14,000 Email Subscribers, 110,000+ Followers, and a Pipeline That Runs Without Ad Spend
The Trust Gap
Mark Savoia had been selling real estate in Costa Rica for three years when he came to Savage Marketing. He had the expertise. What he did not have was a way for a stranger 2,000 miles away to know that.
That is the Trust Gap, and it is the single hardest problem in selling to expats. An expat buyer is making a high-ticket decision in a country they do not know, in a legal system they do not understand, usually without ever having met the person they are buying from. They do not shop on price. They shop on whether they believe you.
Mark’s real advantage was the part nobody could see: he knew residency, taxation, legal structure, and how to actually set up a life here — the kind of information other relocation experts charge for. The job was to make that visible before the first conversation, not during it.
The Strategy
A brand for wealth builders, not property buyers.
We positioned Mark’s relocation knowledge as the front door and the real estate as what happens after. That attracts a buyer who is not just purchasing a house but making a move — a longer runway, a larger decision, and a client who arrives already convinced.
Brand identity and a lead-generating website.
A high-end identity that matched the white-glove service Mark actually delivers. The “Golden Toucan” motif struck the balance between a luxury aesthetic and a tropical market. Built on CostaRicaPlaybook.com.
The lead magnet that became the brand.
Savage wrote and published a 48-page ebook, The Costa Rica Playbook, and built the entire brand around it. Free, ungated, genuinely useful. It closes the Trust Gap before Mark ever gets on a call — by the time a lead books, they have already spent an hour with his thinking.
Meta and Google ads into an email nurture.
Paid traffic to the lead magnet, then an email sequence that nurtured subscribers toward one-on-one calls with Mark.
A video-centric Instagram and TikTok engine.
A high-volume content strategy built around Mark’s natural on-camera persona — on-location property walkthroughs, original drone footage, and relocation information that answers the questions expats are actually typing into Google.
The Results
The launch took the market by storm and download interest has not let up. Two years on, the email list has passed 14,000 — a pool of owned leads Mark can mine for pipeline whenever he wants, with no platform sitting between him and his audience.
Mark Savoia and Costa Rica Playbook are now the go-to resource for foundational research on moving to and buying property in Costa Rica.
- 14,000 email subscribers
- 110,000+ Instagram, Facebook and TikTok followers
- 50 million+ organic views of video content
- Organic traffic has fully replaced ad spend. New subscribers now come 100% from organic social. Ad budget: $0.
From no brand and no marketing to a widely recognised brand property with tens of thousands of followers — and a lead engine that no longer needs a media budget to run.
“Savage is a world-class marketing partner. They created our new brand identity, lead generating website, social media strategy, on-location drone filming, video production, apparel, and more. I now get so much exposure from organic content, I’ve been able to stop doing paid ads — and new leads still accumulate daily.”
This is the Selling to Expats System applied to real estate. See how it works — or find out where your own trust gaps are in two minutes.