Choosing the right Google Ads bidding strategy and implementing an optimized strategy for adjusting bids is critical to driving your ad costs down.

There are currently seven different types of bidding strategies on Google Ads that you can use for a variety of goals. 

They are the following:

1. Manual Cost Per Click (CPC)
2. Target Cost Per Action( CPA)
3. Target Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
4. Maximize Clicks
5. Maximize Conversions
6. Maximize Conversion Value
7. Target Impression Share.

If you missed the first part of this guide, click here.  The first part of this guide covered Manual CPC, Target CPA, and Target Return On As Spend (ROAS) 

Aside from the Manual Cost Per Click bidding strategy, all the other bidding options are automated. As a quick refresher, if you are going to apply an automated bidding strategy to your campaigns, you must have conversion tracking enabled. If you don’t have conversion tracking set up, we created a simple tutorial in our last post to get you started.

2020 GOOGLE ADS BIDDING STRATEGIES TYPES PART (II)

Strategy #4 Maximize Clicks

With maximize clicks enabled, Google will capture as many clicks as possible while spending your daily budget.

 Choose this approach if you’re trying to drive more traffic to your site for branding and list building. Advertisers can place a max CPC limit to maintain a low CPC while Google spends the daily budget.

Some Key Tips:

Always set a max CPC and keep a close eye on your average max CPC as well. Google will operate to receive as many clicks as possible for your campaign, but it will also work hard to consume your entire daily budget each day, even if clicks are far more pricey than your typical costs. 

We consistently emphasized the importance of checking your account despite having an automated strategy to ensure it’s still meeting your goals. If you do not see any results from this approach, adjust your settings, or possibly look to a new bidding strategy.

Strategy #5 Maximize Conversions

Maximize conversions will try to spend your full budget daily, so if you’re currently spending much less than your budget, maximize conversions could increase spending significantly.

It’s crucial that each campaign using maximize conversions has a separate designated daily budget and is not part of a shared budget. If it is part of a shared budget, maximize conversions will spend the entire shared group’s daily budget, not just its allotment.

Some Key Tips:

Do not continue with this approach without having conversion tracking enabled. Google aims to maximize the quantity of tracked conversions, so if no tracking is enabled, the algorithm is more inclined to perform inadequate measurements to find a user that is prepared to convert.

Strategy #6 Maximize Conversion Value

Because maximize conversion value helps optimized your bids based on real-time data, and your existing bid adjustments are not in use. 

Maximize conversions automatically sets bids to help get the most conversions for your campaign while spending your budget. It uses advanced machine learning to optimize bids automatically and offers auction-time bidding capabilities that tailor bids for every auction.

We haven’t tested this form of bidding strategy, but according to Ad Taxi,

“Before testing Maximize Conversion bidding, make sure it’s a good fit for your business goals. You will need to have transaction-specific conversion value tracking in place or manually set values for the conversions you are optimizing toward from the Conversions tab in Google Ads. 

If you are already tracking revenue and your client is growth-oriented, Maximize Conversion Value is a good fit for your campaign. If your focus is on lead generation and CPA, this bid strategy can still be tested by setting values for your lead conversions.“

Strategy #7 Target Impression Share

Target impression share is a Smart Bidding strategy that automatically sets bids with the goal of showing your ad on the absolute top of the page, on the top of the page, or anywhere on the page of Google search results. 

Each of these will tell the Google algorithm different things about your preferences, and it will adjust bids accordingly.

Strategists can also place a max CPC bid with target impression share bidding to ensure that the campaign does not overspend. Still, Google cautions against setting a low CPC as it will affect this strategy.     

Key Tips

Like any other bidding strategy, this one can raise your bids exceeding your profitability level if left on auto-pilot. It is essential to keep a close eye on CPCs and performance outcomes to ensure this bidding strategy achieves your goals before continuing with this strategy. 

Conclusion

We advise that you start with a manual CPC strategy if you are entirely new to Google Ads. Once you get the hang of everything, you can begin experimenting with a few automated bidding strategies, but always remember to have that conversion tracking enabled! If you need help with your Google Ads account, please fill out the contact form on our contact page, and we will gladly assist you.