315 First-Home-Buyer Mortgage Leads at $4.39 Each
How a dedicated high-intent Google Search campaign generated 315 first-home-buyer mortgage leads at $4.39 each for a mortgage brokerage in under six weeks.
- Industry
- Financial Services
- Services
- Google Ads, Google Search, Lead Generation, Landing Pages
- Client
- Kept confidential
- Published
- June 2026
01
The Challenge
Our mortgage client was a busy brokerage relying on referrals, repeat business, and the occasional walk-in. It worked, but it was unpredictable. Some months brought a flood of enquiries, others went quiet, and there was no reliable way to turn marketing spend into a steady flow of qualified mortgage applicants.
The brokerage wanted a predictable pipeline for the deals it valued most:
- First-home-buyer pre-approvals
- Refinancing and restructuring enquiries
- Investment property finance
- General home loan consultations
First-home buyers were the priority. They sit at the top of the funnel, they often return for refinances and top-ups, and a single settlement is worth thousands of dollars in commission. The challenge was reaching them at the exact moment they started looking for help, without burning budget on tyre-kickers.
02
Our Approach
We built a Google Search strategy designed to capture high-intent borrowers the moment they searched for mortgage help, then route them into landing pages built to convert.
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Step 1
Campaign Structure
We split the account into tightly themed search campaigns rather than one catch-all campaign:
- A dedicated first-home-buyer campaign with its own budget and messaging
- A companion high-intent campaign covering broader mortgage and refinance searches
- Separate ad groups by intent so ad copy matched the exact query
- Conversion-based bidding once we had enough lead data to optimise against
Keeping the first-home-buyer campaign isolated meant we could protect its budget and scale it independently once it proved itself.
-
Step 2
Keyword & Intent Targeting
Search works because the prospect tells you what they want. We targeted the queries that signalled a borrower ready to act:
- First-home buyer and KiwiSaver-related mortgage searches
- “Mortgage broker near me” and locality-based searches
- Pre-approval and home loan eligibility queries
- A tight negative keyword list to filter out job seekers, DIY researchers, and irrelevant finance terms
This high-intent focus kept clicks relevant, which is exactly what drove the cost per lead down to $4.39 on the standout campaign.
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Step 3
Landing Pages
We sent paid traffic to purpose-built landing pages rather than the brokerage’s homepage. Each page matched the searcher’s intent, led with the outcome (getting into a first home), and made the next step obvious with a short, low-friction enquiry form. Strong message match between the ad and the page is what turns a cheap click into a cheap lead.
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Step 4
Fast Follow-Up
A $4.39 lead is only valuable if someone calls it back. We worked with the brokerage to ensure new enquiries were contacted quickly while intent was still high, which lifted both contact rates and consultation bookings.
03
The Results
The first-home-buyer campaign became the brokerage’s best-performing lead source, generating 315 first-home-buyer leads at $4.39 per lead in just under six weeks (Google Ads lead-form submissions only, not calls).
- $4.39 cost per lead on the first-home-buyer campaign (exceptional for financial services)
- 58% lower cost per lead in the campaign’s second calendar month than in its first
- More leads in the second month than the first, on a smaller share of the spend
The economics here are hard to ignore. At $4.39 per lead, the brokerage generated 315 first-home-buyer enquiries on a modest budget. A single mortgage settlement is worth thousands of dollars in commission, so even a low close rate makes the campaign hugely profitable. Convert just a handful of those 315 leads and the entire ad spend is recovered many times over.
04
Key Takeaways
-
01
Search captures intent, not interest
These borrowers were already looking for mortgage help, which is why the leads were both cheap and qualified
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02
Tight campaign structure protects your best segment
Isolating the first-home-buyer campaign let us scale it without diluting its budget
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03
Negative keywords pay for themselves
Filtering out irrelevant searches kept the cost per lead remarkably low
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04
Message match drives cheap leads
Purpose-built landing pages aligned to each search turned low-cost clicks into low-cost enquiries
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05
High-ticket services can run on tiny budgets
When the lifetime value of a client runs into the thousands, a $4.39 lead is one of the best returns available in paid media
This campaign shows that mortgage brokers do not need huge budgets to build a predictable pipeline. With high-intent Google Search, sharp targeting, and conversion-focused landing pages, the brokerage turned a modest spend into hundreds of qualified first-home-buyer leads and a lead source it can scale on demand.
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