Google Ads is an outstanding tool that offers a system for advertisers to bid on keywords for their clickable ads, helping them to appear on Google’s SERPs. This technique can be employed for campaigns in just about every industry. The goal is to multiply the number of impressions and clicks your ads receive, which will ideally drive your ads to convert more for your bottom line.
At first glance, the world of Google Ads may appear complex, especially to an irregular user. However, navigating that world doesn’t have to be complicated. If your Google Ads campaign has been sluggish lately and you want to pick it up, you will likely need to revamp your bidding strategies. There are smart ways to do everything, and that is why we here at LSEO have constructed this ultimate guide to stepping up the quality of your Google Ads bidding campaign.
Study these 10 strategy suggestions and your Google Ads revenue will start to escalate and pay off.
Top 10 Google Ads Bidding Strategies
Winning the Google Ads game may seem simple: bid the most, get the keyword, sell your stuff. But there is a lot to learn before you can call yourself a master of the bidding art. Here are some tools you should pay attention to if you really want to get ahead.
1.) Google Ads Auction
When an advertisement is ready to go online, it will go through an ad auction. Google Ads auction is a process that occurs with each Google search to decide which ads will come up. It determines if your ad actually shows and in what position it will appear on the page. The Google Ads system finds all the ads whose keywords match the search. Then, from those ads, Google’s mechanism ignores any that are irrelevant, like ads targeting a foreign country or that are disapproved based on a policy variation. This ensures that only those with sufficiently high Ad Rank appear. Ad Rank is a combination of your bid, the Ad Rank thresholds, the context of the person’s search, and the expected impact of extensions.
2.) Manual Cost Per Click
Manual cost per click, or CPC, allows you to set up different bids for the ad groups in your campaign. This can be done through either individual keywords or placements. Essentially, each time you create and publish an ad for your company, you must establish a maximum price for the cost of someone clicking on it. This is helpful because then you only pay when a customer selects your ad to learn more about your business offerings. This allows new advertisers to keep an eye on ad performance and ensure they are not overspending. Not to mention, you can keep track of the number of impressions your ads generate.
3.) Smart Bidding
Focusing on conversions, the Google Ads Smart Bidding feature can take care of the complicated maneuvering and guesswork involved in setting bids. The feature is a compilation of automated bidding strategies, which uses machine mechanisms like algorithms to optimize conversion value in every auction. There are several strategies involved with this form of bidding. They are Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, and Enhanced CPC or ECPC. All of these can be taken advantage of to improve the return on your investments. The benefits of Smart Bidding include advanced machine learning, several contextual signals, flexible controls, and transparent performance reporting.
4.) Target CPA Bidding
Target cost-per-action, or CPA, bidding is a Google Ads Smart Bidding strategy that sets bids to help get as many conversions as possible at or below the target cost. Through sophisticated mechanisms, you can optimize bids and offer auction-time capabilities that tailor bids for each auction. It is also a standard strategy in a single campaign or as a portfolio technique across multiple platforms. Using portfolios allows you to reach performance goals and quickly adjust bidding settings if they need changes.
5.) Enhanced CPC
Enhanced cost-per-click, or ECPC, multiples the number of conversions from manual bidding. By automatically adjusting your bids for clicks, this will more likely lead to sales on your website. For search and display advertising campaigns, you can heighten conversions, while trying to keep your cost per conversion the same as it is with manual bidding. Even for online shopping marketing, it helps to maintain your overall spending and ensure it remains consistent for each of your ads. This then allows you to prioritize high conversions and properly value varying actions that could lead to sales on your site. It even takes into account diverse rates for all types of traffic to your website along with mobile conversions.
6.) Interactions with Video Ads
When it comes to running video ads, you can use cost-per-video, or CPV, bidding. You will be paying for video views and interactions, including clicks on call-to-actions, overlays, cards, and companion banners. A view is counted when someone watches at least 30 seconds or the whole duration of your video. It is also considered whenever a consumer interacts with the ad. You just have to enter the highest price you want to pay-per-view into a feature called TrueView to tailor your video ads. CPV even affects your company’s ad rank, as it increases the likelihood of them not just appearing more than others but in a higher position compared to other ads.
7.) Bids on Impressions
Of course, the main mission of any site is to attract visitors through their advertisements. Establishing vCPM, or viewable cost per thousand, for viewing biddable expressions allows you to bid for your ad based on how it appears on the Google Display Network. You can set the maximum price you are willing to pay for viewable ads regardless if they are clicked or not. This makes sure you aren’t losing out on money or spending more than required. An ad is counted as “viewable” when 50 percent of your display or video ad shows on screen for one second or longer. For vCPM, you care about increasing brand awareness through views rather than clicks.
8.) Display Network Bidding Features
Google Ads allows you to set up bids on the Display Network in various ways for your campaign. In the ad auction, they use their bids to help you get the most value out of your ads. When your ad is ready to be revealed, Google Ads checks to see if you would like to utilize custom or default bids. Custom bids are enabled for a single targeting method. For instance, if you are looking for topics, Google Ads will use that bid for when ads on your site are related to that topic. On the other hand, default bids are required and put into place if you don’t have custom bids available. Further, you can use bid adjustments to increase or decrease your bid amount and control when your ads appear on your website.
9.) Display Network Ad Auction
The Display Network ad auction determines which ads will show, the order they will emerge, and how much those ads will cost. Your advertisements are ranked among other marketers’ ads according to how they performed or how much attention they captured. They are rated based on their max CPC bids and quality scores. Quality scores are the rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. If your quality score is better than the score of other advertisers, this means you could rank higher than they do, even if their bid is larger than yours. The Display Network ad auction is different from the typical Google Ads auction. You’ll pay what is required to rank higher than the next position, but only for incremental clicks you get from being in the current position.
10.) Keyword Planner
With Keyword Planner, you can search for keyword ideas for Search Network campaigns that are compatible and relevant to your company’s products, services, and target customers. It will highlight historical statistics, including search-volume data for keywords, so you can determine whether you would like to add them to your campaigns. You can refine your target results, customize them by data range, and filter them into an organized format. Not to mention, you can monitor seasonal trends and break down keyword ideas for multiple digital platforms, locations, and devices.
Kick-Start an Expert Google Ads Bidding Campaign
Master all of these strategies and tools, and your business’s Google Ads will be out in the spotlight, earning higher impressions, clicks, and conversions from quality leads who know what they want.
There are countless bidding techniques out there to make your ads the best they can be, but when you need a little help, LSEO’s paid media services team is there to help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation on how we can help your business grow in the paid advertising space.