Anna VoroninaClient: Trenders — Digital Marketing & Brand Growth Agency
Campaign Duration: August 6–18, 2025
Objective: Lead Generation for Real Estate
Platform: TikTok Lead Ads
The Challenge
When you think real estate advertising, TikTok probably isn't the first platform that comes to mind. For years, Facebook and Instagram have dominated the lead generation landscape for property sales — and for good reason. They work.
But Trenders, a full-service marketing agency specializing in business growth and market expansion across Azerbaijan, saw an opportunity to test a different hypothesis:
What if TikTok's younger, highly engaged audience could be converted into serious real estate buyers?
The agency wanted answers to three critical questions:
- Could TikTok compete with Meta platforms on cost-per-lead?
- Would the leads be qualified, or just curious form completionists?
- Could short-form video content drive actual purchase intent in a traditionally high-consideration category?
With those questions in mind, Trenders launched a two-week lead generation campaign to find out.
The Approach
Rather than replicate what works on Facebook, Trenders built a strategy designed specifically for TikTok's ecosystem. Here's what that looked like:
Creative Strategy
Forget polished property tours and formal voiceovers. Trenders leaned into lifestyle-focused, mobile-first videos that felt native to the platform. The content showcased properties through the lens of aspiration and emotion — how it feels to live there, not just what the square footage is.
Short, punchy, and visually dynamic, these videos stopped the scroll.
Targeting & Placement
The team used broad, interest-based targeting rather than narrow demographic filters. This gave TikTok's algorithm room to identify high-intent users on its own, which delivered impressive results. All ads ran in TikTok Feed placement using the Lead Ads format with Instant Forms, minimizing friction between interest and conversion.
Lead Form Optimization
Keeping the form simple made all the difference. Trenders cut the fields down to only what mattered, boosting completion rates without hurting lead quality.
The Results
Let's talk numbers — because this is where things get interesting.
Performance Highlights
- Lower CPL than Facebook/Instagram: TikTok consistently delivered a more efficient cost-per-lead compared to previous campaigns on Meta platforms for similar objective.
- Higher engagement rates: TikTok generated significantly more engagement than other channels.
- Faster lead velocity: The campaign produced a higher volume of leads in a shorter timeframe.
- Above-average lead quality: Many leads demonstrated genuine purchase intent, not just passive interest.
- Strong CTR & conversion rate: The creatives successfully captured attention and converted that attention into form submissions.
Two Unexpected Wins
Beyond the core metrics, Trenders noticed a few surprises:
Younger buyers are more active than expected
The 25 to 34 group brought in a solid share of genuinely interested leads, even though this age range is usually brushed past in traditional real estate marketing.
Impressions grew steadily
Throughout the campaign, impression volume increased consistently, indicating strong algorithmic support and creative resonance.
Key Takeaways for Digital Agencies
If you're running lead generation campaigns for real estate clients (or any high-consideration vertical), here's what Trenders learned:
1. TikTok is a viable lead generation channel
For too long, TikTok has been written off as a platform for dance trends and viral challenges. This campaign proves otherwise. With the right creative approach and targeting strategy, TikTok can deliver lower CPL, higher engagement, and better lead quality than established platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Why it matters for agencies: If you are not testing TikTok for clients in the more “serious” verticals, you are missing real performance gains. A broader media mix expertise is becoming a must if you want to stay competitive.
2. Broad targeting beats hyper-segmentation on TikTok
Trenders found that giving TikTok's algorithm more room to explore delivered better results than narrow demographic targeting. Instead of restricting the audience by age, location, or detailed interests, the team used broader parameters and let the platform's machine learning identify the best converters.
Why it matters for agencies: This insight can fundamentally change how you structure campaigns. Trust the algorithm, test broad audiences, and iterate based on performance data.
3. Creative execution determines success more than budget
The campaigns that won were the ones with the most platform-native creative. Lifestyle-focused, mobile-first videos vastly outperformed traditional property showcase content.
Why it matters for agencies: If you're repurposing Facebook creative for TikTok, you're doing it wrong. Invest in content that speaks TikTok's language. Short, dynamic, emotion-driven storytelling will always beat polished, corporate messaging on this platform.
Navigating TikTok Ads: The Evido by Aitarget Partnership
Working with an official partner can streamline the setup process and provide valuable local support. Trenders partnered with Evido by Aitarget and this collaboration was essential to getting the campaign off the ground quickly and efficiently.
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"We collaborated with the Evido team to get support in setting up our TikTok Ads account and making the initial payments. Their assistance was very helpful in getting our campaigns started. We highly recommend working with Evido.az for their professional and supportive approach."— Elvin Huseynov, Head of Digital
Marketing at Trenders
Final Thoughts
What this campaign really uncovered is a gap in the market: real estate buyers are spending their time on platforms the industry has been slow to use. TikTok did not outperform because it is trendy. It outperformed because the competition is low, the attention is high, and the creative style matches how people decide what feels worth exploring.
The win here is not about proving TikTok can generate leads. That part is almost expected at this point. The real value is in showing that high-consideration categories can break out of crowded, expensive channels and still reach serious buyers without inflating budgets.
For agencies, this points to a simple truth. If a channel is underused by your category, it is almost always worth testing. Not for novelty, but for efficiency.
The lesson is not “use TikTok.” The lesson is “stop fishing where everyone else is casting.”
That is where the real performance gains live.
About Trenders
Trenders is a full-service marketing and business growth agency specializing in brand transformation, SMM and digital marketing. From branding and SEO to video production and lead generation, Trenders combines AI-driven insights, creative execution, and strategic thinking to help businesses scale and dominate their markets.
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