The talk of much of the recent Atria blog posts has been about conversions, the process of transforming potential customers into actual customers. When you make a sale, it’s possible that you have made a conversion, and AdWords wants to help you gain as many new customers as possible. This is why, in addition to its other automatic bidding strategies, it created the Enhanced Cost-per-click (ECPC) strategy to help you along.

What is Enhanced Cost-per-click?

Simply, ECPC takes the maximum cost-per-click bid – the setting in your AdWords account that controls the highest amount you’re willing to pay for a single click on your ad – and raises it as much as 30 percent. This automatic bidding strategy looks for ad auctions that AdWords expects will win you conversions, and it selects specific campaigns you have created to compete at a rate higher than they normally would. It remains picky in its auction selections to have your ads perform their best and to keep your wallet from running dry.

Why Should I Use This Strategy?

A representative of Google, Graham Stogden explains in his YouTube video the difference between the goals and uses of the Target Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) strategy and ECPC. The fundamental difference between the two, he notes, is that Target CPA focuses on gaining acquisitions by focusing on the cost you’re willing to spend per acquisition while ECPC dials down the knob to a focus on specific click costs. It’s basically a cost per customer versus a cost per a customer’s single click.

Although Stogden says Target CPA, which Atria wrote about last month, could be more effective in grabbing acquisitions, users may still want the control that ECPC affords them. Therefore, this strategy could be great for companies or individuals that want fine-grained control over their campaign costs.

How Should I Get Started?

Just like with Target CPA, you will need to enable conversion tracking in your AdWords account so it can determine how best to address potential auctions. You can learn how to set up AdWord tracking by following this link.

You will also need to enable manual CPC bidding in the Bid Strategy menu in your AdWords dashboard before checking the “Enable Enhanced CPC” option in that same menu.

You can also customize how you bid for conversions by changing how AdWords reports your conversions. In the Conversions -> Edit section of your dashboard, you can select “Include in ‘Conversions’” to tell AdWords, for instance, to bid on conversions defined as when a customer puts an item in a shopping cart or purchases an item online. You can also unclick any of the types of conversions you have set. You may include cross-device conversions as well.

For any assistance with these details or in trying to decide between Target CPA and ECPC, don’t hesitate to contact Atria for a consultation.