Digital real-estate marketing: from portals to your own lead generation

Portals: necessary, not sufficient

idealista and Fotocasa in Spain, kv.ee and city24 in Estonia: that is where buyers are, so that is where you need to be. But the portal puts you next to the competition, charges for visibility and decides how your listing looks. Get everything you can out of it, yes — but do not build the business on it alone.

Before you publish, two obligations that get forgotten in Spain. Royal Decree 390/2021 requires the energy efficiency label in every sale or rental offer, promotion and advertisement. And in Andalusia, Decree 218/2005 requires anyone offering homes on a professional basis to make the property’s Abbreviated Information Document available to the public.

Your website: the asset you do control

Your own website — fast, and in the languages of your market — captures the people searching for you by name or by area. Languages are not a detail: in markets such as Tallinn, bilingual in Estonian and Russian, or the Costa del Sol, with its international buyers, a site in a single language shuts out part of your clients before they even know you.

Useful content — guides, neighbourhood data, answers to what people ask before selling or buying — positions you in search engines as the local reference and attracts people who do not yet know they need you. This blog is an example: each article answers a specific question and links to the official sources so the reader can check it.

Channels that multiply

• Social media with short videos of the property and the area: what does not fit in a portal listing.
• Genuine client reviews: the most convincing social proof, as long as they are authentic.
• Email to the contacts who have authorised it, to keep the relationship alive with those not ready yet.
• WhatsApp as a personal service channel, not a broadcast loudspeaker.

Reviews: authentic or nothing

Reviews work because readers trust that a real client wrote them. Directive (EU) 2019/2161 added to EU unfair commercial practices law a ban on publishing or commissioning fake reviews, and an obligation to state whether — and how — you check that reviews come from real customers. Ask every happy client for a review at the moment they are happy, and never fabricate one.

Email, with permission

Email is the cheapest channel for not losing the contacts who are not buying yet, but it is not unrestricted. In Spain, Article 21 of the LSSI prohibits commercial emails the recipient has not requested or expressly authorised, with a limited exception for people who already have a contractual relationship with you. Store consent alongside the contact; it is the difference between a newsletter and a fine.

Do not lose the lead on arrival

Generating contacts is pointless if they go cold in an inbox. What decides it is the first few minutes: who replies, when and with what information. Three rules that work with any tool:

• Every lead has an owner from the very first moment.
• Every channel ends up in the same place, so nobody has to search five inboxes.
• Every lead is prioritised by fit and activity, as we explain in real estate lead scoring.

The portal rents you buyers; your marketing builds you a brand that buyers look for.

How Domuspace helps, with what exists today

In the contacts and leads module you get, from the Basic plan, up to 10 email addresses of your own to publish on portals and forms: whatever arrives there becomes a lead automatically, with its score, and goes to that inbox’s owner or to the whole team. From the record you call or open your own WhatsApp, with a local-time warning if the client is in another country. And email campaigns, from the Professional plan, only go to contacts who gave their consent, to all of them or to one tag at a time, from a verified domain sender and with an optional test send.

What is not there yet: the messages inbox already handles team chat, chat with owners and a read-only mailbox with lead emails, but WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, which are built, cannot be connected until Meta approves the integration. Until then, the portal email addresses and the scoring are what keep leads in order.

Material that sells on its own

The best ad is a good property well presented. A professional brochure with photos, a map and area data raises perceived value and is easy to share. With the brochure generator you send it by email, WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram, personalised with each client’s name, and the link expires after seven days. Invest in presentation: it is what sets your listing apart from the one next to it. And for the listing price to hold everything else up, start with a properly done valuation.