Google Ads Case Study | Residential Real Estate | Canada
Campaign Period: July 16 – November 4, 2026
Location: North Edmonton, Alberta
Services: Google Ads Strategy, Search Advertising, Display Advertising, Retargeting, Conversion Tracking and Campaign Optimization
For a residential property in North Edmonton, the challenge was not simply attracting people searching for apartments. It was reaching renters with different requirements and helping them move from general property discovery toward meaningful enquiry actions.
SwiftPropel built a Google Ads account from scratch, combining Search campaigns with Display advertising, neighbourhood-oriented targeting, apartment-type segmentation and retargeting.
Over approximately four months, the campaigns generated:
| Performance Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Google Ads spend | CA$3,549.09 |
| Impressions | 87,740 |
| Clicks | 3,262 |
| Click-through rate | 3.72% |
| Average cost per click | CA$1.09 |
| Google Ads-tracked form-submission actions | 106 |
| Total selected Google Ads conversions | 172 |
| Cost per selected conversion | CA$20.63 |
| Indicative spend per tracked form submission | CA$33.48 |
The campaign also recorded approximately 3,000 all-conversion actions across primary and secondary activities.
The distinction is important: 106 actions were recorded under the Submit lead form conversion action, while the broader conversion totals included additional interactions such as enquiry-button clicks and other engagement signals.
The campaign demonstrates how local rental demand can be captured through structured Google Ads targeting while website engagement data helps identify where prospective renters spend time evaluating a property.
The Challenge: Attracting Renters in a Competitive Local Market
The property was situated in an established, master-planned North Edmonton residential community.
Its surrounding area offered a distinct lifestyle proposition: neighbourhood amenities, green spaces, residential convenience and access to the broader Edmonton market.
However, prospective renters do not necessarily begin their search with the name of a specific apartment building.
They search for requirements such as:
- Apartments for rent in North Edmonton
- Apartments near me
- Two-bedroom apartments in Edmonton
- One-bedroom apartment rentals
- North Edmonton rental properties
- Apartments in particular neighbourhoods
- Alternative apartment communities
These searches represent different levels of purchase intent.
Someone searching broadly for apartments in Edmonton may still be evaluating several neighbourhoods. Someone searching specifically for two-bedroom apartments in North Edmonton has a more defined requirement. A person searching for a particular property may already be familiar with the building and need only the right information to enquire.
A successful campaign needed to recognize those differences instead of treating every search as interchangeable.
The objective was to connect relevant rental searches with the property’s available accommodation options and encourage prospective renters to take the next step.
Our Approach: Organizing Google Ads Around How Renters Search
SwiftPropel created an acquisition structure using three main campaign layers.
1. Search Advertising for Active Rental Demand
Search campaigns were used to reach people actively looking for rental apartments.
The account included separate Search campaign structures for branded and broader rental-related demand, with ad groups addressing different apartment requirements and local search themes.
Rather than depending only on property-name searches, the account covered broader discovery terms that could introduce the property to renters exploring the North Edmonton market.
Examples from the keyword report included:
| Search Keyword | Clicks | Impressions |
|---|---|---|
| Rental apartment | 375 | 4,788 |
| Apartments in North Edmonton | 164 | 1,867 |
| 2 bedroom apartments for rent | 245 | 1,841 |
| Apartments for rent North Edmonton | 89 | 975 |
| North Edmonton rentals | 81 | 730 |
| Two bedroom apartments for rent | 33 | 371 |
| 1 bedroom apartments for rent | 43 | 274 |
This mix allowed the campaigns to participate in both broad rental discovery and more specific location- and unit-related searches.
2. Display Advertising to Maintain Visibility
Search advertising captures people who are already looking.
Display advertising served a different purpose: reaching relevant audiences and supporting continued visibility while renters considered their options.
The Display campaign included audience structures for interests, competitor-related targeting and retargeting.
This provided a supporting layer to Search advertising, particularly for people who might research multiple properties before making an enquiry.
3. Retargeting to Reconnect With Interested Visitors
Apartment selection is rarely an immediate decision.
Prospective renters may compare floorplans, review photographs, evaluate the surrounding neighbourhood and return to a property website before contacting its leasing team.
SwiftPropel used retargeting within the Display campaign to re-engage previous website visitors.
The retargeting ad group recorded 951 interactions and 31 selected conversions during the campaign period.
These results show measurable activity from the retargeting layer, although they do not establish how many visitors subsequently became tenants.
The Renter Research Journey: Why Floorplans Matter
One of the more revealing parts of this project came from Google Analytics.
The website was not simply receiving visits to its homepage. Users were exploring the information they would need to evaluate a rental property.
Across the reporting period, GA4 recorded:
| Website Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Total sessions | 5,296 |
| Active users | 3,820 |
| New users | 3,768 |
| Engaged sessions | 3,203 |
| Engagement rate | 60.48% |
| Total page views | 11,080 |
| Total events | 33,521 |
Where Visitors Spent Their Attention
| Website Page | Views | Average Engagement Time per Active User |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | 4,854 | 27 seconds |
| Floorplans | 1,886 | 1 minute 22 seconds |
| Gallery | 898 | 1 minute |
| Additional homepage | 854 | 26 seconds |
| Building amenities | 810 | 32 seconds |
| Suite interiors | 679 | 20 seconds |
| Contact | 410 | 30 seconds |
| Location | 403 | 18 seconds |
| Thank-you page | 255 | 13 seconds |
The floorplans page stood out.
It accounted for approximately 17% of all website page views and recorded substantially more average engagement time per active user than the main homepage.
This is a useful commercial insight.
The homepage introduces the property. The floorplans page helps renters evaluate whether the accommodation meets their requirements.
Dimensions, configurations and available layouts can be more decisive than general property messaging once someone is seriously comparing rental options.
The data does not prove that every visitor followed the same page sequence. However, it shows that detailed apartment information attracted significant attention.
For multifamily advertisers, that makes floorplan content a critical part of the enquiry experience—not merely a supporting website section.
Google Ads Performance
During the July 16–November 4, 2026 reporting period, SwiftPropel managed three campaign structures with recorded delivery.
| Campaign | Impressions | Clicks | Spend | Selected Conversions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search – Non Brand | 16,455 | 1,706 | CA$2,409.04 | 122.67 |
| Display Advertising | 70,607 | 1,384 | CA$968.72 | 40.00 |
| Search – Brand | 678 | 172 | CA$171.33 | 9.33 |
| Total | 87,740 | 3,262 | CA$3,549.09 | 172.00 |
Google Ads reports some conversions fractionally because of its attribution and reporting methodology.
Search Captured the Strongest Direct-Response Activity
The campaign labelled Search – Non Brand generated 1,706 clicks and 122.67 selected conversions, making it the largest contributor to the account’s reported selected conversions.
Its 10.37% CTR reflected the relevance of ads appearing against active rental searches.
The brand-focused Search campaign recorded a 25.37% CTR from 172 clicks, reflecting engagement among people searching for property-related terms.
Display advertising generated most of the account’s impressions, providing reach beyond Search alone.
The campaign mix therefore supported two different acquisition needs: capturing immediate search intent and maintaining visibility among people still evaluating rental choices.
Ad Group Insights: Different Rental Needs Produced Different Results
The exported ad group report provides another view of how the account performed.
| Ad Group | Interactions | Selected Conversions | Cost per Selected Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Type Apartments – Search | 375 | 54 | CA$6.95 |
| Neighbourhood – Search | 665 | 33 | CA$32.09 |
| 2 Bed – Search | 340 | 17 | CA$30.11 |
| 1 Bed – Search | 50 | 1 | CA$62.19 |
| Retargeting – Display | 951 | 31 | CA$16.80 |
| Interest Audience – Display | 388 | 6 | CA$49.31 |
| Competitor Audience – Display | 244 | 3 | CA$50.70 |
Interactions are reported as provided by Google Ads and may include different interaction types across campaign formats. Selected conversions include more than completed lead forms.
The results illustrate why an apartment campaign should not use one undifferentiated budget for every search theme.
Broader apartment searches, neighbourhood searches, bedroom-specific demand and returning website visitors generated different levels of activity and different reported conversion costs.
That segmentation gave SwiftPropel a way to evaluate performance by intent theme and audience instead of relying only on account-wide averages.
It also reinforced the importance of reviewing conversion types before deciding which campaign deserves more budget. A campaign generating inexpensive CTA clicks is not necessarily generating the most completed forms.
The Most Important Result: 106 Tracked Form-Submission Actions
The Google Ads conversion-action export recorded the following selected conversion activity:
| Conversion Action | Recorded Conversions |
|---|---|
| Submit lead form | 106 |
| Click_INQUIRE | 27 |
| Click_INQUIRE TODAY! | 23 |
| Calls from ads | 5 |
| Click_FEATURES SHEET | 4 |
| Click_Phone number | 3 |
| Click_CONTACT US | 2 |
| Click_DOWNLOAD FLOORPAN | 2 |
| Total | 172 |
The 106 Submit Lead Form actions were the strongest directly measurable enquiry outcome in the Google Ads export.
The account also measured interactions that indicated rental interest, such as clicking an enquiry button, opening a feature sheet or interacting with a phone contact option.
Those additional events were useful for understanding engagement, but they were not equivalent to completed form submissions.
Website Form Activity Provided Additional Context
The website’s GA4 event report separately recorded:
| Event | Event Count |
|---|---|
| form_start | 299 |
| form_submit | 290 |
| file_download | 441 |
The 290 GA4 form_submit events represent website-wide event activity and should not be attributed entirely to Google Ads.
Likewise, event counts do not necessarily represent 290 unique individuals or verified rental enquiries.
The Google Ads-reported 106 Submit Lead Form actions remain the more appropriate paid-media conversion figure for this case study.
Using total media spend divided by those 106 recorded actions gives an indicative CA$33.48 in advertising spend per tracked form submission.
This is not a verified cost per qualified lead or signed lease.
Paid Search Was the Website’s Largest Acquisition Channel
The GA4 traffic acquisition report showed the following session distribution:
| Traffic Channel | Sessions | Engagement Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Paid Search | 2,700 | 59.67% |
| Organic Search | 1,529 | 68.87% |
| Direct | 828 | 46.26% |
| Organic Social | 85 | 62.35% |
| AI Assistant | 58 | 67.24% |
| Cross-network | 53 | 75.47% |
| Unassigned | 38 | 2.63% |
| Referral | 28 | 71.43% |
Paid Search accounted for approximately 51% of all website sessions.
It also generated 1,611 engaged sessions and 15,027 recorded website events.
This demonstrates that paid search was a substantial acquisition source during the campaign period.
The engagement data provides a second perspective beyond Google Ads click reporting, showing that a meaningful share of paid-search sessions involved measurable website activity.
Geographic Relevance
The GA4 demographic report recorded 3,421 active users from Canada, representing approximately 89.6% of active website users.
Canadian visitors accounted for 3,076 engaged sessions and recorded a 64.06% engagement rate.
This was consistent with the property’s local-market focus.
For a neighbourhood-oriented rental campaign, concentrating demand in the relevant market is more important than generating broad international traffic that has little prospect of becoming a tenant.
Campaign Optimization
Throughout the engagement, SwiftPropel managed the account with recurring performance analysis and optimization.
The operating process included keyword expansion, search-term review, negative-keyword refinement, bidding-strategy evaluation, ad-copy updates, ad asset testing, audience review, device analysis and budget allocation.
Special attention was given to separating different rental-intent groups so that broad apartment searches, neighbourhood searches, unit-specific searches and retargeting activity could be evaluated individually.
This approach made the account more manageable and created opportunities to refine spend based on observed performance.
The available reporting supports the campaign structure and aggregate results. It does not provide a controlled before-and-after test that would allow any single optimization to be assigned a specific percentage uplift.
What Made This Campaign Different?
Many multifamily advertising campaigns concentrate almost entirely on reach, traffic and average CPC.
This project illustrates a more useful perspective: understanding which parts of the rental decision process attract attention and how that activity relates to measurable enquiry actions.
Three observations stand out.
Local search intent was commercially important. The largest website acquisition channel was Paid Search, and search campaigns generated most of the selected Google Ads conversions.
Floorplan research deserved attention. The floorplans page generated 1,886 views, with longer average engagement per active user than the homepage. It demonstrated the importance of detailed accommodation information within the property’s broader website experience.
Completed form actions needed to remain distinct from CTA clicks. Google Ads recorded 106 Submit Lead Form actions, while additional enquiry-button clicks and other interactions contributed to the broader conversion totals. Keeping those metrics separate makes the performance report more meaningful.
Together, these findings show why rental advertising should connect keyword strategy with the information prospective tenants need before enquiring.
Key Takeaway
The most useful lesson from this campaign is that apartment advertising should be organized around both search intent and property evaluation.
A renter may begin with a general search for apartments in North Edmonton but become more interested after seeing the available layouts, amenities and neighbourhood information. Capturing the initial search is only one part of the opportunity. The website must also make it straightforward for that person to assess the property and enquire.
For this project, the combination of Search, Display, retargeting and a website containing detailed property information produced 106 Google Ads-tracked form-submission actions from CA$3,549.09 in advertising spend.
The broader result was a measurable rental acquisition system built around how people discover, research and enquire about apartments.
Measurement Note
This case study uses Google Ads reporting for advertising performance and attributed conversion actions, and GA4 for website-wide traffic and engagement.
The 172 selected conversions and approximately 3,000 all-conversion actions are not presented as confirmed leads. The 106 Submit Lead Form actions are recorded form-submission conversions, not independently verified unique or qualified prospects.
The case study makes no claims about completed property tours, approved applications, signed leases, occupancy gains or rental revenue.
About SwiftPropel
SwiftPropel is a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in performance-driven acquisition strategies across Google Ads, SEO, paid social and lead generation.
For residential property campaigns, SwiftPropel develops structured advertising systems designed to connect relevant rental demand with measurable enquiry opportunities.
Looking to generate more rental enquiries for your property?
Visit SwiftPropel to explore our Google Ads and lead-generation services.
Vijay Sood is a seasoned digital marketer with a passion for driving online growth and innovation. With a robust background in developing and executing comprehensive digital strategies, Vijay excels in leveraging SEO, content marketing, and social media to boost brand visibility and engagement. His expertise lies in transforming data-driven insights into actionable marketing campaigns, helping businesses achieve their digital objectives.
