PPC Bidding Strategies for Real Estate: Maximise Your Ad Budget

Pay-per-click advertising is one of the fastest ways to generate seller and buyer leads for your estate agency. But the difference between a profitable PPC campaign and a money pit often comes down to one thing: your bidding strategy. Most agents set up a Google Ads campaign, choose a daily budget, and leave it on autopilot — never realising they're paying 30–50% more per lead than they need to.

This guide covers the specific bidding strategies that work for real estate, when to use each one, and how to optimise your ad spend for maximum return. Whether you're spending £500 or £10,000 per month, the right bidding strategy can dramatically improve your cost per acquisition.

Manual CPC vs Automated Bidding

The first decision is whether to control your bids manually or let Google's algorithms manage them. Here's the honest breakdown:

Manual CPC gives you complete control over the maximum amount you'll pay for each click. You set bids at the keyword level, adjusting based on performance data. The advantage is precision: you can bid aggressively on high-converting keywords and conservatively on those that drive traffic but few conversions.

The drawback is time. Managing manual bids across dozens of keywords, locations, devices, and time periods is labour-intensive. For agencies without a dedicated PPC manager, manual bidding often results in “set and forget” campaigns that underperform.

Automated bidding uses Google's machine learning to adjust bids in real time based on signals like device, location, time of day, audience, and search query. Google processes millions of data points that no human could analyse manually. The trade-off is that you give up granular control.

Our recommendation: Start with manual CPC for the first 30 days to gather conversion data, then switch to an automated strategy once you have at least 30–50 conversions. Google's algorithms need this baseline data to optimise effectively.

Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

Target CPA is often the best automated bidding strategy for estate agents. You tell Google the maximum you're willing to pay for a lead (a form submission, phone call, or valuation request), and Google adjusts bids automatically to deliver conversions at or below that target.

For real estate, typical target CPAs range from:

• Seller leads (valuations): £25–60 ($35–80) in most markets
• Buyer leads: £10–30 ($15–40) depending on market competition
• Landlord leads: £30–70 ($40–95) as these are typically higher value

Set your initial target CPA about 20% above your actual average CPA from the manual bidding phase. This gives the algorithm room to optimise without cutting off traffic too aggressively. Once it's stable, gradually reduce your target CPA by 5–10% increments every two weeks.

Maximise Conversions

The Maximise Conversions strategy tells Google to get as many conversions as possible within your daily budget. Unlike Target CPA, it doesn't aim for a specific cost per lead — it simply tries to generate the maximum volume.

This strategy works well in two scenarios for estate agents:

• New campaigns: When you don't yet have enough conversion data for Target CPA, Maximise Conversions can build that data quickly.
• Lead volume priority: When you need to fill your diary with valuations rapidly — such as when expanding into a new area or launching a new office.

The risk with Maximise Conversions is that Google may spend your entire budget early in the day on expensive clicks if that's where it predicts conversions. Set a firm daily budget and monitor your cost per lead closely. If CPAs rise above your profitable threshold, switch to Target CPA with a defined ceiling.

Dayparting: When to Show Your Ads

Not all hours of the day produce equal-quality leads for estate agents. Dayparting — adjusting your bids based on the time of day and day of the week — can significantly improve your ROI.

Across the agencies we work with, the data consistently shows these patterns:

• Peak conversion hours: 7–9am (morning commuters researching), 12–2pm (lunch break browsing), and 7–10pm (evening research). Increase bids by 20–30% during these windows.
• Lowest conversion hours: 11pm–6am. Unless your data shows otherwise, reduce bids by 50% or pause campaigns overnight.
• Weekend patterns: Saturday mornings are often the highest-converting period as homeowners have time to research. Sunday evenings also perform well. Increase weekend bids by 15–25%.

Important: these are general patterns. Use your own analytics data to identify your specific peak and trough periods, then adjust your bid modifiers accordingly.

Geo-Bidding: Location-Based Bid Adjustments

For estate agents, location is everything — and your bidding should reflect that. Geo-bidding allows you to adjust bids based on where the searcher is located or what location they're searching about.

• Core service area: Bid at your maximum for searches within your primary service area. These are your most likely clients.
• Secondary areas: Reduce bids by 20–30% for adjacent areas where you operate but are less competitive.
• High-value postcodes: Identify postcodes with higher average property values and increase bids by 25–40%. The commission from a single listing in a premium area justifies a higher cost per lead.
• Exclude unprofitable areas: Add negative location targeting for areas you don't serve to prevent wasted spend.

This aligns your ad spend with your actual business value. A lead from a £800,000 ($1.1M) property area is worth significantly more than one from a £200,000 ($275K) area, so bidding should reflect that difference.

Seasonal Adjustments

The property market has predictable seasonal patterns that should inform your bidding strategy:

• Spring (March–May): Peak listing season. Competition is highest, so CPCs rise 15–30%. Increase budgets to capture the surge in seller intent, but monitor CPAs closely.
• Summer (June–August): Steady activity with slightly lower competition. Maintain consistent spending. In Australia, this is the quieter period; adjust accordingly.
• Autumn (September–November): The second peak period. Increase budgets again to capture sellers wanting to complete before the holidays.
• Winter (December–February): Lowest competition and lowest CPCs. Counterintuitively, this can be the best time to advertise — fewer competitors means lower costs, and the leads that do come through are highly motivated.

Budget Allocation Across Campaigns

How you split your budget between campaigns is as important as your bidding strategy within each campaign. For estate agents running Google Ads, a proven allocation framework is:

• 40–50% to branded and high-intent seller keywords: “Sell my house in [area],” “best estate agent [location],” “property valuation [area].” These convert at the highest rates.
• 25–30% to general real estate keywords: “Estate agent [area],” “houses for sale [area].” These drive volume and brand awareness.
• 15–20% to retargeting: Show ads to people who visited your website but didn't convert. Retargeting typically delivers the lowest CPA of any campaign type.
• 10–15% to testing: Reserve budget for testing new keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and audience segments. This testing budget drives long-term improvement.

Measuring What Matters

The metrics that matter for real estate PPC go beyond clicks and impressions. Track these key indicators to assess whether your bidding strategy is working:

• Cost per lead (CPL): The primary efficiency metric. Compare across campaigns, keywords, and time periods.
• Cost per valuation appointment: Not all leads convert to valuations. This downstream metric shows the true cost of a potential listing.
• Cost per instruction: The ultimate measure of PPC profitability. If your average commission is £3,500 ($4,800) and your cost per instruction from PPC is £500 ($690), you have a healthy 7:1 return.
• Impression share: The percentage of available impressions you're capturing. If your impression share is below 60%, you're likely losing leads to competitors. Consider increasing bids or budget.

PPC bidding is not a set-and-forget exercise. The agents who achieve the best results review their campaigns weekly, adjust bids based on performance data, and continuously test new approaches. Combined with strong SEO, well-managed PPC creates a dual-channel acquisition strategy that delivers leads today while building organic visibility for tomorrow.

Want expert management of your PPC campaigns? Book a free strategy call and we'll audit your current Google Ads account, identify wasted spend, and implement bidding strategies that maximise your return on every pound or dollar invested.