Real estate agencies in Australia and New Zealand collectively waste millions of dollars each year on Google Ads managed by the wrong people. A specialist who knows how to run campaigns for an e-commerce store does not automatically know how to generate qualified property enquiries in a competitive suburb. Before you hand over your ad spend, there are ten specific questions every real estate agency must ask any prospective Google Ads manager. Get the answers wrong and you will pay for clicks that never convert. Get them right and you will have a hiring Google Ads manager real estate Australia process that actually protects your budget.
Table of Contents
- Quick Takeaways
- Why These Questions Matter More Than the Price Tag
- Comparing Google Ads Management Approaches for Real Estate
- Frequently Asked Questions
- References
Quick Takeaways
| Key Insight | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Real estate experience is non-negotiable | Google Ads for property enquiries requires suburb-level keyword targeting and an understanding of vendor and buyer intent, which generic managers rarely have. |
| Conversion tracking must be verified before spend begins | Without properly tagged phone calls, form submissions, and appraisal requests, you cannot measure cost per lead or justify any budget increase. |
| Lead quality beats lead volume every time | A campaign generating 200 unqualified clicks costs more than one generating 20 vendor appraisal requests. Ask how the manager defines and filters quality. |
| Remarketing is essential for the real estate decision cycle | Sellers typically take 3 to 6 months to choose an agent. Without remarketing, you pay for first-touch attention and then disappear from the consideration set. |
| Month-to-month contracts protect agencies from underperforming managers | Lock-in contracts of 12 months with no performance clauses favour the manager, not the agency. Insist on clear exit conditions tied to agreed KPIs. |
| Reporting must include cost per lead, not just click-through rate | CTR and impressions are vanity metrics for real estate. Cost per appraisal request and cost per qualified enquiry are the numbers that matter. |
| Budget flexibility during seasonal shifts is a skill, not a feature | Australian property markets move significantly between spring and winter. Ask specifically how the manager adjusts bids and budgets during low and peak listing seasons. |
Why These Questions Matter More Than the Price Tag
Most real estate agencies start the hiring conversation by asking about price. That is the wrong starting point. A manager charging $199 per month who burns $3,000 in unqualified clicks is dramatically more expensive than one charging $500 per month who delivers eight vendor appraisal requests from the same budget. The questions below are designed to expose competence before you commit any money.
In practice, the agencies that get burned by bad Google Ads management share one thing in common: they hired based on a polished website or a low price, not on evidence of real results in the real estate vertical. The questions in this article give you a structured way to pressure-test any candidate.
What Real Estate Campaigns Have You Run in Australia or New Zealand?
This is the first filter and it should be treated as a pass-or-fail question. A Google Ads specialist with strong results in retail, dental, or legal services is not automatically equipped for real estate. The intent signals are entirely different. Someone searching “houses for sale in Parramatta” is at a different decision stage than someone searching “how much is my home worth in Parramatta,” and the campaign structure must reflect that.
What a Strong Answer Looks Like
A credible specialist should be able to name specific campaign types they have run for real estate clients, describe the geographic targeting they used, and give you approximate cost-per-lead figures. They do not need to name clients by name for confidentiality reasons, but they should speak fluently about suburb-level bidding, competitor conquest campaigns targeting brand keywords from other agencies, and the split between buyer and vendor intent.
A common mistake agencies make is accepting the phrase “we work across many industries” as an acceptable answer. That phrase means the specialist has no real estate focus. Property advertising in competitive Australian markets like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane requires a niche understanding that cross-industry generalists rarely carry.
Pro tip: Ask the specialist to walk you through how they would structure a campaign for your exact suburb and target audience. Their live response will tell you more than any case study PDF they send you afterward.
Which Campaign Types Will You Use and Why?
Google Ads is not a single product. It includes Search, Display, YouTube, Performance Max, and Remarketing. A competent real estate ads manager should be recommending a specific combination based on your agency’s goals, not defaulting to whatever they manage most often.
Search Ads for Immediate Intent
Search campaigns are almost always the foundation for real estate agencies. They capture buyers and vendors who are actively looking. Keywords like “real estate agent [suburb]” or “sell my home [city]” carry strong purchase intent and should be prioritised early in any engagement.
Display and YouTube for Brand Building
Display ads and YouTube campaigns work differently. They build awareness and establish your agency’s brand across the decision cycle, which is longer in real estate than in almost any other service category. Ask the specialist how they would use these formats specifically to stay visible to prospective vendors over a 90-day period.
The data consistently shows that real estate vendors engage with an average of 3.5 marketing touchpoints before selecting an agent, according to research from the Real Estate Institute of Australia. An ads manager who only runs Search campaigns is leaving half the funnel unaddressed.
How Do You Build a Keyword Strategy for a Real Estate Agency?
Keyword strategy in real estate is more nuanced than most industries. You are not just targeting generic terms. You are targeting hyper-local intent, competitor agency brand names, and intent-specific phrases that separate buyers from sellers from landlords from renters.
Negative Keywords Are as Important as Target Keywords
Ask the specialist specifically about their negative keyword process. In practice, real estate campaigns that skip thorough negative keyword lists end up paying for searches like “real estate jobs,” “real estate courses,” and “how to become a real estate agent.” These clicks cost the same as genuine enquiry clicks but convert at zero percent.
A strong candidate will describe a tiered negative keyword structure and explain how they expand it over time using search term reports. If they look uncertain when you ask this question, treat it as a serious red flag.
“The difference between a good Google Ads account and a bad one is rarely the bid strategy. It is almost always the keyword hygiene.” – Frederick Vallaeys, co-founder of Optmyzr and former Google Quality Score engineer.
How Do You Distinguish Lead Quality From Lead Volume?
Volume-focused Google Ads management is one of the most common ways real estate agencies get burned. An ads manager optimising purely for conversion volume will lower your bid thresholds, broaden your keyword match types, and generate a flood of low-intent enquiries that waste your team’s follow-up time.
Ask the specialist how they define a qualified lead for a real estate agency. The answer should include specific signals: a vendor enquiry is more valuable than a buyer enquiry for most listing-focused agencies. Someone requesting an appraisal is more valuable than someone asking about open home times. A credible manager will have a framework for separating these lead types and will build conversion goals that reflect that hierarchy.
Pro tip: Request that the specialist set up separate conversion actions for different enquiry types before the campaign goes live. This gives you visibility into cost per appraisal request versus cost per general enquiry from day one, not three months later.
How Will You Set Up and Verify Conversion Tracking?
This is the most technically important question on this list. Without accurate conversion tracking, every optimisation decision the manager makes is based on incomplete data. You are effectively flying blind while spending money.
At minimum, a real estate agency’s Google Ads account should track form submissions, phone call clicks from mobile ads, direct phone calls to the agency number via call extensions, and chat initiations if applicable. Each of these should be set up as separate conversion actions with appropriate attribution windows. For real estate, a 30-day attribution window is typically the right minimum given the length of the consideration cycle.
Verification Before Launch
Ask the specialist how they verify that conversion tracking is working before the first dollar of ad spend goes out. The right answer involves testing each conversion action manually and confirming it fires correctly in Google Tag Assistant or a similar verification tool. If the answer is “we check it once the campaign is live,” that is an unacceptable process that will cost you data integrity in the first weeks of the campaign.
What Does Your Reporting Look Like and How Often Do We Talk?
Reporting frequency and format vary wildly between Google Ads managers. Some send a monthly PDF with impressions and clicks. Others provide live dashboard access with daily updates. Neither format is inherently better. What matters is whether the report shows you the metrics that are actually relevant to your agency’s goals.
The metrics that should appear in every real estate agency Google Ads report include: cost per lead broken down by campaign and ad group, number of appraisal requests generated, average cost per click by suburb target, impression share against competitors, and search term reports showing what people actually typed before clicking your ad.
Communication Cadence Matters
Ask specifically how often the manager will contact you proactively, not just when you ask. A passive manager who only responds to your questions is not managing your campaigns. An active manager should be reaching out when they spot an anomaly, when a seasonal shift requires a budget adjustment, or when a competitor has entered your target keywords and is driving up your cost per click.
How Do You Manage Budgets When the Market Shifts?
Australian real estate markets are seasonal. Spring listing volumes surge. Winter slows. Interest rate decisions from the Reserve Bank of Australia affect buyer sentiment within days. An effective Google Ads manager must adjust bids, budgets, and campaign priorities in response to these shifts, not maintain a static monthly spend regardless of conditions.
Ask the specialist to describe how they handled a budget reallocation for a real estate client when market conditions changed. A strong answer will include specific examples: increasing vendor-targeted campaigns during spring, pulling back on buyer campaigns during rate uncertainty, or shifting budget from display to search when listing volumes dropped and competition for clicks intensified.
Do You Run Remarketing and How Does It Fit the Real Estate Funnel?
Remarketing is not optional for real estate. The average Australian vendor takes three to six months from first considering selling to selecting an agent and listing. During that window, your agency needs to stay visible. Remarketing campaigns serve ads to people who have already visited your website, keeping your brand in front of warm prospects without paying for cold audience clicks.
Audience Segmentation for Remarketing
Ask the specialist how they segment remarketing audiences for a real estate agency. A generic “all website visitors” remarketing list is a basic starting point, but it is not sufficient. Visitors who viewed your appraisal page are more valuable than visitors who only read a blog post. People who started a contact form but did not submit it are the highest-intent audience in your entire remarketing pool. These audiences should be targeted with different messages and different bid adjustments.
A specialist who cannot explain audience segmentation for remarketing has not run sophisticated real estate campaigns. This is a clear differentiator between entry-level management and genuinely experienced operators.
What Are Your Contract Terms and What Happens If Results Decline?
Contract terms reveal how confident a Google Ads manager is in their own work. A manager who insists on a 12-month locked contract with no performance clauses is protecting themselves, not your agency. Reasonable contract structures include month-to-month arrangements after an initial three-month establishment period, with clearly defined KPIs and a process for escalation if those KPIs are not met.
Ask specifically what happens if your cost per lead increases by 40 percent over two consecutive months. A strong manager will describe their diagnostic process: reviewing search term reports for quality decay, auditing Quality Scores, checking for competitor activity, and implementing specific remediation steps within a defined timeframe. A weak manager will offer vague reassurances without a concrete process.
Are You Google Ads Certified and What Does Your Ongoing Education Look Like?
Google Ads certifications are a baseline, not a differentiator. Every competent manager should hold at least the Google Ads Search certification and the Google Ads Display certification. But certifications expire and the platform changes constantly. Performance Max campaigns, for example, were not a significant part of Google Ads strategy three years ago. They are now a dominant format that requires specific understanding to manage effectively for real estate.
Ask the specialist what changes they have made to their campaign management approach in the last 12 months specifically in response to Google Ads platform updates. Their answer will tell you whether they are actively learning or running on outdated knowledge. An expert who references Smart Bidding strategy evolution, the transition from Broad Match Modifier to Broad Match, or the behavioural changes in Performance Max audience signals is demonstrating active, current expertise.
Comparing Google Ads Management Approaches for Real Estate
Not all Google Ads management services are built the same way. The table below compares three common approaches real estate agencies encounter when hiring, based on the criteria that matter most for property lead generation in Australia.
| Management Approach | What It Typically Includes | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|
| Affordable Specialist (e.g., AusPromotion at $99/month) | Search, Display, YouTube, and Remarketing campaign management with a real estate focus, monthly reporting, and active optimisation without lock-in pricing | Small to medium real estate agencies wanting professional campaign management without enterprise-level overhead costs |
| Large Digital Marketing Agency | Full-service management across SEO, social, and paid media with multiple account managers and higher monthly retainers, typically $1,500 to $5,000 per month | Large agencies with substantial marketing budgets who want a single vendor for all channels, accepting that Google Ads may not be the primary specialisation |
| Freelance Google Ads Contractor | Flexible engagement, often lower cost, but variable quality with no team backup, no platform partnerships, and inconsistent real estate vertical experience | Agencies willing to invest significant time in vetting, onboarding, and supervising an individual contractor with no agency infrastructure behind them |
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should a real estate agency spend on Google Ads in Australia?
There is no single right number, but in practice most competitive suburban markets in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane require a minimum ad spend of $1,500 to $3,000 per month to generate meaningful data and consistent enquiries. Smaller regional markets can perform well from $800 to $1,200 per month. The management fee is separate from and in addition to this ad spend budget.
What is the most important metric for real estate Google Ads campaigns?
Cost per qualified lead is the most important metric. Impressions, clicks, and click-through rate are all secondary. For a listing-focused agency, the metric you ultimately want to track is cost per appraisal request, because that maps directly to potential commission revenue. Everything else is a supporting data point.
How long does it take to see results from Google Ads for a real estate agency?
In practice, well-structured Search campaigns targeting high-intent keywords start generating enquiries within the first two to three weeks. However, it takes approximately 60 to 90 days to accumulate enough conversion data to make statistically sound bid optimisations. Agencies should not judge performance in the first month. They should judge it based on trends across the first quarter.
Should a real estate agency use Performance Max campaigns?
Performance Max can be effective for real estate brand awareness and remarketing goals, but it should not replace dedicated Search campaigns for high-intent vendor and buyer keywords. The lack of keyword-level transparency in Performance Max makes it unsuitable as a standalone lead generation tool for most real estate agencies. Use it as a complement to Search, not a replacement.
What questions to ask a Google Ads specialist about their reporting process?
Ask whether their reports show cost per lead by campaign, not just aggregate account performance. Ask whether you will have access to the actual Google Ads account or only to a summary report. Account access is non-negotiable. If a manager refuses to share direct account access, they may be concealing performance data or managing your account alongside dozens of others with minimal individual attention.
Is it worth hiring a Google Ads specialist instead of managing campaigns in-house?
For most real estate agencies, yes. Google Ads management is a skill set that requires daily platform updates, bid adjustment discipline, and conversion data analysis that principal agents and property managers rarely have time to develop properly. The cost of an underperforming in-house campaign is almost always higher than the cost of a competent specialist’s monthly fee, particularly once wasted ad spend is factored in.
If you have recently gone through the process of hiring a Google Ads manager for your real estate agency, share what question turned out to be the most revealing during the interview.
References
- Forbes Business Council insights on hiring digital marketing specialists and evaluating vendor performance
- HubSpot marketing statistics on lead generation costs, conversion benchmarks, and digital advertising performance data
- Ahrefs blog covering keyword strategy, search intent analysis, and paid search best practices relevant to local service industries
- Statista data on Australian digital advertising spend, real estate marketing investment, and Google Ads industry benchmarks
- Moz learning resources on search intent, local search behaviour, and performance measurement frameworks applicable to property advertising