We all know that Google Ads are a taxing adventure. With daily optimizations, new test, tracking, and fine tuning campaigns there is a lot you need to do in an average day as a digital marketer. Leveraging technology in Google Ads is a great way to speed up your workflow. In today's blog we are going to go over automated bidding, which can help you effectively compete in Google Ads.
Automated Bidding
Automated bidding strategies will help out dramatically when it comes to bid management. They will also help you to reach your monthly KPI goals. Automated bidding is defined as a bid strategy that automatically sets up bids for your ads to increase your clicks to conversions. Below is a chart of strategies around automated bidding that Google has released to help you understand what each strategy is capable of doing for you.
Automated Bidding Concerns
This sounds like the perfect solution to a big pain point for digital marketers right? However, a lot of people are having a hard time giving control overbids in Google Ads.
Can AI Really Handle My Bidding?
Adjusting keyword bids manually in Google Ads is a long and tedious process. Reviewing your ad performance, keywords, and making the necessary adjustments can be a full time job on its own. Since this process is something that you often need an expert to work on to ensure great results, it can be difficult to just let a computer do it. Can you really expect a computer to achieve the same capacity and same results? As we talk about auto bidding more you will see that AI can, in fact, help implement bid adjustments just as effectively if far less time.
Automated Bidding Isn’t New
Many people think that automated bidding is a new feature, however Google Ads implemented this a long time ago. However they are just now getting recognition for it. Google Ads has had auto bidding since 2010 and over the past 10 years AI has been learning the algorithm behind automated bidding. With this accumulation of data and learning it is safe to say that automated bidding now has enough knowledge to make optimizations and drive results.
Can Automated Bidding Increase Conversions?
To make a long answer short, yes, automated bidding can help you increase your conversions. There are several strategies that you can use to do this. If you’re targeting impression shares, you improve your visibility. If you maximize clicks you can increase your website's traffic. However, these two strategies are not conversion based. The ones that are conversion based are: maximize conversions, maximize conversion value, enhanced cost per click (CPC), target ROAS and target CPA.
These strategies have been reoptimized and are continuously improving through machine learning to make them as strong as possible.
How is Smart Bidding Considered Smart
Google ads smart bidding optimizes for conversions in every auction. The machine learning behind algorithms uses this data on an immense scale and at lighting speed. It also focuses on any parameters it identifies, which are known as signals. Some of these parameters are: location, time of day, device, language, browser, operating system, demographic (for display), and product attributes (for shopping).
Should I Be Using Automated Bidding?
Depending on your business and how your campaigns are doing, automated bidding might, or might not work in your favor. Just like anything else it requires fine tuning in order to make things work. Certain prerequisites also mean that automated bidding might be right for you.
Compatible Businesses for Automated Bidding
If you have any of these prerequisites automated bidding should be something you consider:
You have conversion tracking in place
Campaigns aren’t limited by budget
Targeting isn’t narrow
Performance metrics aren’t too aggressive
You have good campaign structure with adequate ad groups
Businesses for Automated Bidding That Might Not Work
If you have any of these prerequisites, automated bidding might not work in your favor:
You don’t have conversion tracking
Your budget is limited
You have narrow targeting (demographics, locations, etc)
You expect immediate results.
Smart bidding/automated bidding takes time to be effective.
Automated Bidding Benefits
Now that we have more information regarding automated bidding and smart bidding strategies, we need to consider the best way to leverage them.
Hit New Growth & Goals
As a basic answer, automated bidding is designed to get you the best prospects possible to visit your landing pages. Some of these strategies will give you more traffic, while others will boost the quality of your traffic. By using these bidding strategies you will be able to identify and capitalize on opportunities you might not have been aware of, giving you a great return on your investment.
Improve Your Optimization Score
Optimization scores are how well your Google Ads account is set up to perform. If you have 100% in your optimization score your account is fully running, so it is a valuable metric to track. Google Ads give recommendations to your account and campaigns to help boost your optimization score. Since automated bidding strategies help the performance of your campaigns, applying these strategies will improve your optimization score. This, in turn, will make your account function more efficiently.
Time Saver
Giving up your manual bidding will get you back hours to work on other tasks and responsibilities in your accounts. Automated bidding has the potential to make countless hours of data, and metrics to try and predict the right decisions for bid optimization, a thing of the past.
Being able to have time to capitalize on other areas, like search queries, ad copy improvements, landing page testing, new campaigns, and better tracking can be a huge advantage in your business. If you don’t have the man hours to tackle these other tasks, Google’s Smart Bidding and automated bidding strategies can be leveraged to help you reach these goals. Just remember, it isn’t a perfect fit for everyone and it can take some time to get results. Hopefully this time saver can be a great use to you.