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Feeling like your budget is holding you back from making the most out of Google Ads?
Many small businesses and beginner advertisers find themselves restricted by limited funds, which makes it difficult to achieve their goals through paid advertising. However, when you learn how to effectively use AdWords bidding strategies, you can maximize your return on investment (ROI).
Done right, this can turn a small budget into a big win. Let’s give you the essential tips for AdWords bidding so you can do a lot more with less spending.
The performance of your ad is affected by several factors, including:
It’s vital that you remain aware of your advertising budget so that your campaigns are always optimized for the best performance.
AdWords bidding for keywords can be a little confusing for newcomers to Google Ads, and many people make the mistake of spending a lot for relatively few conversions.
Many marketers believe they should aim for the highest position in Google’s Search Engine Result Page (SERPs), however, that should not be your ultimate Google Ads bidding strategy. Instead, focus on meeting the specific goals of your business.
With a good bidding strategy, you can develop more relevant, engaging ads, which help reduce costs, thus earning you cheaper clicks and more conversions. Over time, your ad rank will improve.
So, which strategy is the best?
Well, that depends on the objectives you set for your ad campaign. These should mirror your business goals, and so they’ll vary depending on what your business is doing.
For example, you may have goals that target growth in various key areas, such as:
When you have defined your goals, consider the strategies below to find the best fit for your campaign.
Brand awareness is defined as the extent to which people can recall or recognize a specific brand. If you want to boost brand awareness, the idea is to make increase visibility of your company, products, or cause.
The best strategy to use for this is to adopt a focus on CPM – Cost per Thousand Impressions. This involves manual bidding, where you set a maximum cost that indicates the most you will spend on an ad that you want to display the most.
When to Use
There are some instances where a cost-per-click (CPC) strategy can generate more low-cost impressions than a CPM model. For example, if Google displays your ads below the fold. However, generally speaking, it is best to opt for CPM when your goal is brand awareness.
The process of identifying prospective customers to buy your products or services is an ongoing concern for most businesses. Without leads, you can’t make sales, and so it’s crucial to have the right strategy to attract more leads.
The best keyword bidding strategy for lead generation goals is to focus on CPC (cost per click). In Google Ads, there are two ways to set the CPC of your campaign keywords.
Setting your keywords on automatic CPC gives full control to Google, freeing up your resources to work on other aspects of the campaign. Google algorithms determine when to change your bids while staying within your set daily limits.
When to Use
Typically, this strategy is best reserved for large campaigns with big budgets as it saves a lot of time. On the flip side, giving Google full control can lead to a lot of wasted spend on poor-performing keywords.
By using manual CPC, you can retain full control over your bids. This allows you to set individual keyword bids, or if you prefer, you can set bids at the ad group level.
It is best to use data analytics to guide your decisions with manual bidding. By assessing keyword history and previous results, you can determine keywords that are more likely to generate results. This is how to Optimize Search Keywords by Intelligently Adjusting the Max CPC.
When to Use
This is an effective strategy to attract quality traffic to your website or landing page, and it ensures you maintain a good click-through rate (CTR). Furthermore, as you have full control over bidding, you can protect against wasted spend.
The drawback of using manual CPC is that it is very time-consuming.
Conversions are the ultimate goal of many campaigns. This is when someone interacts with your ad and responds to the desired call-to-action, whether it’s a click, a sign-up or a purchase.
If you’re focusing on conversions, a smart strategy is enhanced CPC. This seeks to maximize the number of conversions you get from your clicks.
You can achieve this by enabling enhanced CPC in Google Ads. This will automatically change your manual bids of clicks based on Google’s calculations about the probability of this click leading to a conversion.
Typically, Google Ads consider the keyword history. It increases bids by about 50% if they have performed well in the past, and reduces bids on keywords that historically haven’t done so well.
When to Use
If you’re past the point of brand awareness and are now focused on maximizing your conversions, then the enhanced CPC strategy is a great one to work with.
In addition to increasing online sales, it can help reduce your advertising budget. Just know that it is not effective at the initial stage, as keyword history needs to be taken into account.
How much effective is your bidding strategy you can evaluate by running PPCexpo What’s Changed Report.
When you start out with Google Ads, it’s easy to squander money on your keyword bids. Before diving in at the deep end, think about what your business goals are. When you define them, align your campaign objectives so that you have a guiding hand when it comes to bidding.
It’s a wise move to start out with manual bids to retain more control at first, at least until you have developed some history and built a more accurate keyword list that includes relevant search terms and negative keywords.
After that, you will be able to increase profits with advanced keyword bidding strategies.
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