01Sellers are the customer you are marketing to
A buyer finds a home on a portal and often cares more about the home than about who listed it. A seller chooses an agent, and a seller with a home to sell is the only source of listings. So the marketing that is yours, the part that carries your name, speaks mostly to sellers. They ask practical things. Have you sold homes like mine on my street or nearby? How will you show mine? What happens if it does not sell? What do I sign, and for how long? Answer those on your site and your profile before they ask on the phone.
- Write for the seller: the area, the kinds of home you sell, how you work from valuation to handing over the keys
- Say in plain words what the seller signs and what exclusivity means in your contract
- Show homes you have sold, with the owner's written consent and without the address if they prefer
- Keep buyer-facing material on the listing and the portals, not on your own home page
02The listing is the advertisement
Every listing you publish is read by buyers and by future sellers, who judge your standard from it. Real photos in daylight, a floor plan and a description that states the floor, the year of the building and what is not perfect: this is where an agent's reputation is built. Add a short vertical video, 30 to 60 seconds, filmed on a phone while you walk through the home. Use it on the listing where the portal allows video and on your own channels. We publish no figures on how many buyers start on a portal or on social media, because we have not measured it. Ask each person who enquires where they found the home, and write it down.
- Daylight photos of every room, a floor plan and the street
- A description with the facts a buyer asks first: floor, building year, heating, parking, running costs
- A vertical walkthrough filmed on a phone, in the real home
- Note where each enquirer found the home
03Own a few neighbourhoods rather than the whole city
An agent who knows a district can say things a portal cannot: which blocks have had their facades insulated, where parking disappears at six, how long the walk to the nearest transport stop really takes. Write a page for each neighbourhood you actually work in, from your own knowledge, and skip the copy-and-swap page where only the district name changes. Set up your Google profile to match. Google lists real estate agents among individual practitioners, who get their own profile if they work in a public-facing role and can be contacted at the verified location during stated hours. With no office that clients visit, Google's rule for a business that goes to the customer is to hide the address and set a service area, so read the guidelines before you choose. Ask past sellers and buyers for reviews: Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.
- A page for each neighbourhood you work in, written from what you know, not a copy with the name swapped
- Name streets, building ages, parking, transport and schools only where you can vouch for them
- One profile per location: the agency's, or yours as an individual practitioner where you qualify
- Ask every past seller and buyer for a review
04Reply fast, and keep in touch with people you have already helped
An enquiry on a listing comes from someone comparing several homes and several agents on the same evening. A fast, straight reply gives you a chance a slow one does not. We have no figure for how big that chance is, so test it yourself by ringing the number on your own listing at nine in the evening. The cheapest marketing an agent has is the people already helped. A buyer today may be a seller in a few years, and a satisfied seller knows the neighbours. Ask permission to stay in touch, send one useful message a quarter and tell them plainly that you take referrals. Keep two numbers: enquiries that became viewings, and valuation requests that became signed listings.
- Reply to every enquiry the same day, with a straight answer and a proposed viewing time
- Ring the number on your own listing in the evening and see who answers
- Ask past clients, with their permission, whether you may stay in touch: one useful message a quarter
- Track two numbers: enquiries that became viewings, valuation requests that became signed listings
05Where PROOF48 is the wrong choice for an agent
We have not built or marketed a real estate agency, and none of our eight builds is one. The FOUND plan, at 297 EUR a month, covers Google Business Profile management, local SEO for 5 target keywords, schema, a monthly ranking report and review monitoring, which is enough for an agent covering a few neighbourhoods. BROADCAST, at 597 EUR, adds 4 AI blog posts and 12 AI videos a month. Those videos use an AI avatar, so they cannot show a home, and we would not put an AI presenter in front of a viewing. We do not shoot property photos or manage portal listings, and ad management sits in GROWTH, at 1,497 EUR a month plus ad spend. A listings site with search is a web app, from 5,000 EUR, with its own timeline.
- No real estate case study at /work, and we say so
- FOUND (297 EUR a month): profile, 5 keywords, review monitoring; BROADCAST (597 EUR) adds AI blog posts and AI videos, not property tours
- No property photography, no portal listing management, and ad management only from GROWTH (1,497 EUR plus ad spend)
- A listings site with search is a web app, from 5,000 EUR; the rules on advertising a property are yours to check
Not an agency: a property site with a gallery and an enquiry flow
None of our eight written-up builds is a real estate agency or a listings site. The closest is Santorini Hotel in Eforie Nord, a business built around a property: a public site with rooms, a gallery and contact, a booking enquiry flow, and structured data so search engines read the hotel as a hotel. What carries over: a property page is a gallery plus one clear way to ask. What does not: we have not built a searchable inventory with filters, which is a different job, a web app. We do not publish the hotel's occupancy or booking figures.
See the build: Santorini HotelQuestions, answered
Do I need my own website if my agency already gives me a page?
Possibly not. An agency page may be enough to start, and your agreement with the agency may limit what you can publish under your own name, so read it first. A site of up to about five pages costs 500 to 2,500 EUR, is built in 48 hours and is paid for after the preview.
Can an AI video present my listing?
Not as a viewing. The 12 AI videos in BROADCAST use an AI avatar, so they suit explainers about a neighbourhood or the steps of buying. A home needs real footage, filmed on a phone in the real rooms.
Does PROOF48 post my listings to the property portals?
No. Portal listings are not part of any PROOF48 plan. We build the site, the profile and the content around them.
Can marketing promise me a number of signed listings?
No. Nobody controls who decides to sell or what Google shows. We promise no position, no number of enquiries and no number of signed listings, and we publish no results we have not measured.
Where PROOF48 fits
Marketing for a real estate agent works when it speaks to sellers: listings with honest photos and a phone walkthrough, a few neighbourhoods you know well, a Google profile with real reviews, quick replies and a habit of staying in touch with past clients. PROOF48's FOUND plan, at 297 EUR a month, covers the profile and local search side. It does not shoot your listings or post them to portals.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.