Work · Real estate services company
Demand was disappearing, and no one could see where. The audit found it in four weeks.
A national referral business was getting fewer inquiries every year. The team still closed deals as well as ever. The problem was upstream, and it was hiding across a dozen systems and vendors.
- Client
- Real estate services company
- Sector
- Real estate services · National referral network
- Engagement
- Growth audit, AI search recovery and AI operating-system design
- Status
- Ongoing
~50%
Drop in search traffic the audit uncovered
4 weeks
From kickoff to findings and roadmap
30 days
To the first quick wins
The challenge
- Inquiries had been falling for three years, while the share that turned into business held steady. Fewer buyers were finding the company.
- The evidence was scattered across the website, paid media, the CRM and outside vendors. Each owner saw one piece, and leadership could not see the whole.
What we did
- Audited six growth priorities in four weeks, through read-only access to the company's CRM, ad platforms, analytics and finance records.
- Tested how AI assistants answer the questions buyers ask in this category, and how often they recommend the company against its rivals.
- Delivered the findings, an 18-month roadmap and an AI operating model, with quick wins for every priority in the first 30 days.
What the audit found
- Search traffic had fallen by about half in a year. Most of the loss traced to a small set of high-value pages.
- Part of the marketing budget was funding tactics that returned far less than the ones beside them.
- AI assistants were recommending rivals far more often than the company, even for questions it should own.
What changed
- Leadership reallocated marketing budget away from underperforming tactics and toward the ones that pay back.
- A search recovery program is under way, built for AI search: content designed to be cited by ChatGPT, Google and other AI answer engines.
- CRM, tracking and lead-handling improvements are moving forward against the audit's roadmap.
- Hawksmoor set up AI Chiefs of Staff for the leadership team, to keep priorities, follow-up and decisions moving.
Ongoing engagement. The client is confidential. Figures are rounded and adjusted to protect client confidentiality, and recovery results are not yet published.
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