How a national new homes developer built a joined-up programme; from buyer personas through to SEO, paid search and lead nurture, that transformed their cost per lead and pipeline quality.
Organic traffic growth
Cost per lead (PPC)
Digital lead volume
Email open rate
The challenge
No unified customer understanding
Marketing was targeting broad demographics without insight into the distinct motivations, concerns and search behaviours of different buyer segments.
Organic search underperforming
The website ranked poorly for high-intent local searches. Competitors with smaller brand profiles were outranking them for terms like "new homes in [region]".
PPC spend haemorrhaging budget
Paid search campaigns were running on broad match terms with poor quality scores, pushing up CPCs and generating clicks that didn't convert.
Leads going cold in the pipeline
Enquiries were being collected but follow-up was slow and generic. Prospects who weren't ready to buy immediately were simply falling out of the funnel.
Step one — audience insight
Five buyer personas, built from the ground up
Before touching a single campaign, we spent six weeks in discovery — interviews with sales teams, CRM data analysis and review of site behaviour. Five distinct buyer types emerged, each with different motivations, timelines and digital behaviours.
The First Steppers
First-time buyers, 25–34, driven by Help to Buy and fear of missing the property ladder
Price-led
The Growing Family
Upsizing couples with young children, prioritising school catchments and safe neighbourhoods
Location-led
The Downsizers
Empty nesters, 55–70, seeking lower maintenance, community and proximity to amenities
Lifestyle-led
The Relocators
Professionals moving for work, often from London, buying remotely with strong budgets
Speed-led
The Investors
Buy-to-let purchasers focused on rental yield and capital growth potential
Return-led
Our approach
A sequenced programme, not a scattergun
Rather than optimising each channel in isolation, we built the programme in deliberate phases — using insight from each stage to sharpen the next.
The results — channel by channel
Measurable improvement across every channel
Lead funnel performance
End-to-end funnel — start vs end of programme
Summary of outcomes
18 months. Measurable impact across the board.
Growth in organic search traffic over 18 months
Reduction in average cost per lead from PPC
Email open rate vs 21% industry average
Total digital lead volume by end of programme
Evidence-based buyer personas informing every channel
Page ranking for 14 high-intent regional search terms
"The shift wasn't just in numbers — it was in how the business thought about digital. We stopped treating it as a cost and started treating it as a sales channel."