Part of the effectiveness of what Adwords brings to the table is its ability to automate. Its tools such as the Keyword Planner and Display Planner help make campaigns easier by offering suggestions about how best you can move forward with campaigns.
Beyond the pure creation of your ads and the keywords used to give them life in Google searches, you must also consider bidding costs. Another useful tool in your Adwords arsenal is its built-in ability to automate bids. By simply navigating to the “Campaigns” tab in your dashboard and clicking on the campaign you want to edit, you can scroll to the “Bid strategy” section and select from a number of bid strategies that Adwords will manage for you.
Bid Strategies
A number of automated bid strategies exist within Adwords. If you want to increase visits to your website, it will be best to choose the Maximize Clicks option. This method of bidding works within a set budget to earn you the highest number of clicks. You can set the cost-per-click for any keyword and the target spend you wish to allocate for the period a campaign will run.
The bid strategy Target Search Page Location will try to increase your chances of appearing at the top of all search results. It can adjust your cost-per-click to keep your exposure on the front page of Google as much as possible. Similarly, you can choose specific domains you want to beat, and the Target Outranking Share strategy will focus on adjusting your bid prices to outrank your stated opponents.
Another way of being more specific with bid prices is by targeting customers with the Target CPA (cost-per-acquisition) strategy. Here, you can tell Adwords to maximize your campaign’s effectiveness for creating conversions – the switch from prospective to active customers. For this, however, you will need to use Adwords to track your previous conversions so it has a baseline to work from. The Enhanced Cost-per-click strategy also works to maximize conversions, but it uses your manual keyword bids as a primary component.
Finally, the Target Return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) strategy tries to maximize your conversions by working with a return-on-ad-spend level that you set.
Pick Your Flavor
Which strategy will you want to use? Generally, the answer to that question will depend on your goals. The brief explanations above show that you can maximize the use of your dollar in a number of ways and that you can even target specific opponents. In subsequent weeks, Atria will talk about each of these strategies in depth and how you can best utilize them.
In the meantime, you should think about the goals you want to achieve for your specific campaigns. Atria is always ready for a consultation to help along the way and the leader in SEO & PPC management.