What is the best Bidding Strategy when it comes to PPC advertising?
What is the best Bidding Strategy when it comes to PPC advertising?
As with all things
IT DEPENDS
When it comes to Google Ads, the most important thing is what to pay per click. This will allow the marketer to better manage the media spend while also achieving the desired results. While most bidding strategies require a level of human interaction, the manual bidding strategy demands the full attention of the PPC advertiser.
Let’s start with a brief overview of the bidding strategies.
Google Ads
Target cost per Acquisition [CPA]
CPA is designed to spend the stated daily budget while driving as many conversions as possible at the CPA defined by the marketer.
This bidding strategy will strive to bring conversions and ignore the value of the conversions. This strategy needs at least 60 days of accurate conversions in order to properly train the campaign for the desired CPA.
Do note that the daily budget needed for successful training should be around 10-20 times the target CPA.
This strategy works best for accounts that
- have similar conversion values
- brands that have strict CPL [cost per lead]
- have reached the required conversions for the campaign to perform properly
- have the budget required to continuously train the campaigns.
This strategy will not work for accounts that have multiple conversion values. Also, this bidding strategy runs the risk of underperforming and underspending.
Target return on ad spend [ROAS]
Target ROAS is a bidding strategy focused on conversion value over conversion volume. The strategy needs conversion values to be properly tracked in order to bring the best possible results. The strategy needs at least 15 conversions in a 30 day period.
This strategy works best for accounts that
- have large volumes of data
- multiple conversion values
- require specific profits per product or product category
This strategy will not work for accounts that
- don’t have the data needed
- haven’t established a CPA
- want to reach the objective in a limited amount of time
- have ROAS goals that don’t align with the budget and keywords costs
Maximize clicks
Maximize clicks is a bidding strategy that allows campaigns to generate a large amount of data in a relatively short period of time. This objective is aimed at new accounts that need data before conversions.
This strategy works best for campaigns that
- haven’t set conversions
- don’t care about ROAS
- want data
- understand which keywords work best for the products and/or services
- are interested in low search volume queries
This strategy will not work for campaigns that
- need conversions
- have strict KPIs
- know the CPAs of most of the products sold
- want cost control
- don’t have a dedicated account manager
- have a long term strategy
Maximize conversions
This bidding strategy is ideal for campaigns that have the same conversion values. The strategy will attempt to drive as many conversions as possible within budget.
This strategy works best for campaigns that
- need a balance between conversion volume and conversion value
- need consistent growth
- don’t require a certain conversion threshold
This strategy will not work for campaigns that
- have misconfigured conversions
- have misconfigured conversion values
- want a certain amount of ROAS
- have a small time window
Target impression share
Target Impression share is a bidding strategy that helps advertisers achieve the desired impression share in the desired location within the budget. Eg 100% Absolute Top of the page.
This strategy is ideal for campaigns/accounts that
- are brand campaigns
- want to test desired keywords against the budget
- aren’t interested in conversions or clicks
- are interested in securing the 1st place in the SERPs
- want to influence buyer’s behavior
This strategy will not work for campaigns that
- want conversions
- Are performance-oriented
- don’t have the budget needed
- don’t want to face strong competition
Enhanced CPC [ECPC]
Enhanced CPC is a bidding strategy that helps you get more conversions from manual bidding. ECPC will automatically adjust the bids for clicks that are more or less likely to lead to the desired outcome [eg conversions]. The difference between ECPC and other Smart bidding campaigns is that ECPC partially automates your manual bids by adjusting your max CPC [including the bid adjustments you have made]
The good
Works with all your campaign settings and max CPC bids
Raises or lowers your manual bids to help you get more conversions or conversion value
Works with third-party bidding systems, even if they’re automating your bids
You don’t need to adjust your bids for Desktop and Tablet
You don’t need to set conversions for Display campaigns [although it helps]
The bad
You need to set the bid adjustments for mobile devices
CPC will fluctuate greatly
This strategy is ideal for campaigns/accounts that
- want conversions
- Are performance-oriented
- want control
- have budget constraints
- have multiple conversion values
This strategy will not work for accounts that
- haven’t established a CPA
- have ROAS goals that don’t align with the budget and keywords costs
- have limited understanding about bid adjustments and CPC
Manual bidding
Manual bidding is a bidding strategy that is perfect for new accounts as well as old accounts. Manual bidding allows the marketer to adjust bids on devices, Audiences, Locations, Time, Age, Genders, etc. This bidding strategy allows for ultimate control and cost-effective experimentations.
This strategy is ideal for campaigns that
- want control
- want to adjust bids as needed
- have a PPC strategy in place
- are aware of the competition
- have dedicated PPC managers
- know their CPAs
- have strict KPIs
- are created by seasoned PPC advertisers
- have budget constraints
This strategy will not work for campaigns that
- don’t have the resources needed for PPC management
- don’t understand bid adjustments
- want aggressive ad spend
Cost-per-view-bidding CPV
It is the default bidding strategy for TrueView video ads. With CPV bidding you’ll pay for video views or interactions[clicks, CTAs, overlays, cards, and companion banners). A view is counted when someone watches 30s of your ad or interacts with your ad.
That said there is no perfect bid strategy but only one that fits the marketing objective. Seasoned managers tend to gravitate to manual bids alongside maximizing conversions if they have enough data to justify such a bidding strategy mix.
Top posts in Google Ads
How to audit Google Ads campaigns