Cutting Cost-Per-Lead by 45% for a Property Developer

The Challenge

A property developer was spending heavily on PPC but the leads were low quality. Sales teams wasted time on enquiries from unqualified browsers, and the cost per lead had climbed to a level that made paid acquisition unprofitable for all but the highest-value developments.

Our Approach

1. Restructured Google Ads campaigns to target high-intent, long-tail keywords that signalled genuine purchase intent rather than broad awareness terms.
2. Built dedicated landing pages for each development with pre-qualification questions that filtered out casual browsers before lead submission.
3. Implemented offline conversion tracking, feeding CRM deal-stage data back into Google Ads to train the algorithm on what a valuable lead actually looks like.
4. Added negative keyword lists and audience exclusions to eliminate irrelevant click spend.

Results

• Cost per lead dropped by 45% within the first quarter.
• Lead-to-viewing conversion rate increased from 11% to 29%.
• Sales team reported that lead quality improved to the point where follow-up time per lead halved.

Key Takeaways

• Feeding offline conversion data back to ad platforms transforms bidding accuracy over time.
• Pre-qualification on landing pages protects sales capacity and improves funnel efficiency.
• Broad match keywords without intent signals burn budget on clicks that will never convert.