The vendor was frustrated. “We spent $4,000 on marketing and only got twelve enquiries. That’s over $300 per enquiry!”

I hear variations of this complaint regularly. There’s a fundamental gap between what sellers expect from digital marketing and what it actually delivers—and it usually starts with unclear expectations during the listing presentation.

The Expectation Problem

When vendors pay for marketing, they’re often imagining direct causation: money in, buyers out. Like a vending machine.

But property marketing doesn’t work that way. You’re paying for exposure to an audience that includes serious buyers, curious neighbours, dreamers, investors gathering information, and people who accidentally clicked while scrolling on the bus.

Converting that exposure into inspections, and inspections into offers, depends on factors mostly outside marketing’s control: the property itself, the price, the market conditions, buyer financing.

The Numbers That Actually Matter

Rather than cost-per-enquiry, I find these metrics more useful for evaluating marketing effectiveness:

Views on portals. How many people saw the listing? For a typical Sydney property, you’d want thousands of views over a campaign. If you’re getting hundreds, something’s wrong with positioning or pricing.

Saved searches. On realestate.com.au and Domain, you can see how many people saved your listing. This indicates genuine interest, not casual browsing.

Inspection attendance. Quality enquiries that convert to physical inspections. Twelve enquiries that produce eight inspections is excellent. Twelve enquiries that produce one inspection suggests a mismatch between marketing and reality.

Source tracking. Where are your best buyers coming from? Portal premium placements? Social media? Print? Your own database? Understanding this helps allocate budget effectively.

Setting Expectations Early

The listing presentation is where expectations get set—or where problems start. Here’s how I approach the marketing conversation now:

Explain reach versus conversion separately. “The marketing budget buys you visibility to approximately X number of potential buyers in your target demographics. Converting that visibility into offers depends on the property, the price, and market conditions.”

Give realistic benchmarks. “For a property like yours, we typically see 3,000-5,000 portal views, 50-100 enquiries, and 15-25 inspections. But these numbers vary based on how aggressively we price.”

Discuss what marketing can and can’t do. Marketing can’t sell an overpriced property. It can’t create buyers who don’t exist. It can maximise exposure to the available buyer pool and present the property in the best possible light.

The VPA Conversation

Vendor paid advertising remains contentious. Some sellers see it as money down the drain; others understand it as an investment in sale price.

I’ve found honesty works best: “You can sell this property with minimal marketing. It’ll probably take longer and you might leave money on the table because you won’t have reached all potential buyers. The marketing investment is about maximising competition and therefore price. But there are no guarantees.”

Show them comparable properties and their marketing packages. CoreLogic and PropTrack data can help demonstrate how days on market relate to marketing investment—though the correlation isn’t always clean.

When Marketing Isn’t The Problem

Sometimes vendors blame marketing when the real issue is pricing. If a well-marketed property isn’t generating inspections, the market is telling you something.

That’s a harder conversation. But it’s better to have it early, backed by data on similar properties and buyer feedback from open homes, than to let vendors continue believing marketing is the problem.

The Bottom Line

Digital marketing is a tool, not magic. Setting realistic expectations from the start—what it can do, what it can’t, and how you’ll measure success—prevents disappointment later.

The best listing presentations don’t oversell marketing. They explain it clearly and let vendors make informed decisions about their investment.