The most successful brands in real estate engage specialist marketing agencies to plug their knowledge and skills gaps, and keep their marketing performing at its peak.
Before founding Hoole, I worked as a brand custodian in the head office marketing team at McGrath for several years. I implemented marketing technology into large real estate businesses across Australia and New Zealand for Campaigntrack. I even spent several weeks in Auckland helping Barfoot & Thompson, and twice rolled out the LJ Hooker national rebrand.
Having spent the past 20 years working with central real estate marketing teams of all shapes and sizes, the reasons to outsource aren’t just to acquire additional market talent and deliver projects on a tight budget and timeline; it’s that modern marketing has simply outgrown what any single person or small marketing team can realistically deliver.
It’s why corporate giants like the Commonwealth Bank, McDonald’s, and Woolworths, with marketing departments bigger than most real estate businesses, still partner with specialist marketing agencies. They know that you can’t possibly do it all under one roof.
No employee can be an expert in everything. And when time and internal marketing resources are stretched thin, performance suffers. That’s where partnering with an expert real estate marketing agency like Hoole can make all the difference. We don’t replace your team, we strengthen it.
Many of our clients include franchise head offices, large real estate networks, proptech firms, and property portals. These businesses already have in-house marketers or teams, but they still turn to Hoole for our technical expertise and deep knowledge of digital marketing.
Cunninghams: Making property management a priority
Led by John Cunningham, former REINSW President and long-time board member, Cunningham’s has been a trusted name in Northern Beaches real estate since 1991.
Their small but highly experienced in-house marketing team supports nearly 40 residential sales and project marketing professionals, as well as 16 property management staff. Their marketing division handles the campaigns for hundreds of listings each year. They are talented, resourceful, and deeply committed to the brand, but no internal marketing team, no matter how skilled or experienced, has the bandwidth to cover every channel and tactic simultaneously.
Like many in-house marketing teams, urgent daily demands, or as I like to call it, ‘firefighting’, tended to push long-term initiatives to the back burner. For Cunninghams, this meant that property management, a significant growth driver, kept losing out to urgent agent requests and project marketing campaign deadlines. It wasn’t a matter of skill or willpower, but rather a matter of limited time and capacity.
Hiring another full-time marketer was an option, but it would have been a costly one. It would also mean betting on finding someone who could be a Google Ads expert, a social media ads guru, an SEO strategist, a designer, an email deliverability expert, an automation whiz, a data analyst, and a sharp content creator all at once. That’s basically hunting for a unicorn.
Instead, they brought in Hoole to manage an entire property management marketing program from start to finish.We proposed a strategy and produced weekly landlord-focused blogs, distributing them across their website and social media. We amplified them with paid ads and email campaigns to educate, engage, and ensure they remained consistently visible.
We built and implemented a dedicated Google Ads and Meta Ads funnel to drive traffic to a property management landing page, with remarketing campaigns to stay top-of-mind with prospects.
We also raised the profile of their business development managers through targeted content, helping warm up landlord leads before direct outreach. Weekly performance reports kept the in-house marketing team informed, eliminating the need for them to manage the details.
The result? Cunninghams’ property management services are now consistently visible to landlords both on and beyond the Northern Beaches, without draining the in-house team’s focus from sales, projects, and brand stewardship. By letting Hoole own the property management program, Cunninghams gained the benefits of deep, specialist execution, without the cost, HR risk, or time sink of another hire.
Once the program was in full swing, the Cunninghams’ Head of Marketing admitted it was a relief, like a weight had been lifted, knowing Hoole had everything totally under control.
Propvue: Ending the cycle of hiring marketing staff
Propvue is a major real estate network with over 200 offices across various brands, including Belle Property, Hocking Stuart, Maker Advisory, Belle Escapes, and Belle International.
Within the head office marketing team, Propvue has a team of both senior and junior full-time marketers who manage strategy, campaigns, and creative assets while supporting local offices with templates, training, and guidance to maintain brand consistency. They also assist with new franchise recruitment and coordinate PR and media initiatives across the network.
However, they were finding that junior marketing staff would often resign after a year, once they felt they’d learned as much as they could, taking fresh opportunities in other industries. High turnover is common in entry-level marketing positions as people seek to grow their careers and notch up a variety of job experiences.
Through no fault of their own, the marketing leaders at Propvue were continually recruiting and training replacements, which pulled them away from focusing on brand strategy. Each staff departure caused disruption, campaigns lagged, and energy was diverted from the bigger-picture work that drives network-wide growth.
Propvue’s head of marketing didn’t need to keep hiring and training junior staff; they needed expert, dependable execution for production-heavy tasks, such as social media management, that wouldn’t miss a beat through external marketing agency support.
That’s where Hoole stepped in. We took full ownership of their social media program across all brands, creating weekly content calendars for each one to ensure a consistent rhythm. We handled creation, scheduling, and publishing, with the in-house team simply reviewing and approving concepts every month.
Beyond the day-to-day, we also launched a PR program to celebrate the addition of new offices to the network, generating real estate media coverage for the brand.
By outsourcing these high-volume, production-heavy tasks to a marketing agency, the senior marketers finally had space to work on strategic initiatives without the constant threat of operational bottlenecks. And because staff on the Hoole team are in their 30s and upwards we have high staff retention rates. With our help Propvue’s social presence and PR activity remained steady and professional, no matter what was happening internally.
Downsizing.com.au: Scaling content without compromise
Downsizing.com.au is Australia’s leading platform for over-50s seeking retirement living options. Their audience has unique needs, and their content has to strike the right balance between informative and empathetic.
The company recognised that consistent, high-quality content was crucial for SEO, engagement, and audience trust; however, producing it at scale was proving nearly impossible. A combination of real estate industry knowledge and an appreciation for the lifestyles and interests of downsizers was essential. But finding freelancers who could write at the required level while meeting the volume demands was a constant challenge.
They needed more than just “content creators”; they needed a team fluent in both the retirement sector and the mechanics of modern real estate marketing. A team that could handle both content creation and social media management. Hiring in-house would have required multiple full-time specialists in writing, SEO, campaign delivery, and analytics; a costly and risky move with high potential for delays and inefficiencies.
Instead, they partnered with Hoole. We took over their content creation, socials and email campaign delivery, publishing two new blogs each week on downsizer-specific topics. Each article was promoted via social media advertising and reinforced through weekly email newsletters to keep subscribers engaged. Performance was monitored through weekly reporting, ensuring that topics resonated and campaigns stayed optimised.
With Hoole’s support, Downsizing.com.au scaled its content without compromising quality or consistency. Their over-50s audience received timely, relevant insights that reinforced the brand’s authority as the go-to destination for downsizing. At the same time, the internal team focused on brand-level initiatives and long-term strategy.
Why savvy marketers partner with a marketing agency
In-house real estate marketing teams are constantly juggling brand custodianship, campaigns, agent requests, and a steady stream of new listings. With urgent tasks related to property listings always taking priority, long-term initiatives such as brand building and lead generation can easily be delayed. Over time, this reactive mode can stall business growth and limit innovation.
Outsourcing production-heavy or time-consuming tasks to a specialist real estate marketing agency frees in-house marketers to focus on strategy, keeping big-picture initiatives moving. Hiring more in-house staff isn’t always the solution; salaries, onboarding, training, and staff turnover make it a costly and time-consuming process. An agency provides a whole team for the cost of one hire, scalable to your needs, and ensures continuity when staff take leave or move on.
Real estate marketing has unique complexities, legislation, market conditions, data, and messaging that resonate with property owners and investors, requiring specialised expertise. A real estate-focused agency already understands these challenges and can bring fresh ideas from experience across multiple property markets.
External agencies bring a fresh set of eyes, we help identify marketing gaps, keep strategies on track, and maintain momentum. With the right marketing partner, your team can remain focused on working ‘on’ the business, rather than working ‘in’ it, driving consistent growth without burning out internal resources.
Engage a real estate marketing agency to stay competitive
Bringing in a real estate marketing agency isn’t about replacing your team; it’s about giving them the support, skills, and capacity to deliver more than they could on their own.
Benefits include:
- Technical marketing specialists for every channel and tactic
- Experience across multiple brands and markets
- Cost-effective scalability without HR headaches
- Consistent delivery, even during staff turnover or leave
- A fresh perspective to keep your brand strategy sharp
Just like a championship sports team, having the right players in the right positions delivers the best results.
Ready to get professional real estate marketing help?
Whether it’s one-off projects or ongoing marketing programs, Hoole can integrate seamlessly with your team and help you achieve more. With a team of over 30 marketing specialists covering strategy, content, SEO, paid advertising, social media, branding, and design, we provide the expertise and capacity your real estate business needs to deliver consistently strong results.
The question isn’t if you should work with an agency; it’s which agency you choose. When your brand, reputation, and performance are on the line, partnering with a specialist real estate marketing agency that truly understands your world is the smartest move.
If you’re a marketing professional looking to elevate your real estate brand and marketing strategy, book a free 1-hour call with me, Melanie Hoole. I’ll provide practical, tailored advice on how a specialist agency can equip your team with the expertise, insights and additional capacity to deliver a stronger, more consistent presence and achieve better results across every channel.
Written by Melanie Hoole
My team and I specialise in helping real estate and property professionals perfect their personal brand, build a first-class digital profile and implement inbound marketing activities to attract leads. If you are unsure which direction to take with your digital marketing contact me for help.
