Property business owners face this question regularly. You have a marketing budget and you want more leads. Google Ads or Facebook Ads? Both have advocates and both can genuinely work. But they work for different things, and understanding the difference determines where you will get more from your first pound spent.
How the two platforms work differently
Google Ads is intent-based. Someone has already decided they want something and they are searching for it. Your ad appears at the moment they are actively looking. You are not interrupting them. You are answering a question they are already asking.
Facebook Ads is interruption-based. You are showing ads to people based on who they are, what they are interested in, and who else they look like. They were not searching for anything. Your ad appears in their feed because an algorithm decided they might be relevant to you.
Neither approach is better in the abstract. The question is which one matches where your clients are in their decision-making when they first encounter you.
Where Google Ads wins for property businesses
- Capturing people who are already looking for what you do: the intent signal is explicit
- Generating leads quickly after launch: campaigns can deliver enquiries within days
- Clear attribution: you can see which searches led to form fills and calls
- Works well for high-ticket services where one client justifies significant spend
- Lower barrier to testing: you know quickly whether a campaign is working
Where Facebook Ads performs better
- Building brand awareness before someone needs you: for services with a long research phase
- Retargeting visitors who came to your site but did not enquire
- Reaching clients defined by demographics rather than search intent, for example targeting homeowners in a specific income bracket in a specific area
- Some industries where Facebook audiences are more defined than Google search volume
The honest answer for most property businesses
For most property businesses looking for leads from clients who are actively looking to hire, Google Ads delivers faster and more predictable results. Someone searching 'luxury bathroom renovation contractor London' is further along in their decision than someone scrolling Instagram on a Saturday morning.
The intent is already there. Your job is to show up at that moment and give them a reason to contact you rather than the next result.
Why the platform matters less than the destination
The most important variable in any paid advertising campaign is not the platform. It is where the traffic goes and whether that page is built to convert.
A well-structured Google Ads campaign sending traffic to a generic homepage will underperform against a Facebook campaign sending traffic to a purpose-built landing page. The platform matters. The landing page matters more.
This is why the campaigns that generate the best cost per lead combine the right platform with a landing page built specifically for that traffic. The ad and the page work as a single system, not as separate decisions.
If you want to see what a well-structured Google Ads campaign looks like for a property business, with proper landing pages and conversion tracking built in, get in touch. Or if your current website is the problem, see what conversion-focused website design for property businesses involves.
Getting traffic but not enough leads?
Colonnade builds Google Ads campaigns and landing pages as a single system. Better leads, tracked properly, from a digital presence built to convert.