Introduction
Google Ads offers several bid strategies that are tailored to different types of campaigns and business goals. Automated bidding can increase your campaign performance, with less work on your end. In this course, we'll help you decide on a bid strategy that’s right for you.
What you’ll learn:
When automated bidding is for you
How to determine the right bidding strategy
What would you do?
You just heard about automated bidding and are tempted to try it out for your campaign. It sounds pretty sweet, especially the automated part. Before you go to set it up, what are some things you should think about?
How automated bidding works
Your keyword list determines which searches and site visits can trigger your ad if you win the bid, but the "right" bid for an impression can be a moving target influenced by things like match type, device, and location.
With automated bidding, Google Ads can automatically increase bids for impressions that it predicts (from auction-time data) could be more successful.
When to use automated bidding
Automated bidding is not for everyone. Is it right for you? Answer the questions below to find out. Each question is based on a common characteristic of advertisers and campaigns that use automated bidding strategies.
For instance, do you want to drive as many conversions as possible, within your budget?
Studies have shown 80 percent of a marketer's time is spent manually optimizing campaigns.How best could you use this time?
You’re likely to get better results if your campaign is already getting at least 15 conversions and 15 clicks per month before you enable automated bidding. This isn’t a requirement, but this kind of data helps the algorithm work its magic.
Though you’ll need conversion tracking enabled to use many automated features, we do have strategies that don’t require this if this isn’t for you. If you’re ready to get started with conversion tracking, see the resources at the end of this course
When to use manual bidding
If you don’t think you're a good fit for automated bidding, manual bidding is always an option. You may want to consider manual bidding if:
You don’t have enough conversions to meet the recommendations for automated bidding
You need 100 percent control of how you pay for views, clicks or conversions
If the descriptions above don’t apply to you, we recommend choosing an automated bidding strategy. Read on to learn how to do just that.
How to choose your automated bidding strategy
You set the automated bidding strategy in Google Ads that best serves your primary campaign goal.
Maximize clicks automatically sets your bids to help get as many clicks as possible within your budget. It can increase site visits and increase clicks on low-traffic terms. Good for advertisers just starting off with online marketing who are most interested in getting customers to their website.
Target return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) bids more where Google Ads estimates ads are more likely to lead to a sale — aiming to get as much return on ad spend as possible. Good for advertisers who know the exact value of each conversion to their business.
Automated bidding strategies designed to generate conversions include Enhanced cost per click (ECPC), Maximize conversions and Target cost per acquisition (CPA). We’ll dive into each of these in the following section. Good for advertisers looking to drive conversions.
Which automated conversion bidding type is right for you?
Enhanced cost per click (ECPC) is a semi-automated bid strategy which adjusts your bids to get you as many conversions as possible, within your determined budget. You set keyword bids and let Google Ads work its magic to improve your campaign’s performance.
Good for advertisers looking for an incremental increase in conversions while still retaining control over their keyword bids.
Maximize conversions bidding automatically sets bids at auction time to get you as much conversion volume as possible within your campaign’s budget.
Good for those with a fixed advertising budget already seeing at least 15 conversions and 15 clicks per month, who do not know how much they should be willing to pay for a conversion (in other words, they do not have a target CPA).
Target CPA automatically sets bids to help get as many conversions as possible at the target CPA you set (some conversions may cost more or less than your target). Target CPA does not operate within a set budget.
Good for advertisers who know how much they’re willing to pay for a conversion and prioritize maintaining a specific cost per conversion over driving conversion volume.
Automated bidding in action
Think you have it down? Let’s see how automated bidding could work in the real world.
To date, Barbara has been setting bids for her online fashion website manually. As her business grows, she’s spending more and more of her time managing her campaigns and bids. It’s preventing her from spending time on other strategic projects, like setting up a YouTube advertising campaign.
Barbara currently sees 20 clicks and 15 conversions per month. She’s ready to try her hand at automated bidding to free up some of the time she’s spending on campaign optimization. She decides to try ECPC bidding so she can maintain control of her bids, but allow Google Ads to automatically adjust her bids in the auction to maximize conversions.
After a couple weeks, Barbara has received almost 40 conversions with her new bid strategy. She’s thrilled with this success and is curious to explore other automated strategies that could grow her business even more. In reviewing her ECPC campaign results, she now has a good sense for the average cost per conversion, in other words, how much she’s willing to pay to have someone purchase an item on her site.
Now that Barbara has a good understanding of her average CPA, she decides to try a fully automated bidding strategy and set this average as her Target CPA. With her new free time, she can get around to building that video creative for her YouTube campaign.
Best practices when using automated bidding
Now that you have automated bidding down, try these helpful automated bidding tips to keep it simple when using it on your conversion-tracked campaign.
Assume the automated bidding algorithm will need a couple of weeks to accumulate enough data to make informed predictions. Try to keep campaign changes to a minimum while the algorithm learns how to maximize performance for your goals.
Conversion tracking allows you to see how effectively your ad clicks lead to valuable customer activity, like purchases or newsletter sign-ups. In order to use automated bidding, you’ll need to enable conversion tracking. Review the resources section at the end of the course for steps to do so.
Google Ads’ algorithm has to adapt to your changes, so try to make them together and infrequently overall. Try to keep Target CPA goals, ads, and campaign daily budgets fairly steady.
The bid strategy report lets you see how well your bid strategies have performed for key metrics. Use this information to make adjustments to your bid strategies and improve your campaign results.
Recap
In this course, we covered what automated bidding is, who can benefit from it, and how to pick the right automated bid strategy for your goals. Now ask yourself: Is automated bidding right for me? If so, which strategy could help you reach your goals?
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