What are the Best Google Ads bid strategies?

In this blog, I’m going to explain to you the different types of Google Ads bid strategies.

To find out more check out my video below or keep reading for the full blog.

Now by bid strategies, what we mean is that it’s the rules and algorithms that Google or other search engines may use?

In order to determine how much it should bid on various campaigns or clicks to your website to help you achieve your goal. Now, what I mean by goal is I want to maximize the number of clicks to a website. I might want a certain number of conversions. I want to set an ROI or row.

So you’ve got specific goals. That’s where different types of bid strategies will be used in order to help you accomplish your goal.

One thing to note is that you can use you can play different bid strategies at either campaign level, or at the portfolio level. That campaign level only, it uses data from just that one campaign.

In order to make its decisions, all metrics and calculations have based on a smaller data set. But with a portfolio of buildings, the decisions that are made of either a group of campaigns to make it decisions more holistically. So we will look at row s and ROI across all data points.

Both these applications have their strengths and weaknesses, depending on your overall goals.

Target impression share.

So with target impression share, it’s only available on search only. Now what you’re trying to gain, your objective is to get more visibility. You can do this by specifying a percentage to Google to say what type of impression share you want. Either at the absolute top of the Google page or at the top of the search results page.

So for example, you could specify that I want my ad to be shown 70% at the top of the search results page. Now, this is great. But you got to be careful that this could lead to a whole huge amount of costs. In which may or may not be converting so be careful in terms of how you use it.

Just because you’re at the top of the page, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get the conversion that you desire. It’s also important to note that when target impression share. You do not have control over individual bids.

The algorithm and machine learning calculate all that for you to maximize clicks. So with maximize, clicks is available on search, display and shopping.

Now with maximizing clicks. As the name implies, your objective is to get as many clicks as possible. But you can specify a certain upper limit to say I don’t want my cost per click to exceed this amount.

What you’re really trying to do is trying to get as many clicks as possible within a given budget manual CPC. So with manual CPC, you have total control of your bids. These bids will not be overwritten by Google.

Manual CPC is available on search, display and shopping. With manual CPC, you can specify a maximum bid, which Google will then not override.

With manual CPC, you can adjust your bids at various levels such as device, audience or locations. The only downside of manual CPC is that it requires constant intervention. So only use manual CPC if you really know exactly what you’re doing. You’ve got a strategy in place in order to determine what type of bids you’re going to be using.

With manual CPC, you also have the option to enable Enhanced CPC. Google will bid up for those audiences who are more likely to convert and bid down for those people who Google may deem to be just time wasters and are not likely to lead to a conversion, target CPA.

These are available at search display UAC. Except for universal app campaigns, as well as app install campaigns. The objective of a target CPA campaign. — is to drive as many conversions as possible, within a specified cost per action cost. In which you can then pre-specify that you want to get leads or conversions.

And then what to Google will do is it will try to get you as many conversions as possible. In which it knows that for each conversion, it’s likely to cost you in the region of 20 pounds or 30 pounds or less.

But this does require conversion data in the first place.

So it’s advisable to use this campaign once you’ve got adequate conversion data and it does need that conversion data to be coming in quite regularly. If you’re getting at least 15 to 20 conversions per month, then that’s a good start to say. Hey, this is now about time, I can start using target CPA because we’re giving the algorithm a lot of information to say. These are the types of audiences that are converting and therefore we can use.

To determine what type of target CPA or who to serve our ad to one downside of target CPA, it doesn’t respond to big changes quickly. So if you are making massive changes, don’t expect your target CPA strategy.

To be up to date really quickly, it does take a bit of machine learning time for it to really understand your target. What type of Google Ads bid strategies it needs to apply to your Google Ads campaigns, your keywords target return on ad spends.

So this is available on search, display and shopping. The objective of this is to drive a minimum return on your paid investment with a target return on ad spend.

It allows you to get the maximum conversion value at your return that you have specified. Your bids are automatically optimized at auction time with a target return on ad spend.

As we target CPA, it does require data. So it does require at least 20 conversions within the last 45 days within the last 30 days for search campaigns. Finally, it does require about a six weeks window after any significant change to over your budget.

To maximize conversion is available on search and display. And with maximizing conversions, you’re trying to get as many conversions as possible. Regardless of the cost per conversion. It uses historical data to determine whether the user is likely to convert or not. And if they’re likely, if the user is more likely to convert, maximize conversions will increase the bid. If they’re not likely to convert, then the algorithm will decrease the bid for that particular user.

So these are available on search and smart shopping campaigns. The objective is to maximize revenue generation, regardless of the conversion value.

This strategy does not take into account ROI or CPA either. So if that is affected that you are worried about then maximize conversion value is probably not for you.

This Google Ads Bid strategies rely heavily on Google’s contextual signals, as well as converter behaviour.