Is there a budget floor under Google seller ads or is $800 just going to disappear

Question

I own a couple of small multifamily buildings and I'd like to find the next one off market instead of fighting six offers on the MLS. Called an agency about search ads. They said $2,500 a month minimum in ad spend plus $1,500 management, and when I said I wanted to test with $800 they said don't bother.

Part of me thinks that's just them protecting their margin. But someone in another room told me Google needs a certain volume before it works at all, which I don't really understand. Ads either show or they don't, right? Where does $800 actually go wrong?

Rena Guide · Accepted Answer

There is a floor, and it comes from data volume.

Clicks on seller-intent searches are expensive because investors, iBuyers, and agents all bid on the same handful of phrases. In many metros a click runs somewhere between $15 and $60. It commonly takes 30 to 80 clicks before one person calls or fills in a form. At $30 a click and 50 clicks, one lead cost $1,500. So $800 a month buys you part of a lead, and on top of that your daily budget will be spent by mid-morning, which means you're invisible for the hours when people actually search.

The other half is that the platform's bidding uses your own conversion history to decide who to show ads to. With two conversions a month it never gets past guessing, so your cost per lead stays at the bad end of the range instead of settling down.

Then there's the fee ratio in your quote. $1,500 of management on $800 of spend is $2,300 out for maybe one lead. That's the number to push on, not the minimum itself. Some agencies price at a percentage of spend with a floor, which behaves better on small accounts.

If $800 is what you have, ask them what their smallest currently running account spends and how many leads it produces per month, in writing. And know that $800 of direct mail or cold calling buys a lot more attempts at small multifamily owners than $800 of paid search does. The labor is yours instead of theirs.

aaron_fitz10 · Answer

Two agencies quoted me and the minimums were nowhere near each other. One said $3,000 for a metro, the other said $1,200 was workable in a rural county because clicks there were closer to $8. Same service, different auction. Worth asking specifically what a click costs on your keywords before you argue about the minimum.

raj_mehta14 · Answer

Slow down for me. When they say $2,500 ad spend plus $1,500 management, does the $2,500 go to the agency and then they buy the ads? Because if it passes through their hands I assume some of it stays there.

jessreyes12 · Answer

@vellum it depends who owns the account. If the campaigns run in your own Google Ads account with your card on file, the $2,500 goes straight to Google and you can see every dollar. If they run it through their account and invoice you, you're taking their word for what was spent, and that's exactly where a markup would sit. I ask for admin access on my own account as the first condition now.

paulgrant17 · Answer

50 clicks to get one lead is the number that stuck with me. Nobody says that part out loud in the sales call.

Is there a budget floor under Google seller ads or is $800 just going to disappear

5 replies