Make Smarter Ad Campaigns with Automated Bidding
What’s the difference between manual bidding and automated bidding?
What is Smart Bidding and why is it important for my business?
How can I use the right strategies for Smart Bidding?
Good news for marketers: all the new ways to connect online means businesses have even more opportunities to reach customers.
It also means there are even more data signals you can gather from customers and use to inform exactly how you go about reaching them.
Want some examples? Let’s see what data signals can affect how you reach customers.
One thing that Google Ads users might do with customers’ data signals is use them to adjust their bids for ads.
The word bid refers to how much money you set in Google Ads as the amount you are willing to spend each time someone clicks your ad. A bid is just one of many elements that determines when and where your ad shows up for users.
But to manually adjust bids to match millions of unique data signals coming from customers – from what device they are using to when and where they are using it – would be difficult, if not impossible, for a human to do.
That’s why a lot of people choose to use automated bidding tools like Google Ads’ Smart Bidding, which uses machine learning to analyze signals and automatically adjust bids to an amount more likely to attract the right customer.
Of course, while Smart Bidding is fast and “smart,” you’re still the brains behind the operation, and the machine learning can get even more intelligent when you take the time to empower them with the right strategies and data.
Google Ads offers a variety of Smart Bidding strategies for different goals. The trick is to browse all the options available and find the right bid strategy for your needs.
Say you want to maximize conversions given a certain budget, and you don’t have a specific target like cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS): the Maximize Conversions strategy might be the right choice for you.
Or, if you don’t have budget constraints and your goal is to generate conversions like leads or signups, you might instead consider the Target CPA strategy.
Finally, if you don’t have any budget constraints, your campaign has already driven a certain amount of conversions, and your goal is to get a specific return on ad spend, you might pick the Target ROAS strategy.
If you decide on the Target CPA or Target ROAS strategy, you can choose realistic targets to set by looking at your average CPA or ROAS for the past 4 weeks.
After you’ve implemented your Smart Bidding strategy, you’ll need to let a proper waiting period pass before analyzing your strategy’s performance.
Usually the waiting period consists of a learning period plus conversion time lag. The learning period refers to how long Smart Bidding algorithms take to learn, usually 1-2 weeks, although it depends on how much conversion data is available.
Conversion time lag, meanwhile, refers to the average time it takes for a click to result in an online conversion.
To see how many days are left in your learning period, you can check your campaign’s bid strategy report. During this time, don’t make too many changes to your campaign.
Next, figure out your conversion time lag.
For search campaigns:
Go to Search attribution reports, set a 30-day window, and look at conversion lag from first click.
For display campaigns:
Set your date range to a 90-day window and segment your campaign-level conversion data by “days to conversions.”
Once your learning period is done, let your campaign run for a few weeks more.
Then figure out your standard lag time for conversions (the average time it takes for a click to result in an online conversion). That’s how long you need to wait to run your analysis.
One of the simplest ways to analyze your performance is by checking your bid strategy report to see if your campaign is meeting the CPA or ROAS target you’ve set.
By choosing Smart Bidding, you’ll have freed up a lot of time you would have used on manual bidding. Use that time to get more strategic about optimization.
For example, you might tweak your ad creative, improve your landing page, or design a better mobile shopping experience on your retail site. All these optimizations will help the Smart Bidding algorithm perform even better.
By prepping your campaign for success, choosing the right bid strategy, giving enough of a waiting period before analyzing your performance, and continuing to optimize, you can become a Smart Bidding master.
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Now that you know some Smart Bidding basics, let’s decide what strategy is best for helping you accomplish your goals.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
Smart Bidding uses machine learning to quickly analyze millions of signals and automatically adjust bids to an amount more likely to show up and successfully attract the right customer.
Google Ads offers a variety of Smart Bidding strategies for different goals - the trick is to browse all the options available and find the right bid strategy for your needs.
After you've implemented your Smart Bidding strategy and your learning period is done, let your campaign run for a few weeks more, then figure out your standard lag time for conversations to see how long you need to wait to run your analysis.