How To Choose Keyword Bidding Strategies
Imagine the Google Adwords auction for a moment. The keywords are set, the goals are established, and everything is enabled to go. A relevant query comes into the search bar and suddenly the opportunity arises to start capturing relevant users. Before the first click is charged to the ad, consider the options of different keyword bidding strategies.
About Manual Bidding
When selecting manual bidding, this option will give advertisers the greatest control in setting the maximum bid for each keyword that participates in the auction. Picture one person with a sign simply bidding on the auction with only price in mind for each time your ads are eligible to be shown. Although this strategy allows control, it also misses opportunities that automated strategies have natively built into Google’s ad auction algorithm.
About Smart Bidding
When selecting a smart bidding strategy, the AdWords account allows Google’s machine learning to optimize keyword bids for a specific goal while staying within the set budget. Automated smart bidding accounts for the keyword bids and thousands of other signals including, time, day of week, location, interests, language, browser, likeliness to convert, audience types, and more each time any keyword participates in the auction. Now imagine doing this times every keyword in the account, and it would be impossible to find every opportunity without automated strategies.
Choosing The Right Smart Bidding Strategy
Consider the overall goals and customer funnel that the AdWords account is performing for.
When thinking about top level funnel strategies such as brand awareness and consideration, below are a few options:
Maximize Clicks automatically sets your bids to help get as many clicks as possible within your budget. This is a great option when first starting to get traffic to the website, and can also be leveraged as a remarketing list for further opportunities down the funnel.
Target Outranking Share allows advertisers to choose a competitor’s domain and how often to outrank it in the auction. From there, AdWords automatically sets search bids to help meet that target.
Target Search Page Location automatically sets keyword bids to help increase the chances that ads appear at the top of the page or on the first page of search results.
When thinking about lower level funnel strategies such as lead generation and ecommerce purchases, below are a few options:
Target CPA (previously known as conversion optimizer) automatically sets search or display bids to help get as many conversions as possible at the set target cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) automatically sets bids to help get as much conversion value as possible at the target return on ad spend set.
Maximize Conversions automatically sets bids to help you get the most conversions for your campaign while spending your budget. PPC Pro Tip: Google best practice suggests having at least 30 conversions in a month to ensure Google’s algorithm is collecting relevant traffic from AdWords.
Enhanced cost-per-click (ECPC) increases conversions while staying in control of keyword bids. ECPC automatically adjusts manual keyword bids to help get more conversions, while trying to achieve the same cost-per-conversion.
Still Not Sure Which Strategy To Choose?
To get started with selecting the best bidding strategy for your Google AdWords account, reach out to your NJM account manager or schedule an AdWords audit with our business development team today.