How to pick the right bidding strategy for Google Ads

The changing world of paid search

This year Google announced another change by eliminating broad modified match type, this is another significant step towards keyword management defaulting to automation. Although it may seem like a big change broad match modified is now being applied to the updated phrase match as the graphic shows below.

To get the best results from your Google Ads campaigns, it’s important to have the right campaign set up for the product or service you are trying to sell. It’s also critical to ensure your campaign type matches the budget you have set aside for your marketing efforts.

Pretty much every time a customer comes to us for help with their campaigns we see the same mistakes over and over again which is not only costing them money but potential revenue as well. So here are a few tips on how to pick the right strategy for your business.

Picking the strategy 

Choosing the best Google Ads bidding strategy for your campaigns is not always an easy decision especially if you don’t have experience using Google Ads. From the outset, it’s important to define the objectives for your campaign.

For example, if you’re a plumber you may have a PPC campaign for boiler and heating installation, you could also have a campaign for brand protection where you’re bidding on your brands’ keywords.

Lead Generation

Going back to the plumbing example, you’re a plumber and you want your phone to ring or for customers to complete a contact form. This leaves three bidding strategies.

• Target CPA
• Maximise Conversions
• Manual CPC

The key to smart bidding campaigns is you need volume if your campaign is restricted by budget or you’re only getting a few conversions a day. Smart bidding won’t work as Google needs data volume to make good decisions in order to optimise and automate your campaigns. That’s why Manual CPC is always a good start. 

So what do you pick if you’re not budget-restricted or are generating enough conversions for Google to optimise your bidding strategy?

Target CPA gives you more comfort due to the ability to set a target cost per acquisition – in terms of how much you are willing to pay per lead giving you control and flexibility to make sure your leads come in at a certain price. 

But say you’re a business such as a call centre with no budget restrictions and need the phones to be ringing then maximise conversions could be better for you. Google will optimise your campaign to find the maximum conversions for your budget which can make it more expensive per conversion but your overall conversion volume should be higher.

Sales 

• Target ROAS
• Maximise Conversions
• Manual CPC

For a sales strategy, manual CPC is used in the same way that I’ve described in the lead strategy. 

If your budget is fixed and you want to ensure you don’t go outside of your fixed budget then Target ROAS is the best strategy for you.

Maximise conversion requires a lot of conversion data to be optimised efficiently for your campaign – meaning if you have the data and are not restricted on budget giving google free reign to optimise your campaigns could be the best option. 

What we tend to do with our clients is start the campaigns on a fixed target advertising spend and as we generate conversion data is to run split experiments to see what Google can do with the data. 

Vanity Bidding

• Target Impression Share
• Maximise Clicks
• Manual CPC

To ensure a certain amount of impressions and to maximise impression share for your brand’s terms. Then target impression share could be quite useful.

Another example is some breaking news within your niche and you want to capitalise from people looking for this story you can then bid on this particular term to generate traffic. 

Google Bidding Strategies: Conclusion

Choosing the right bidding strategy isn't easy. With many options to pick from it can be quite overwhelming for users new to the platform. Before selecting your bidding strategy make sure to assess your campaign goals, this will make it easier in picking which setup to go for.