How to Change Bid Strategy in Google Ads?

In 2021, the average encountered between six to ten thousand ads every single day. That’s massive — and your business ads could be one of these. When it comes to marketing, you’ve got to pay close attention to Google Ads. As the leading search engine platform, if you place your ads on Google, you’re sure to drive a significant number of eyeballs to your business.

To get started with Google Ads, you’ve got to know answers to the question – what are bid strategies? Also, you’ve got to understand how to change bid strategy in Google Ads.

That’s not all…

You’ve got to figure out how to edit your campaign bid strategy. But before that, you’ve got to consider ‘what are bid strategies’. Afterwards, you would see easy ways of editing your campaign bid strategy.

Enough said! Let’s dive right into it.

What is bid strategy?

Bid strategies are ingredients of tailored campaigns that help you to accomplish specific objectives. Yes, as a business owner, you’ve got marketing goals – and a bid strategy will help you accomplish such goals. Depending on who your target audience is, you can focus on generating more conversions, higher click rates, or impressions.

Most times, the bidding strategy is based on goals – and here is how to get started with it.

Bid Strategies Based on Goals

Regardless of the kind of business you’re running, you need eyeballs – eyeballs translate to paying customers. To do that, you’ve got to focus on clicks. And that’s where the cost-per-click (CPC) campaign bid strategy comes into play.

Business owners who want to boost their brand awareness should focus on impressions and that can be achieved much better by using target impression share bidding strategy to remain on top of SERP. Speaking of impressions (that you receive on YouTube or the Google Display Network), you should take a look at the cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) bidding strategy.

Furthermore, if you’re interested in the actions your customers will take, then you’ve got to focus on conversion tracking – and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) will be your best fit. The actions to be taken by your customers could be downloading new software or some relevant actions of your choice.

Let’s consider all these bidding strategies in detail.

CPC Bidding Strategy

If you want to drive more eyeballs to your website, then you’ve got to consider any of these CPC bidding strategies – manual CPC bidding, and maximize clicks.

• Manual CPC bidding: With manual CPC bidding, you get to choose and manage your maximum CPC bids. It’s an option that lets you personalize your bidding strategy. You get to tweak it based on what you consider most valuable. You can either focus on bidding for placement or keywords. When you’ve settled for one of these options, you get to focus your budgeting effort on it.
• Maximize Clicks: It’s an automated bidding strategy where you get to choose a daily maximum limit. This way, the system gets to auto-manage your account and do the bidding for you. The primary goal of this strategy is to drive the most volume of traffic within your daily limit.

CPM Bidding Strategy

For YouTube or display campaigns, if you desire more views, then the CPM bidding strategy will be your best shot. By merely fine tuning the maximum CPM bids, the CPM bidding strategy will help you manage the visibility of your ads.

Here are some things the CPM bidding strategy will help you accomplish.

• Boost your brand awareness without necessarily generating traffic
• Target some placements, and not keywords
• The message is presented in the ad – your target audience doesn’t necessarily need to click through to view your website.

CPA Bidding Strategy

If you desire high conversion rates, then the CPA bidding strategy will be your best fit. It offers a reliable way of bidding for conversions. However, to get started, your campaign has to fulfill some requirements.

First, your conversion tracking has to be enabled. Next, the campaign has to target display networks, search networks, or both. Here are some instances where you’ve got to focus on the CPA bidding strategy.

• When you’re running a direct response focus campaign.
• When you’ve got a campaign with a well-defined conversion goal. It could be purchase, download, or a signup
• When your campaign conversion is somewhat stable from one week to the next.

Using the CPC, CPM, and CPA bidding strategy are all fine. But you can take one step forward by targeting a return on ads spend ROAS.

Target Return on Ads Spend (ROAS)

If you’re like most marketers, you won’t be comfortable with this strategy. After all, return on ads spend requires math – and math is no fun! However, if you’re a math whiz, you may be pretty comfortable with the strategy.

Regardless of whether you like math or not, here’s how to target return on ads spend.

With the target ROAS, your bids will be auto-set by Google to maximize conversion value. And the bid will be dependent on the return you desire for your ad spend. Ideally, the target ROAS is percentage-based.

Here’s how it works…

Let’s say you want to generate $20 for every $5 spent on your Google campaign, you’ve got to do the math by using the formula below.

Sales  /  ad spend x 100% = Target ROAS.

From the formula above, your Target ROAS will be.

$20 in sales from campaign / $5 ad spend (clicks) x 100% = 400% target ROAS.

That sounds easy, right?

Now you’ve got a good grasp of ‘what is bid strategy’. Next, you’ve got to figure out how to change bid strategy in Google Ads.

Changing bid strategy in Google Ads

First, you’ve got to sign in to your Google Ads account.

Next, click on the Campaigns option. The option is found in the left-hand corner of the page menu.

After you select the campaign from the list you can click on Edit menu button to see multiple options. There you will find option to change the bid strategy.

Now you’ve got an answer to the big question ‘what is bid strategy’, and you’ve also figured out how to edit your campaign bid strategy, next step is to learn a reliable way of choosing a bidding strategy for your campaign.

An overview of how to choose a good bidding strategy for your campaign

Now you know the nitty-gritty of the various bidding types on Google, the next step is to figure out the right bidding strategy for your campaign.

Your choice will be dependent on your budget, goals, and volume. Yes, these three factors determine the bidding strategy for your campaign.

All your campaigns should be modified to fit your desired outcome. For instance, if you want to drive sales on a display network, then choosing the CPM bidding strategy is a waste of time.

Why?

Because the CPM bidding strategy is designed to secure views, and not drive sales to a website.

All in all, your desired bidding strategy should fit the outcome you want for your campaign.

FAQs:

Can I change the bid strategy for a smart campaign?

To change the bid strategy for a smart campaign, you’ve got to navigate to the page menu of the campaign and click on the Settings icon. Next, open bidding and click on the Change bid option. Choose a new bid strategy from the options shown in the drop-down menu. Finally, click on the Save icon.

On the flip side, changing the bid strategy for a smart campaign will cause the campaign to go in Google review — and getting Google’s approvals may take some time. Therefore, it would be best if you don’t change the bid strategy of a campaign very often.

How do I cancel a Google Ads bid strategy?

Canceling is only possible if you replace the current bid strategy with some other. You can do it by clicking on campaign then select the campaign from the list, after that click on Edit and then select Change bid strategy. Finally you will find number of options to select as shown in image below.

Wrap Up:

Figuring out how to edit your campaign bid strategy is easy. All you need is to navigate through your Google Ads account and follow the steps outlined in this guide. And if you’re a newbie who’s wondering ‘what is bid strategy’, all you need to know is that bid strategy helps you to accomplish specific marketing objectives.

Let’s face it, Google is the largest search engine platform on the planet. With billions of eyeballs that land on the platform, if you can drive a fraction of such traffic to your business, then you’re in for some good time.

Bid strategy helps you modify your ad campaign to accomplish your desired objective.

Whether you desire more sales, clicks, or impressions. The right bid strategy will help you accomplish that and more.

Now you know what bid strategies are, and you’ve figured out how to change bid strategy in Google Ads, what bid strategy will you be using for your next ad campaign?