Penninvest: ~750 leads for US real-estate investing at ~$20 each

Penninvest is a company engaged in real-estate investing in Pennsylvania (USA). At the time, the region was actively growing in property value, so there was good money to be made there. The company has long specialized in flipping and BRRR (buy-rehab-rent-refinance) — models of earning on real estate with returns of roughly 15–36% per year. We worked with the project for about six months (roughly 1.5 years ago). This is a fully open case — all figures can be published.

Task

Use Meta advertising to attract leads — people ready to invest. The minimum investment was from $35k, the average around $50k; separately, large investors ($500k+) who could buy property directly. The client’s monetization model: either a large investor comes in on their own, or a pool of investors gathers a shared sum, buys property, and splits the profit from its sale/rental — the company takes a percentage of the profitable deals.

Our approach

1. Two audiences — two languages. English-speaking (mostly the affluent native US population that has the means to invest or take out credit) and Russian-speaking (expats; it was more convenient for the owners to sell in their native language). Each got its own message.
2. Qualifying the lead by investment amount: from $35–50k into a pool, or a large investor at $500k+ directly.
3. Daily lead-quality analysis. As soon as we got a summary, we looked at how many leads picked up the phone and how targeted they were, and adjusted the campaigns based on that data.
4. We also covered SMM through a partner. The client saw our work and asked us to take on social media too — we did it through a partner (at the time we didn’t offer SMM separately).

Challenges

1. Expensive geo + a high ticket bar. US real-estate investing is an expensive, competitive audience; we had to build trust for a high ticket. Despite that, we reached ~$20 per lead — far below the market rate for such a geo.
2. A small budget for optimization. The budget wasn’t the largest for this niche, which makes campaign learning harder. But systematic work with creatives and audiences delivered a steady flow of genuinely quality leads, not «empty» requests.

Result

Over six months — about $15k in budget, an average cost per lead of ~$20 (a very strong number for such an expensive geo) → roughly 750 leads. The leads were quality: some became clients, and a few more were in the warming-up stage and ready to invest.

Market · expensive geo

high

Penninvest · actual

~$20

In US investment geos, leads are usually expensive. We held ~$20 per quality lead. An illustrative comparison — the exact market price depends on the niche and audience.

Additionally, through a partner we grew the client’s social media: over that period, about +3,000 live followers who organically wrote in DMs and offered to invest on their own. In other words, the advertising worked not only on direct leads but also on an organic inbound flow.

This case is an example of how, even in an expensive US investment geo with a high ticket and a modest budget, you can hold the cost of a quality lead at ~$20 — if you reconcile lead quality daily and work with the right audience segments from the start.