps for PropTech marketers
Knowing that ROI visibility requires unified systems and smarter attribution is one thing—implementing it is another. For marketing managers, CMOs, and revenue leaders in PropTech and real estate, the path forward lies in combining proven best practices with pragmatic execution. Below are actionable steps, along with real-world examples, that show how to move from theory to impact.
1. Integrate CRM with ad platforms
Without integration, ad performance lives in one silo and customer interactions in another. By connecting platforms such as HubSpot or Salesforce with Google Ads, Meta, or LinkedIn, marketers gain a continuous flow of data between advertising spend and sales pipeline activity.
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Example: A real estate firm in Johannesburg integrated HubSpot CRM with Google Ads. Instead of just tracking clicks, they could now see which ad campaigns generated enquiries that moved into “viewing scheduled” stage in the pipeline. This gave the CMO clear evidence to double down on high-performing ad sets.
2. Adopt multi-touch attribution
Last-click models ignore the influence of awareness and nurturing campaigns. By implementing multi-touch attribution, marketing teams give proper weight to each channel that influences a buyer’s decision.
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Example: A PropTech startup in London discovered that their YouTube content was critical in influencing buyers, even though enquiries were eventually submitted via their website. Multi-touch attribution revealed this hidden impact, leading them to expand their video budget strategically.
3. Implement UTM discipline
Consistent UTM parameters across campaigns and listings ensure every click is properly tagged and traced. When campaigns run across multiple property listings, a disciplined approach makes it possible to see which listing drove the highest ROI.
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Example: A developer in Dubai created a UTM naming convention for each tower project. When reporting, they could clearly distinguish between ad spend for Tower A and Tower B, proving which project delivered more qualified buyers per rand invested.
4. Leverage dynamic dashboards
Manually preparing reports drains time and risks error. Instead, PropTech marketers can use dashboards in HubSpot, Breeze AI, or other analytics tools to create live, executive-ready views of ROI per channel, listing, or campaign.
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Example: A Nigerian real estate agency built a HubSpot dashboard showing ROI by property type (apartments vs. office space). The CFO could now see at a glance which vertical was producing better returns, streamlining investment decisions.
5. Run ROI pilots
Instead of overhauling everything at once, marketers can pick one high-value property or campaign, implement advanced tracking and attribution, and use the insights as proof of concept. This builds confidence with leadership and creates momentum for broader adoption.
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Example: A firm in Cape Town ran an ROI pilot for one luxury development, mapping every enquiry back to ad spend using multi-touch attribution. Within three months, they proved that 70% of qualified leads came from LinkedIn campaigns, not Google Search. The pilot became the model for scaling across their portfolio.
By following these steps, PropTech and real estate marketers can shift from chasing vanity metrics to presenting hard evidence of how digital advertising drives pipeline and revenue. This not only secures future budgets but also positions marketing as a strategic growth driver in a competitive, data-driven industry.
How Velocity helps prove ROI
Velocity partners with PropTech firms and real estate companies to:
- Unify CRM, ad, and listing data into a single marketing and revenue operations stack.
- Deploy HubSpot and Breeze AI to create real-time ROI dashboards.
- Automate attribution models that connect property listings to final transactions.
- Train teams to interpret ROI data for smarter budget allocation.
The outcome is simple: marketing managers, CMOs, and revenue leaders can walk into boardrooms with confidence, showing exactly how ad spend translates to pipeline and closed deals.
To find out more about how Velocity can assist you and your real estate business, contact us today.
FAQs
1. Why is proving ROI harder in real estate than other industries
Because the buyer journey is long, fragmented, and property-specific, with multiple touchpoints across devices and listings.
2. What is the biggest mistake marketers make
Relying on last-click attribution, which undervalues awareness channels that influence consideration.
3. What tools should we use
HubSpot CRM, Breeze AI for analytics, and integrations with Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn. No need to rip out your stack—just connect it.
4. How can I convince leadership to invest in better attribution
Run a pilot on one listing campaign, show how advanced tracking connects to closings, and use it as proof of ROI for scaling.
5. Can AI really help with ROI tracking
Yes. AI surfaces predictive insights, identifies high-intent leads, and connects ad spend to buyer actions across listings in real time.
Ready to connect your ad spend to actual closings? Speak to Velocity about building a CRM-driven ROI framework for your property marketing campaigns.
