Case Mountain Residence
How to Sell Luxury Real Estate During Wartime
Challenge
Luxury real estate always has a longer sales cycle and is rarely purchased at the excavation stage. Buyers typically make decisions when the building's framework is already in place, showing that the project is nearing completion. In wartime, the situation is even more difficult: people are unwilling to invest in real estate at early construction stages, and the market is oversaturated with offers.
Additionally:
- Traditional tools stopped working as effectively as before.
- Budgets were limited.
- Competition intensified.
According to our research, since the beginning of the war, Google Ads budgets in the premium real estate segment have decreased by 78% compared to 2021, while the average number of conversions dropped by 70-80%. This required adapting marketing strategies: traditional paid advertising was losing effectiveness, so the focus had to shift to comprehensive digital campaigns using social media, remarketing, and interactive content.
We needed to attract only those who were genuinely considering a purchase and convince them to act.
Strategy: What Did We Do?
Mountain Residence is not just a complex of apartments for sale but also a hotel in Bukovel. It offers chalets, apartments, a swimming pool, a restaurant, and room booking options.
This factor influenced advertising campaigns, especially branded searches. Potential buyers could come across ads but were interested in rental opportunities, reducing conversion rates for purchase leads. Moreover, branded ads attracted users looking for a hotel rather than an investment. This required adjustments in targeting and keywords.
So, we developed a digital strategy that worked in three main directions:
1. Engaging Potential Buyers in the Product
- Emphasis on video reviews showcasing landscapes and investment benefits.
- Using construction progress updates to build trust.
- Presenting the commissioning date in 2024.
2. Smart Use of Advertising Budgets
- Optimizing Facebook Ads: combining lead generation campaigns with website traffic campaigns.
- Focusing Google Ads on high-frequency searches: "buy apartments Bukovel," "real estate investment Bukovel."
- Using remarketing to re-engage a warm audience.
3. Flexibility and Quick Adaptation
- Rapid creative changes to maintain effectiveness.
- Testing new audiences and ad messaging.
Implementation & Results
Facebook Ads
- Campaign period: April 2023 – April 2024
- Lead generation: Over the entire project period, we received 1,833 leads at a cost of €4.01 per lead, of which 460 were qualified leads, with a cost per qualified lead of €15.95.
- Website traffic: We received 5,019 landing page views at a cost of €0.08 per view.
Messaging: Investment benefits (in figures), information about the complex, available apartment layouts for purchase.
Most effective ads:
- Information about the 2024 commissioning date.
- Video reviews of landscapes and investment benefits.
- Monthly construction progress updates.
How Did We Generate Qualified Leads?
- Testing multiple interest-based audiences, including: business owners, decision-makers in companies, investors, IT specialists, and a broad audience.
- Using customer database audiences and lookalike audiences based on them, which contributed to 45% of the total qualified leads.
- Manual platform and placement settings.
- Disabling Audience Network and desktop devices, as these settings often generate non-qualified leads from bots. This helped reduce ad frequency from 15.84 (pre-project audit data) to 3.02.
Google Ads
Formats used: search ads, display network (GDN), remarketing, video.
Best-performing strategies:
- Queries containing "Bukovel" had a 38% higher conversion rate compared to other searches, indicating that users specifically searching for real estate in this region showed significantly higher interest.
- Purchase-oriented queries—campaigns targeting direct property purchases rather than investments—generated more conversions.
- Remarketing and video ads effectively re-engaged users who had previously interacted with the website.
Investment-related ads were less effective—high costs and low conversion rates indicated weak interest in real estate as an investment asset.
Some advertising directions operated within a limited budget, restricting reach. Meanwhile, campaigns focused on real estate searches in Bukovel and the Carpathians outperformed competitors in visibility. Some leads were only interested in rentals, necessitating further targeting optimization.
Challenges & Solutions
During the project, we encountered several difficulties:
- Rising real estate prices. We adapted ad messaging and unique selling propositions (USPs).
- Website changes. Fixed technical errors in the lead form.
- Some leads were only interested in rentals. Adjusted targeting to narrow the audience.
- Sales managers did not categorize leads as qualified or unqualified. This reduced marketing efficiency, so we implemented a clear tracking system.
Conclusion: What Did We Prove?
Mountain Residence became a test of digital tools’ resilience in uncertain times. We realized that traditional advertising methods no longer guarantee results, and success depends on trust, adaptability, and a targeted approach to the audience.
Thanks to a well-structured strategy, we not only sustained sales but also built a system that will work in the long term. This case study proved that the luxury segment requires active marketing, transparency, and addressing client objections.
In challenging times, winners are not those who cut budgets and wait for better conditions but those who change their approach, experiment, and act quickly.
