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Search ads are definitely the right starting point for commercial property. Display can wait.
Your instinct on Display is correct, without exclusions and a tight placement list, you’ll burn through budget on garbage inventory fast. The photos sound great but they’re wasted on sites no one trusts. I’d park that idea for now.
On Search, I’d go leads over pure traffic, but with a caveat: don’t obsess over the in-platform lead form just yet. Your own landing page with a soft CTA works fine, something like “Book a viewing” or “Request a brochure” is much lower friction than “Send us your details” and will still let Google’s smart bidding learn.
A few things to think about before you launch:
– What keywords are you targeting? Commercial property searches can be weirdly broad (“office space”, “retail unit to let” etc.), you’ll want tight phrase/exact match to start and a solid negative list from day one
– Are you targeting a specific location or multiple? This really affects structure
One thing I’d strongly recommend — don’t launch with Smart bidding straight away. Start with manual CPC or max clicks (only Exact), get some conversion data in, then look at tCPA once you’ve got 20-30 conversions through (and add phrase). Otherwise Google’s just guessing.
What market are you in, city centre office, retail, industrial? Helps to know before giving more specific advice.
We created a video about commercial PPC lead gen, that might be helpful as well:
[https://youtu.be/cb0-z34Pj6Y](https://youtu.be/cb0-z34Pj6Y)Eg target specific zip codes and leave out residential areas.
