Bid Stratgies

One popular question we receive at Amplify is: “I am creating a new campaign, which bid strategy should I use?“. Google Ads offers a wide variety bid strategies. Each strategy has its primary goals as well as prerequisites for implementing. An important piece to remember is that automated strategies require data in order to operate successfully. Keeping this in mind, if our goal is to run on an automated strategy like Max Conversions, we will want to make sure we have data first before implementing.

So What Should You Use?

A large majority of PPC users want to run their PPC campaigns on an automated strategy with an emphasis on conversions. However, all conversion based strategies will at least have the bare minimum requirement of historical data. Without historical data, these automated strategies do not know what search queries would indicate a higher likelihood of a conversion. Additionally, we may see prerequisites such as 15 conversions in the last 30 days. So… how do we solve this? Take a look at the two strategies below.

Strategy One:

Begin by operating on a Manual CPC strategy to help drive initial traffic to the campaign. Operate on this strategy for 14 days to compile a good sample size of data. After 14 days, switch to a max conversions strategy provided you are not concerned with the campaigns CPA. If you are CPA conscious, continue to operate on Manual CPC until you hit the prerequisite of 15 conversions in the last 30 days for Target CPA use.

Pro Tip: Make sure you continue to add in negative keywords using Google Ad’s Search Terms Report

Strategy Two:

Begin by operating on a Maximize Clicks strategy to help drive initial traffic to the campaign. Operate on this strategy for 21 days to compile a good sample size of data. After 21 days, switch to a max conversions strategy provided you are not concerned with the campaigns CPA. If you are CPA conscious, continue to operate on Manual CPC until you hit the prerequisite of 15 conversions in the last 30 days for Target CPA use.

Pro Tip: All Google Ad’s automated strategies go through a 14 day learning period. Major changes made to the PPC campaign during this period will reset the learning phase. Additionally, try to give a the strategy a full 21 days to learn and optimize. Adding negative keywords during this time period WILL NOT trigger the learning phase, so keep on adding negatives!