Which Bidding Strategy Should I Use When Creating A Brand New Google Ads Account?

In today’s digitally-driven business landscape, having a sound Google Ads strategy is crucial to outperforming the competition and achieving your marketing goals. With a plethora of bidding strategies available, it’s important to understand how each one works and how to leverage them effectively in your campaigns.🚀

Drawing on nearly two decades of digital marketing expertise, I’m excited to guide you through the maze of Google Ads bidding strategies, laying out a clear path to success for your online advertising initiatives.

Understanding Bidding Strategies: Manual CPC and More

One of the most commonly asked questions from advertisers stepping into the Google Ads arena is, “What bidding strategy should I use?” It’s a pertinent query given the array of options at your disposal, such as manual CPC (cost-per-click), target impression share, and maximize conversion value. Let’s delve deeper into these strategies.🕵️‍♂️

Manual CPC: This strategy provides advertisers with the greatest control over their Google Ads budget. In Manual CPC bidding, you can set the maximum amount that you are willing to pay for a click on your ad. This is a great strategy for beginners or those who wish to maintain a tight grip on their ad spend.
Target Impression Share: This strategy focuses on visibility. Here, Google automatically sets your bids to help your ads appear as often as possible, depending on the location on the search results page you aim for (top of the page, absolute top of the page, or anywhere on the page).
Maximize Conversion Value: Google automatically sets your bids to help get the most conversion value within your budget. This is a smart bidding strategy ideal for advertisers who want to optimize their ad spend to achieve the highest ROI.

While each of these strategies has its unique advantages, it’s essential to understand that data plays a vital role in their effectiveness, particularly when it comes to the smart bidding strategies.🧠

Data: The Fuel for Smart Bidding Strategies

Smart bidding strategies, such as maximize conversion value and target impression share, rely heavily on machine learning. These strategies learn from your past performance to optimize future bids, but for this, they require a significant amount of data.

With a brand-new Google Ads account, you’re starting with a clean slate, meaning there is no data for these smart strategies to learn from. This lack of data can result in your campaign entering a ‘learning mode,’ which may slow down your progress.

This is where manual CPC becomes the ideal stepping stone. By starting with manual CPC, you’re in full control of your budget and can start accumulating data right from the outset. As you gain clicks and conversions, you’ll gradually build a solid foundation of data that can fuel the machine learning algorithms of the smart bidding strategies.💼

For an effective transition to smart bidding, aim for at least 15 to 20 conversions within a 30-day period. This benchmark will provide Google’s algorithms with enough data to make informed decisions when shifting to smart bidding strategies.

The Art of Balancing Visibility and Cost-Effectiveness

While we’ve established that manual CPC is an effective launching pad, there are instances when other strategies might serve your objectives better. One such instance is brand campaigns.

For brand campaigns, target impression share can be an effective bidding strategy. This approach focuses on securing a certain percentage of the total possible impressions for your ads. Aiming for about 80% of the top spot on the search results page can be a good starting point.

This 80% mark is often a sweet spot where visibility and cost-effectiveness intersect. Aiming for 100% might seem appealing, but it can lead to bidding wars with competitors who might want to rank for your brand keywords. Such wars could lead to inflated costs without a proportional increase in returns. From my experience, the 80% target tends to offer a good balance between visibility and affordability.🎯

Optimising Your Google Ads Performance: Beyond Bidding

While bidding strategies are certainly a critical component of Google Ads, it’s equally important to keep refining your strategy in other areas to improve overall performance. Here are some tips to ensure you get the most out of your campaigns:

Keyword Optimisation: Continually refine your keyword lists based on performance data. Weed out underperforming or irrelevant keywords, and expand on the ones driving results.
Ad Copy Excellence: Experiment with different headlines, descriptions, and calls to action. The better your ad copy, the higher your click-through rates and Quality Score.
Landing Page Relevance: Ensure your landing pages align with your ad copy and keywords. A high-quality, relevant landing page can reduce your CPC and increase conversion rates.
Performance Monitoring: Regularly monitor and analyse your campaign performance. Make necessary adjustments to your bidding, ad copy, keywords, and other elements based on data.

The Power of Google Ads Audit

Given the complexities of Google Ads, it’s beneficial to have an expert’s perspective on your campaign. That’s why we offer a FREE Google Ads Audit for businesses.

An audit involves a thorough examination of your Google Ads account to identify opportunities for improvement and potential pitfalls to avoid. It looks at various aspects, including bidding strategy, keyword selection, ad copy, Quality Score, and more.

This service can help you understand how your campaigns are performing, where you’re getting the most value, and areas where changes can lead to substantial improvements. To get started with your free audit, simply reach out to us.📞

Conclusion

Understanding and utilising Google Ads bidding strategies is a critical step to achieving success in the online advertising space. Starting with manual CPC and moving to smart bidding strategies, coupled with ongoing optimisation and periodic audits, can lead to powerful results.

Ready to take your Google Ads campaigns to the next level? Get in touch for a FREE Google Ads Audit and let’s unlock the potential of your digital marketing initiatives together. Call us on 07866 555 555 today and let’s start driving impressive results for your business! 🚀