Business Development (MBD) property firm case studies

December 8, 2025|Kim's Blog, Management Skills, Marketing, Property, Social Media, Strategy|

Following the recent compilations of case studies for law firms (Marketing and Business Development (MBD) law firm case studies) and accountancy firms (Marketing and Business Development (MBD) accountancy firm case studies), here are some from property and real estate firms. Marketing and Business Development (MBD) property firm case studies (2024-2025).

The law firm case studies were varied, the accountancy firms case studies had a number of rebranding examples and these real estate case studies have more focus on data, measuring performance and the contribution of marketing to organisational success.

Bowman Riley Architects – Leadership, culture change and management transformation
Chestertons – PR strategy
Cheffins – Multi-channel strategy
Countrywide – Lead tracking, measurement and reporting
Hunters – Market reports and data insights
JLL – Improved marketing performance
PropertySense – PR strategy
SDL Group – Strategy and brand review

Bowman Riley Architects – Leadership, culture change and management transformation

How Bowman Riley Architects Elevated Leadership and Culture with The Management Shift Approach – HRD March 2025

Sixteen members of the Bowman Riley’s leadership team completed a four month The Management Shift (TMS) Leadership Development Programme for cultural transformation. Book review: The Management Shift by Vlatka Hlupic

The 5-Level Model shows five levels that an individual mindset goes through and there is a corresponding organisational culture at each level. Every level is characterised by specific thinking patterns, language used, emotions, leadership style, behaviour and organisational outcomes.

Soon after the TMS Programme started, managing director Michael Feather, noted: “After the first workshop, I started to see things changing. Not every change is visible, but there was a shift in the overall vibe – we were getting our mojo back.”

Leadership Transformation

This shift in mindset led to a more collaborative approach to dealing with change and disruption. This was followed by notable changes in behaviour of other leaders.

Many employees started talking about TMS various little culture enhancing projects stemming from TMS concepts started to spin off. TMS champions have been appointed in various offices.

More effort is now put in place to celebrate success in both verbal and non-verbal methods. Recognising and appreciating people in the moment, but also by improving the already used formal method of issuing somebody with a “Values Card” where an individual has exhibited one or more of the company core values. The company also enhanced its focus on understanding and meeting the needs of its multigenerational workforce

Bowman Riley’s recruitment strategy became more aligned to recruiting candidates with the right personality and cultural fit rather than just technical skills.

The MD created a new format for the monthly report, focusing on the company’s purpose, mission, goals, and culture, aiming to make the report more impactful and emotional.

Fostering Connection and Measuring Success

Bowman Riley introduced several initiatives to strengthen team bonds and improve employee satisfaction. The yearly staff engagement survey confirmed notable. A 2024 survey showed increase in leadership related engagement scores of 8%, and overall engagement increase of 2.5% in comparison to scores before TMS Programme. This will directly impact profit increase and productivity increase as research shows that more engaged employees are 21% more productive.

One of the most notable results of the TMS implementation was an increase in creativity, fun and light-heartedness within the company culture.

The company is now conducting leadership focus groups to further refine its approach and prepare for future challenges. They have delivered well against their most recent business plans.

Chestertons – PR strategy

Property PR case studies, Property Public Relations

With 30+ branches, Chestertons is one of London’s leading estate agencies. To raise awareness of Chestertons’ market research and position the management team as thought leaders, Viking PR has been implementing an ongoing property PR campaign since 2020.

As a result, Chestertons’ lettings and sales arm is regularly featured across national, regional and international press including The Times, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg, City AM, Evening Standard, Metro, South China Morning Post and more.

Cheffins – Multi-channel strategy

Cheffins – NicheCom

Celebrating 200 years in business, Cheffins has five offices and needed a multi-channel strategy to honour its heritage, engage in the community and reinforce its position as a market leader.

Six campaigns over a 12 month period included brand storytelling across social media, window displays, direct mail and Rightmove advertising using the strapline “Trusted advice used for generations”. They used design and print, property photography and drone photography.

Countrywide – Lead tracking, measurement and reporting

Countrywide case study

Countrywide PLC serves residential and commercial customers in over 850 branches – employing more than 10,000 people across the UK. It has 65 different brands and websites. They generate millions of online calls and leads each year from organic search, Google My Business and paid search but there was a lack of optimsation in its paid search channel and a lack of reporting. They were receiving more phone calls than online form submissions. They needed to understand which keywords and campaign generated the best calls. And to track call performance to keyword level and preserve local calling codes.

Head of Digital set out goals including:

To focus more time developing strategies and improving performance
To link the leads coming in for each of Countrywide’s branches to paid search metrics, improving the lead volume and efficiency
To increase the overall volume of leads from paid channels while also reducing the cost per lead
To grow the PPC acquisition channel to generate over 10k leads per week
To improve visibility on paid search performance for all of Countrywide’s campaigns
To implement a platform that would help Countrywide’s online marketing team spend less time on manual reporting
To ensure the solution used Countrywide’s corporate lead reporting data, to enable clarity by eliminating double counting

There was a bespoke integration of TTNC’s enterprise telephony solutions and Google Analytics, Marin’s PPC ad management software into Countrywide’s existing business lead tracking and reporting systems.

Performance improvement included:

33% increase in leads
30% decrease in cost per lead
9% increase in clicks
7% decrease in spending

This performance uplift equated to around 2,500 additional weekly leads and 130,000 leads annually, as well a six-figure sum saving on advertising spend.

Hunters – Market reports and data insights

Case study | Hunters | Dataloft by PriceHubble | Property Market Analysis and Reports

Hunters has over 150 UK offices. The marketing team has access to all local, regional and national market insights on Dataloft for their web site (with 180,000 hits per month), email marketing, developer pitches, social media, print and understanding the market.

Each office has accounts and conducts their own hyper-local social media, door drops, emails and market reports for valuations.

Data on the economy, the property market and the prime market was used to source content. There are also content options such as local amenity data and national property market news.

JLL – Improved marketing performance

How JLL Improved Marketing Performance and Lowered Costs, According to CMO Siddharth Taparia – Business Insider November 2024

An interview with CMO Siddharth Taparia who started at JLL in 2021.

Focused on the importance of brand and building marketing measurement systems to define the contribution of marketing to the company’s overall goals which centre on revenue and profitability.

They developed 16 KPIs from contribution to pipeline, engagement on digital channels, campaign effectiveness, marketing spend effectiveness and return on investment (ROI).

There was a significant rebranding of the company in 2022 – tracking growth of brand awareness with all audiences. Certain campaigns have been tracked to show direct contribution from marketing through the sales cycle.

Since 2022, pipeline contribution from marketing is up 3X. Revenue contribution is up 4X. And they have done this with 11% less resources and effectiveness is up by over 20%.

Property Sense – PR strategy

Property Sense Case Study – Real Estate Marketing Media

Property Sense is a disruptive agent in the North of England.

Real Estate Marketing Media (REMM) helped launch its brand with a six month plan. The PR strategy was designed to secure media coverage on a market entry while profiling the founder of the business. Initial deals were highlighted and there were interviews for thought leadership and personal brand recognition.

SDL Group – Marketing and brand strategy review

Strategic Brand Marketing Review for Property Services Group – Strategy & Commercial Consultancy Whitecap Consulting

Shepherd Direct Group Limited (SDL) is a diverse group of companies involved in different stages of the property market value chain, including; surveying, estate agency, lettings, broker services and mortgage advice. Today, SDL is the UK’s largest independent provider of mortgage valuations. It works with most major lenders in the UK, managing well in excess of 200,000 valuations per year.

SDL Group, at the time with ten brands, sought to benefit from more synergy and structure between the individual businesses. They requested a review of the marketing strategy and plans across the group business units. SDL wanted to improve the identity and structure across their businesses to allow for a well branded and positioned umbrella organisation.

The initial task for consultants Whitecap was to map out the marketing strategy and plans across the whole organisation, for each brand, identifying the activities, skills and resources required for it to succeed over the next three years.

Working in partnership with the Group Marketing Director, an assessment was conducted of key factors associated with each business unit, such as: the market proposition, target audiences, USPs, critical success factors and marketing channels. From here, it was possible to clearly present how each brand should fit within the organisation in both role and purpose.

Rob Clifford, Group Commercial Director, SDL Group: “Whitecap’s assessment of our individual business units helped us to understand what each brand’s role and purpose was. From this, we then developed a fresh group brand that clearly highlighted how our organisation fits together and the different areas we can serve. The change provides the group’s trading businesses with a coherent set of visual cues, helping internal and external stakeholders to appreciate the synergies that are available across the group.”