Sector: property
PPC for Birmingham estate agents, letting agents and developers
The valuation is the search that pays
The portals own the property searches, so a Birmingham agent's Google Ads account does not fight them. It bids on the search the portals cannot answer: the homeowner in Harborne or Sutton Coldfield typing “house valuation”, the landlord in Selly Oak typing “letting agent fees”, the buyer typing the name of a development in Longbridge. A page for each, a form that asks the address, a tracked number, and the instructions fed back into the bidding at month end. From £249 a month, one agent per suburb.
Three campaigns
Three kinds of enquiry, each with its own page and its own budget
Sales agents, single or multi-branch
Sellers: the valuation
"House valuation", "sell my house", "how much is my house worth" plus the suburb. The page asks for the address and a phone number and promises a visit within days. The enquiry is a valuation request; the result, reported monthly, is instructions won.
Letting agents and managing agents
Landlords: the tenant find and the management quote
"Letting agent", "property management", "landlord" plus the suburb. Fees on the page, as agents are required to publish them; a form for the property; tenant searches excluded. Judged on managed properties won.
Developers and new-build sales teams
Developers: the scheme
The development's name, the house types and the price bands, one page per scheme with the brochure and the viewing form. Reservations and exchanges imported as offline conversions so the bidding learns which searches sold homes.
Student lets
The Selly Oak year, and why a flat budget misses it
The University of Birmingham's student housing market around Selly Oak, Bournbrook and Edgbaston runs on the academic calendar, and so does a campaign for it. The shape below is corrected from your own enquiry dates.
September
Build, do not spend
The new intake has just moved into halls and this year's houses. Campaigns for next year are built now: pages by house size and street, ads by price per room.
November to January
The house hunt
Groups form and searches for next year's houses climb sharply. Budget on, bids up on the streets you have stock on, the viewing form counted as the enquiry.
February to March
The tail
The remaining rooms and the late groups. Budget tapers; ads name the streets with stock left rather than the whole area.
April to August
Paused, mostly
Searches now are parents comparing halls and summer sub-lets. The campaign is paused, or held at a low budget for the late rooms, and the money goes to the landlord campaign instead.
The search that pays
Why “valuation” is worth twenty times “estate agent”
“Estate agent Moseley” is typed by buyers looking for listings, renters, job seekers and the occasional seller, and the portals and the map pack take most of the clicks. “House valuation Moseley” is typed by someone who has decided to sell and has not yet chosen who with. The click costs more and it is worth far more, because the enquiry is the thing an agent's whole business runs on: the instruction.
So the campaign is built on the valuation searches, the page asks for the address and promises a visit, the form and a tracked call both count, and at month end you tell us which valuations became instructions. Those go back into the account as the thing to bid for.
Where in Birmingham
The radius follows the branch, and the suburb names follow the searches
A Harborne branch draws instructions from Harborne, Edgbaston and Quinton; a Sutton Coldfield branch from Four Oaks, Boldmere and Mere Green; a Solihull branch from Shirley, Knowle and Dorridge. The campaign targets the postcode districts around the branch and the ads name the suburb the searcher typed, because “valuation in Boldmere” from an agent that says Boldmere converts better than one that says Birmingham.
Developers are the exception: a city-centre apartment scheme sells to the whole region and to investors, and the radius is drawn from where the reservations actually came from.
The rules on the page
Fees published, claims kept honest
Letting agents are required to publish their fees, and the Tenant Fees Act limits what a tenant can be charged, so the landlord page carries the fee schedule rather than hiding it behind the form. Sales pages avoid the claims that get an agent a Trading Standards complaint and Google a reason to disapprove the ad: no “best price guaranteed”, no invented sold-in-days figures, no reviews that cannot be shown to be real. What sells the valuation is the promise of a visit within days and a named person who will make it.
Keep reading
Next door to this page
Solicitors
The conveyancing side of the same house sale.
Landing pages
A valuation page that asks the address and nothing else.
Pricing
Single-branch agents usually sit on Starter; the tiers are on one page.
Get a quote
Send the branch and the suburbs; the reply says whether they are open and what a valuation click costs.
Questions from Birmingham agents and developers
What should a Birmingham estate agent bid on?
Valuation searches, almost exclusively. "Estate agent Harborne" is searched by buyers and renters as well as sellers, and the portals win it anyway. "House valuation Harborne" and "sell my house Moseley" are searched by the person who is about to instruct an agent, and a valuation request is the enquiry that pays.
Is it worth competing with Rightmove and Zoopla on Google?
Not for property searches; the portals hold them and a buyer will find your listing there. For instructions, the portals are not your competitor, the agent up the road is, and the searcher typing "valuation" plus a suburb has not chosen either of you yet. That is the search worth paying for.
How do you run lettings campaigns for landlords?
As a separate campaign from sales, with its own page. The searches are "letting agent", "landlord", "tenant find", "property management" plus the suburb, the page states the landlord fees as the Consumer Rights Act requires agents to publish them, and the enquiry is a valuation or a management quote request. Tenant searches are excluded unless you want them.
Can you run ads for student lets around the universities?
Yes, on the academic calendar rather than a flat budget. Selly Oak, Edgbaston and Bournbrook searches for next year's houses start in the autumn term and peak in the new year; the campaign is built in September, spends from November to March, and is paused in the summer when the searches are from parents comparing halls.
What about new-build developments in Longbridge or the city centre?
A development campaign has a page per scheme, ads by house type and price band, a short form for the brochure or the viewing, and a radius that reflects where the buyers actually come from, which for a Longbridge scheme is south Birmingham and Bromsgrove and for a city-centre apartment block is the whole region plus investors. Offline conversions, reservations and exchanges, are imported so the bidding learns which enquiries became sales.
What does it cost?
The fee is set by spend: £249 a month up to £1,000 of ad spend, £399 up to £3,000, £599 up to £8,000. A single-branch agent running a valuation campaign usually sits on Starter; a multi-branch agent or a developer on Growth or Scale. One agent per suburb on the monthly plans.
How do you stop paying for tenants and buyers when we want sellers and landlords?
Negatives for the words they use: "to rent", "for sale", "flat to let", "houses for sale in", and the portal names. A campaign built on valuation and landlord searches barely sees them, and the weekly read of what people typed catches the rest.
Can you track which valuation requests became instructions?
Yes, and it is the number the account is judged on. Valuation requests are counted from the form and from tracked calls; at month end you tell us which became instructions and which completed, and those go back into the account as offline conversions, so the bidding buys more of the searches that produced instructions rather than merely forms.
Send your branch and the suburbs you list in. The reply says whether they are still open and what a valuation click costs there.
If ads are already running, add the customer ID and the free check reads how much of the spend went on buyers and tenants rather than on sellers and landlords.