Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 27.08.2026 
By Threshold
A property’s paid search account went from a 1.60% click-through rate to 10.46%. Phone calls from prospects jumped 1,575%. Cost per click dropped 43%, without a single extra dollar added to the budget. That turnaround is the campaign we entered for Fairways at Star Ranch, and we’re proud to share that it’s been shortlisted for Best US PPC Campaign at the Global Search Awards 2026.
Here’s the story behind those numbers and why we think they point to something bigger happening across search right now.
The Agency Behind the Account Growth
Since 2013, Threshold has delivered measurable revenue growth for our focused industries through high-performing digital marketing and award-winning websites. Our web growth engine integrates SEO, AI, automation, attribution, strategy, and execution to transform digital experiences into scalable engines for discovery, demand, and revenue. Based in Austin, Texas, our global team works with clients across North America, with a real estate practice that specializes in turning marketing budgets into measurable leasing outcomes for multifamily and build-to-rent communities. Fairways at Star Ranch is that engine at work.
The Account We Inherited
When Fairways at Star Ranch came to Threshold, its paid search program, run by the client’s previous agency, leaned heavily on broad, largely unmonitored automation. Performance Max campaigns were pulling a substandard 0.95% click-through rate, and legacy “Near Me” segments targeted broad radii with costs per click as high as $13.19. It was vanity traffic: plenty of impressions, very little leasing intent. Overall cost per click had crept up to $4.46, well above the industry benchmark of $2.00 to $3.00, while click-through rate sat at just 1.60%, far short of the 8 to 10% we knew was achievable.
Rather than asking for a bigger budget, our team ran a structural rescue of the account. We phased out underperforming Performance Max and “Near Me” campaigns in favor of precise, human-managed Search activity that showed up exactly when a prospect searched for the property by name. We launched a dedicated “in-location branded” campaign to capture bottom-funnel demand and scrubbed negative keywords to eliminate the high-cost, zero-engagement waste draining the budget. Direct GA4 data backed every optimization, tracking deep-funnel actions instead of surface-level clicks. The goal was simple: fewer wasted impressions, more of the actions that drive occupancy.
What Changed, By the Numbers
Comparing the client’s previous quarter (July to September 2025) to the first full quarter under Threshold (October to December 2025), the account saw a complete performance reversal:
- Click-through rate rose to 10.46%, up from 1.60%, an increase of over 550%.
- Cost per click fell to $2.53, down from $4.46, a 43% reduction, landing within the industry benchmark.
- New “The Fairways at Star Ranch” branded search campaigns achieved an 11.75% click-through rate.
- Click-to-call actions grew from 11.10 to 185.95, a 1,575% increase.
- Schedule Tour events grew from 6.48 to 31.99, a 393% increase.
- Check Availability events climbed from 382.17 to 1,001.95.
Branded terms alone were bought at an ultra-efficient $0.71 cost per click, proof that the right account hygiene can make a budget work nearly six times as hard without spending a dollar more. The client felt the difference too.
“Threshold outperformed prior-year metrics as well as the months immediately preceding the transition across nearly every category we measured. The improvements were not isolated to one metric and were consistent across the full performance funnel. The results gave us the ability to clearly demonstrate measurable value back to ownership through reporting and leasing performance.”
– Cortney Young, Regional Marketing Manager, Willow Bridge
The Significance of Being Shortlisted
Being shortlisted at the Global Search Awards is a meaningful moment for our team, because this campaign is exactly the kind of work we love: taking an account that had been coasting on automation, applying real strategic rigor, and providing results our client could feel in their leasing office, not just on a dashboard.
“Being recognized by the Global Search Awards means a lot to our team because it’s proof that asking ‘what if’ still wins. What if we stopped trusting automation to run itself? What if we treated every dollar of a client’s budget like it was our own? That question is baked into how we work at Threshold, on every account, not just this one, and this shortlisting tells us it’s paying off, for our clients and for the industry watching.”
– Laura Robbins, Corporate Marketing Manager, Threshold
Where We See Search Heading
This campaign sits inside a broader shift we’re watching play out across paid search. Automation is not going away, and we wouldn’t want it to. Google’s machine learning can do things no human team can at scale, and tools like Performance Max and Smart Bidding have their place. But 2025 and 2026 have made one thing clear: automation performs best inside a tightly defined, well-fenced playing field. The teams getting the strongest results right now are pairing automated bidding with disciplined, human-led account structure rather than handing the entire strategy to the algorithm. Fairways at Star Ranch show that clearly: same platform, same tools, but with real strategic oversight guiding where the budget goes.
We’re also watching AI-driven search experiences change what a “click” even means. As Google’s AI Overviews and other generative features absorb more informational queries, we expect paid search budgets to concentrate further around high-intent, branded, and bottom-funnel terms, the exact territory we leaned into here. Top-of-funnel traffic is getting harder to buy efficiently, so the accounts that win in 2026 will be those with negative-keyword discipline and audience precision to protect their budgets from low-value clicks.
For real estate and multifamily marketers specifically, we predict the next twelve months will bring a sharper focus on leasing actions over vanity traffic. Property marketers are under real pressure to show occupancy impact, not just impressions, so we expect reporting to shift towards including tour bookings, call volume, and lead-to-lease ratios, if teams haven’t already. These metrics matter to ownership groups and investors.
First-party data and platform integrations like GA4 are also becoming non-negotiable. Every optimization in this campaign was only possible because we had clean, deep-funnel data feeding the account. Our advice to other search marketers: get your measurement foundation right before you touch a single bid or keyword. The strategy only works if you can see what’s working.
Get in TouchYou can learn more about Threshold Agency and our real estate marketing work at thresholdagency.com, read the full case study here, or visit our client at fairwaysatstarranch.com.
