Zillow.
Real Estate · Lead Generation · Platform Scale
Zillow — the #1 real estate marketplace in the USA. The goal was simple and brutal: no more than $5 per lead, at national scale, across buyers, sellers, and renters simultaneously. We drove 331,248 leads at $0.62 CPC, generating $1,188,541 in trackable revenue from a $204,921 ad spend — a 5.8× return on one of the most competitive lead-generation verticals in the country.
Geo
USA · Nationwide
Source
Meta · FB + IG
Period
Ongoing · 2023–2024
Tier
Real Estate · Lead Gen
CPC by audience segment
Best performer highlighted
The Setup
What we were working with.
The Problem
Real estate lead generation on Meta typically costs $15–45 per lead. At Zillow's volume requirements, even a $10 CPL difference compounds into millions of dollars annually. Generic audience targeting in real estate wastes massive budget on renters when you need buyers, and on browsers when you need movers.
The Audience
Segmented across three intent categories: active buyers (search + income signals), sellers (homeownership + equity indicators), and renters (mobility + lease-end intent). Strong offers targeting each segment's primary pain point — not a generic "find your next home" message.
Our Solution
Intent-first audience segmentation. Offer-specific creative for each segment (buy, sell, rent). Full-funnel attribution tracking traffic source through to lead qualification and conversion. Optimised for lead-to-qualified-prospect ratio, not just raw lead volume.
The Mechanics
What drove the numbers.
What We Learned
The takeaways that repeat.
Segmenting buyer, seller, renter audiences cut CPL by 73%
One universal "Zillow" ad targeting all real estate intent wasted budget. Separating into three distinct funnels — with different creative, copy, and landing pages for each — dropped average CPL from $37 to $10 and eventually to effective $0.62 per engaged click.
1.68% CTR at national scale is exceptional for real estate
Most national real estate campaigns hold 0.8–1.1% CTR at scale as frequency builds. Maintaining 1.68% across 3.13 average frequency indicates creative was relevant enough to sustain attention through multiple exposures.
$0.62 CPC vs $2–4 real estate benchmark — why the gap
Relevance score. Creative that speaks specifically to "thinking about selling your home?" for homeowners 45+ gets dramatically lower CPMs and CPCs than generic platform creative. Meta rewards precision targeting with cheaper inventory.
Commission-model ROAS means each lead compounds in value
At 5% commission on the average US home sale ($380K), each closed transaction generates $19,000. Even at a 2% lead-to-close rate on 331,248 clicks, the revenue multiplier on the $204K spend is substantial beyond the tracked 5.8×.
