Google Ads bidding strategies: how to choose and what are the features

Every company, regardless of its size and specifics of activity, is interested in reducing advertising costs as much as possible. If possible, it is better to pay less to achieve the goal.

Correctly chosen bidding strategies Google Ads will help reduce the costs of marketing and advertising campaigns. The task of choosing the right one is not as easy as it may seem to an inexperienced user.

Some allow you to select the click price manually, others give you the opportunity to activate the auto mode. To understand the capabilities of each strategy, we offer a detailed description of them, as well as an analysis of the pros and cons of each.

In addition, let’s consider why you need a price optimizer and display method. Remember that before starting work, it is recommended to choose the right goal of the advertising campaign, because productivity directly depends on it.

What You Need to Know About Manual Bidding in Google Ads

This is a good solution for the first launch of new companies, which will allow you to collect a base for further evaluation of the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.

Manual bidding strategiesallow the user to set the maximum bid per click based on business needs. This can be done separately for different queries or for an entire group of ads. To determine the price, the advertiser carefully studies the key performance indicators of the advertising campaign. Based on this, a number of measures can be taken to increase the return.

Disadvantages of this method:

1. For your ads to be effective, you need to regularly monitor updates.
2. You will have to put in a lot of time and effort, performing manual analysis of rates by different criteria, for example, audience or location. If you take the work lightly, this is fraught with a drain on the advertising budget, and some ads will simply not be shown to the target audience.
3. The work does not use relevant data. For this strategy, statistics are used for those events that have already occurred.

When it is recommended to use it: if you have already identified the most relevant keywords and placements, and all that remains is to correctly distribute the budget. If the results for a given keyword do not reach the planned indicator, manually increase the bid.

Step-by-step diagrams for using manual assignment:

1. It is advisable to start by increasing the bid on profitable keywords or entire phrases.< /li>
2. The bid amount should be at least 30% higher than what Google offers. This will allow you to immediately get a high quality score. Otherwise, with a low bid, the metric will quickly fall and you won’t be able to raise it.
3. Compare the dependence of price and placement locations, analyze micro conversion.
4. At the next stage, it is recommended to adjust the rates downwards and monitor the dynamics.

Automated bidding strategy

This Adwords bidding strategy means that Google uses automatic price adjustment within the current budget. This eliminates the need to spend a lot of effort on manual adjustment, allowing you to do other tasks. The disadvantages of the method include an increased price – the system does not always set priorities that meet the goals of the marketer.

There are several subtypes of strategies in the automatic setup that can be selected depending on the task at hand. The navigation of this menu is quite complex, and it is problematic for an inexperienced user to figure it out. To get started, you need to define the goal:

1. Conversions – will the visitor perform the specified target action to achieve the result expected by the business.
2. Conversion value – how much you can get on average when achieving a conversion. Analysis of data for at least the last month will allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of contextual advertising.
3. Clicks – to interest potential customers and motivate them to go to the page or website.
4. Impression percentage – how many times the ad was shown, divided by the number of queries in which they could still be reflected. This indicator is useful because it allows you to assess the audience reach. If the impression counter is practically not growing, it means that the lion’s share of the audience does not see the ad and for better results, the rate needs to be increased.

There is a smart bidding option in the settings – in fact, this is neither a manual nor an automatic mode. This is one of the automation algorithms that works on the basis of Data Science. To achieve the goals when choosing this bid strategy , you do not need to create unique parameters, you just need to turn it on. Then it will start working according to an intelligent algorithm, we will consider the details of the process below.

Google algorithms are constantly changing and becoming more sophisticated. More and more often, when working in the account, the system offers to abandon manual settings and completely switch to an automated format. Practice shows that for an effective advertising campaign, it is important to skillfully use not only automatic, but also some manual strategies depending on current goals.

There is no universal ready-made solution, you will have to try several formats yourself to analyze the results and choose the best option for the bidding strategy.

1. Get as many conversions as possible

Allows you to distribute your current budget most effectively. When activated, Google uses the maximum number of user behavioral factors in its work – their search history, behavior on the site, or performing a target action. Based on their totality, a decision is made whether to display an ad. The user only needs to select a daily budget limit. The system will distribute it in such a way as to achieve high efficiency (increase conversion to the maximum possible) and not go beyond the limits.

What’s good about it:

1. The rate is adjusted non-stop and taking into account the analysis of current data.
2. High efficiency allows you to work only with the target audience.
3. It takes a minimum of time to set up and manage.

It is important to remember the disadvantages, because when choosing a strategy, the cost per click indicator often increases (sometimes unnecessarily). For the algorithm to work effectively, you need an array of data – statistics for at least 30 days, during which there were more than 15 conversions.

What kind of business is it suitable for: if the goal is to achieve profit growth, and the company’s main clients have a long LTV or CLV.

2. Target Cost Per Conversion

Suitable for companies that want to increase brand awareness and achieve an increase in the number of customers. In this case, Google AdWords bids can be automated and selected separately for different auctions.

Advantages:

1. The number of conversions will increase with the same budget.
2. Gives businesses more low-cost clicks and minimizes the number of overly expensive leads.
3. To achieve the target price, the bids are generated automatically by the system.

The downside of this method is the impossibility of setting limits on the price per click. In order for the cost of the target action to be in the advertiser’s interests, a large budget is needed. Approximately at least 2 times higher than the CPA for this campaign, but even more is better. If the price is too low, you will simply lose some of the clicks.

When leaning towards its use, it is necessary to remember that Google Ads is not able to predict all the factors that affect the price. If the competition in the niche increases, the rates will increase, therefore the current target price will not be enough for further effective display.

The more statistics a company has on early conversions, the better the system will examine the data and offer a better target price. To do this, you need to perform a deep analysis: examine the type of user device, collect statistics on their geolocation, time, request, etc.

3. Targeted ROAS – What You Need to Know About Auto ROAS Strategy

In the section for selecting conversion value, there is a separate sub-item where you can set the target profitability indicator in percentage format.

First, you need to calculate the conversion value with the current profitability, for which a formula is available. To calculate the percentage, ROAS is determined – revenue from advertising, which must be divided by the costs incurred and multiplied by 100%. For example, revenue should be 50 thousand rubles, current marketing costs – 20 thousand. Total ROAS is 250%.

This is a Google Adwords bidding strategy for those who care about high profits from contextual advertising. It will only work for you if tracking is set up and you have received enough information about the value and conversions. In simple words – if you want to get $ 7 in return for every dollar spent on clicks, you need to set 700% profitability in your account.

Its advantage is that the ad is shown to a warm audience that is ready to make a purchase. The disadvantage is that Google needs maximum information to form a list of the most potentially profitable key phrases. The actual profitability may not correspond to the planned value, since the result may be affected by third-party factors.

This strategyworks based on statistics, predicting the percentage of conversion and its value. This data is used to form the optimal price per click in accordance with the plan, thereby increasing the conversion rate. The system learns by collecting data about the user’s device, browser, geo- and other factors, which increases the likelihood of a successful conversion.

4. Maximum clicks – available with the selected goal “Clicks”

The price will be increased or decreased autonomously by the system depending on contextual signals. It always depends on the probability with which the user will click on the ad.

Pros:

1. This is a smart strategy that helps you achieve an increase in the number of clicks on a limited budget.
2. Convenience and simplicity, bringing maximum traffic according to the current budget.
3. You don’t need to track conversions to run a campaign.

There are also disadvantages – the price per click can increase significantly, which will entail additional costs. To avoid this, you need to set the maximum price value. Also, you will not be able to control traffic.

It will be useful for advertisers with a limited budget, but who also want to use automatic bid strategies to reach the group of users who are most likely to click on the ad.

You can choose this strategy, set a budget and wait until the actions necessary to achieve the goal are performed automatically. Or set the click price so as not to go beyond the budget.

Who can use it: for example, a novice blogger who wants to attract attention to the page and increase the number of subscribers. The strategy will allow him to get a lot of interactions in a short period. To increase the reach on the network, it is better to choose the maximum price.

Remember about simulators in Google Ads, with the use of which you can evaluate the effectiveness of a particular campaign under the condition of increasing or decreasing the budget for the day.

5. Target Impression Percentage

The system sets bids in such a way as to have the maximum number of impressions at the top of the list. Thus, the percentage of impressions received is constantly growing steadily, but it can only be used in the search network.

You can choose the page area yourself: the ad placement at the top of the page or strictly at the top position and, in addition, choose a limit on the bid size. This will help avoid a situation where the click price unexpectedly increases significantly. But you shouldn’t set too strict limits either, otherwise the system won’t be able to perform an autobid at auctions to achieve the required number of impressions.

What are the advantages:

1. This is an effective smart adwords bidding strategy.
2. Great for increasing brand awareness, which is important for young companies.
3. A simpler approach to setup is used than when manually forming the bid price.

The main disadvantage is that the strategy is not suitable for all business goals, since the share of impressions may not meet the objectives. If the brand does not need to increase recognition, there will be little benefit for it, and the impressions received will be prohibitively expensive. Another negative point is that there is no traffic control.

Use cases: not only for brand recognition, but also to increase awareness of the product among potential customers. Potentially transitional keywords are used for this. In order to get relevant traffic, it is better to use other strategies in addition to this one.

6. Understanding the CPC Optimizer

Formally, this option is automatic, but still differs from the strategies described above. It is used to make edits to bids whose price was set manually, not by the system.

The benefits of the optimizer are obvious, but still not all advertisers resort to its help. There are several reasons for this:

1. Not every advertiser or marketer is ready to entrust the work of fine-tuning advertising to a robot. Many clients often choose manual settings as more reliable.
2. There is a possibility that the desired result will not be achieved, but time will be lost.
3. You have to spend money during the trial period, which for some companies may be an unnecessary marketing expense.

Companies that are related to e-commerce should try working in the conversion price optimizer. It should be used for at least 3 weeks or more – this is what Google recommends. In other cases, the results may be unreliable. While the advertising campaign is running, you cannot make any major changes to it (you do not need to add a new title, change the list of keywords or delete some of them) – this is also a prerequisite for the correct operation of the system.

Flexible or batch control of bidding strategies in Google Ads

The same settings and strategies are available in the account as before, but they can be applied not only to one campaign, but to several different ones at once (there can be any number). Such batch management greatly simplifies the task and saves time, since there is no need to transfer settings manually, but they can simply be duplicated in a few clicks.

Choose the appropriate strategy option and its configuration, and then you can apply it to an entire ad group, several keys, or an entire advertising campaign.

To open a batch assignment, go to Tools, then Shared Library, and from the bid strategies that open, click the + icon. After adding campaign settings, you can select a list of ads to which you want to apply them. You don’t have to select campaigns, but simply save the settings template in the system to return to this strategy a little later and add it to any ad.

Pros: minimum participation in the advertising campaign after saving the settings. The downside is that it is easy to make mistakes during the setup process due to carelessness. When working in this menu, a new strategy will open up for you.

Target win percentage – in case you need to beat your closest competitors in clicks

In a special field, you can add the competitor’s domain address and indicate in percentage terms how often you need to win auctions from them – this can be 100% or 95%.

Google AdWords algorithms will constantly automatically adjust the bid amount in such a way as to beat the competitor. As a result, ads will be guaranteed to be higher in the list.

Smart Bidding in Google Ads

A function that appeared back in 2016 and is not essentially a strategy. It is an algorithm based on deep statistical analysis and mathematical forecasting. The system runs through a lot of data about clients, based on which they are assigned certain characteristics. The collected information undergoes further processing in order to identify several factors that influence conversion the most.

Based on the calculations received, Ads applies Smart Bidding – it lowers or raises the bid depending on whether it will help improve conversion. The system studies the user’s needs in detail, taking into account the search history and successful purchases made earlier, interests, preferences and other parameters.

Why you should test Smart Bidding at least once:

1. Bids are set automatically during the auction. The system analyzes the probability of conversion, and based on this data, it forms the bid amount. If the probability of successful conversion decreases or is minimal, the ad will be excluded from the auction.
2. User requests, intentions and interests are taken into account. Due to such adaptability, impressions are based on the request for which the conversion chance is extremely high.
3. A cross-analysis of behavioral factors is performed. The bid will be formed taking into account a number of contextual signals, including the user’s location, the type of device used, the browser, the time of day, and much more.

With multiple campaigns, it allows you to manage your advertising budget more efficiently, since the system will have more information about users and conversion. This data can be used even for young companies with low conversion to improve efficiency.

What other problems can a dynamic system help solve:

1. Form the correct price taking into account seasonality and dynamic trading, as a result of which demand changes.
2. To stay up to date with changes in search trends.
3. To control the price and balance the cost per click by setting a cost per action that will not be exceeded under any conditions.

For the algorithm to work correctly, you need to have at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days. It is important that they are tracked correctly, otherwise the system will work with errors.

How bidding chooses who to show ads to:

1. What language is set for the client’s browser interface. If the interface is Russian, priority is given to advertisers whose account and website are also in Russian.
2. From which gadget the user goes online. For example, a person is trying to find the addresses of the nearest electronics stores from a smartphone. The system will show those stores that are located near his current location as a priority.
3. Statistics show that users are more likely to search for information at night, so it is better to show them informational ads. More orders are made during the day, so sales ads come to the fore.
4. Search history on a PC, laptop or phone – if the user previously searched for repair products, then later he will be shown mainly ads related to the topic of repair or building materials.

Residents of all countries can work with the tool, only Ukraine has some problems – here the algorithm shows good efficiency only in the field of electronics and household appliances, where conversion rates are high.

Results

Previously, the process of setting up campaigns in the advertising account was largely based on guesswork, and to work effectively, you needed to have enough experience and a deep study of different bidding strategies.

Today, to quickly achieve the desired result within the budget, it is enough to try and learn the features of several strategies – they automate the process and use intelligent learning algorithms for better results. This increases the value of conversion and reduces business costs for marketing. This allows you to spend less time and resources on setting up search advertising and pay attention to other marketing activities.