Who they are

Ernest-Brooks International is an award-winning estate agency based in Canary Wharf, with a client base that stretches well beyond London. Alongside selling and letting property across the capital, a significant part of their business is landlords based overseas, many of them in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and China, who own London property purely as an investment and need an agency they can trust from thousands of miles away. That's a very different marketing problem to a typical high street agency, and it needed a very different approach.

The challenge

Generating seller leads in Canary Wharf is one job. Generating trust and conversation with a landlord based in Hong Kong or Shanghai, who's never met the agency in person and is deciding whether to keep using them or switch to someone local, is an entirely different one.

Most estate agent marketing is built for people down the road, it doesn't know how to speak to an investor eight time zones away who thinks in yield and currency exchange as much as they think in bricks and mortar. Ernest-Brooks needed a system that could do both at once: generate seller enquiries in London, while also opening and continuing conversations with overseas landlords who needed reassurance, information and regular contact to stay engaged.

The approach

SocialPal built two parallel tracks for Ernest-Brooks, running side by side:

1. Local seller lead generation. The online valuation tool was put in front of homeowners in Canary Wharf and the surrounding areas, giving local sellers a direct route to get in touch, generating 167 leads since January.

2. Overseas landlord engagement. A dedicated guide aimed specifically at overseas property investors was promoted to audiences in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and China, giving landlords a genuine reason to start a conversation rather than a generic ad asking them to get in touch. That guide has been downloaded 477 times since January by investors across those markets.

3. Investment property retargeting. Overseas investors who engaged with the guide or the brand were then shown recently let investment properties, driving 24,500 people to the site from different countries, proof of activity and results that matters just as much to a landlord abroad as it does to a seller in London.

4. Staying top of mind across time zones. Because overseas landlords can't simply walk past an office or bump into the team locally, ongoing retargeting has kept Ernest-Brooks visible to 32,000 people since January, seen an average of 30 times, a level of repeated contact built specifically to replace the in-person relationship that distance makes impossible.

The results, unpacked

167 seller leads since January, 32 in the last 30 days alone

A steady, ongoing flow of valuation-ready sellers in Canary Wharf and the surrounding areas, without any drop-off since the campaign began.

477 guide downloads from overseas investors

Every download is a landlord actively choosing to engage from thousands of miles away, a far stronger signal of genuine interest than a passive ad impression, and each one a warm introduction to a market Ernest-Brooks can now follow up with directly.

24,500 people from overseas brought to the site, seen at least 5 times

Getting an overseas investor to visit the website at all is a meaningful step. Getting 24,500 of them to do it, and seeing the content enough times to build familiarity rather than a single fleeting visit, is what turns a cold international audience into a genuine pipeline.

32,000 people retargeted since January, seen an average of 30 times

This is the number that replaces the handshake and the office visit an overseas landlord will never get. Thirty touchpoints since January means Ernest-Brooks isn't a name a Hong Kong-based investor half-remembers, it's an agency they've seen consistently enough to trust with their London property.

Why it worked

The guide did what a generic ad never could. Giving overseas investors something genuinely useful to download, rather than just asking them to get in touch, gave people across four different countries a reason to engage on their own terms, which is exactly why downloads have kept climbing since January.

Frequency replaced proximity. A London agency can't rely on an overseas landlord walking past the office. Being seen an average of 30 times since January is what does that job instead, consistent enough contact that distance stops being a barrier to trust.

Two audiences, one system, no compromise. Local seller generation and overseas landlord engagement ran side by side rather than competing for attention, which is why both have grown together 167 seller leads and 477 international downloads, from the same underlying activity.

What this means for other agents

Ernest-Brooks have used this approach to successfully bring on property investors from markets most agencies never think to market to at all. Most agents assume their addressable audience ends at the edge of their town or postcode. Ernest-Brooks' results show what's possible when that assumption gets dropped, an overseas landlord considering their London portfolio is just as reachable, and just as valuable, as the seller down the road, provided the marketing speaks to what actually matters to them.

If your agency works with landlords, investors or clients outside your immediate area, whether that's overseas or simply out of town, there's very likely a pipeline sitting untouched because nobody's built a system to reach them consistently. That's exactly what SocialPal is built to do. Book a call at socialpal.info/appointment and let's talk about what this could look like for your client base.

Results reflect campaign data for Ernest-Brooks International from January 2026 to present. Individual results may vary.