Half-Million-Dollar Marketing Budgets Separate Top Performers From Struggling Agents

Written by:

Rudi Davis

Date:

05 Feb 2026

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In real estate, the standard response to a slowdown is to cut expenses as transaction volume falls. But according to Montreal-based team leader Joëlle Bitar, who manages over 100 active listings, this strategy keeps most brokers from ever reaching the top of the industry.

Bitar, who leads a 25-person team and ranks among the top 50 brokers worldwide, takes the opposite approach. She increases her marketing investment when the market cools, rather than pulling back. “When it slows down a little bit, I just boost it more in publicity,” she says. “Brokers usually tend to do the opposite, because they’re making less money. So they spend less publicity. No, you have to spend money all the time to make money.”

Why Most Brokers Can’t Compete

Bitar’s team spends nearly $500,000 a year on marketing, an amount that remains steady or rises during market downturns. “Most brokers can’t do that,” she says. “They don’t have the budget. They don’t have half a million dollars a year to spend on publicity.”

This high level of spending gives her team a lasting edge. When the market slows and other brokers cut back, her listings dominate the attention of the remaining buyers. Sustaining this approach requires more than money; it requires in-house marketing staff, proprietary design capabilities, and the financial cushion to maintain spending even when commissions dip.

Bitar’s operation includes five marketing professionals and a full-time graphic designer. This setup allows her team to quickly launch campaigns across multiple channels, social media, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and more than 100 websites, without the delays or additional costs of outsourcing. “We go hard on social media, Google ad, Facebook ad,” she says, describing a strategy that most independent brokers can’t match.

Downturns as Opportunities

The core of Bitar’s strategy is to maintain visibility when competitors fade from view. When most brokers simultaneously cut their marketing budgets, those who continue investing capture a larger share of the remaining buyers. As the market recovers, these buyers often stay with the brokers whose listings they noticed during the slowdown, creating a pipeline that outlasts the downturn.

Bitar cites a recent market softening as evidence. When activity slowed a year and a half ago, she anticipated the decline and increased her team’s marketing spend. While many competitors saw their sales drop sharply, her team continued to close deals at a steady pace.

This approach requires brokers to build out marketing resources during strong markets, rather than waiting for a downturn to adapt. It’s a counter-cyclical investment that most agents, operating on thin margins and with unpredictable income, struggle to maintain.

The Competitive Barrier of Scale

The reality, Bitar says, is that sustaining a half-million-dollar marketing budget is out of reach for most brokers. This creates a barrier that keeps smaller or less-capitalized agents from catching up. As a result, market downturns don’t just separate weak performers from strong ones—they make it even harder for those without resources to compete in the future.

This model challenges the industry’s typical response to slower markets. Instead of focusing on expense cuts and capital preservation, Bitar’s strategy shows that downturns can be a time to gain ground—if a broker is prepared. The opportunity is only available to those who have already built the infrastructure and budget to act when others are pulling back.

A Model That Could Change the Industry

Whether more brokers will follow this model depends on how quickly they recognize the risks of cost-cutting in downturns. Bitar’s experience shows that ongoing marketing investment during slow periods can keep deals moving when others stall.

For brokers without in-house marketing resources, the takeaway is clear: building that capacity during strong years is no longer optional. It’s a requirement for long-term survival and growth. Those who fail to invest may find themselves stuck in a cycle of market-dependent performance, losing ground to better-prepared rivals every time the market slows.

As the real estate industry faces more frequent and unpredictable cycles, the gap between brokers who can sustain aggressive marketing and those who can’t is likely to widen. For most agents, the choice is to invest ahead of the next downturn, or risk falling permanently behind.