Which Bidding Strategy To Choose On Google Ads?

The Google Ads advertising tool is based on an auction system, which means that it puts the players on its platform in competition. To obtain good performance, you will therefore have to stand out from your competitors, and this through 3 elements: either by the price paid per click, or by the relevance of your keywords or by the quality score of your ads.

Choosing a bidding strategy is one of the key elements of a Google Ads campaign. Indeed, depending on the brand’s objectives, choosing the right auction strategy will allow the desired results to be achieved more efficiently and at a lower budget.

Related: Bid Shading

The first step: determine your goals

First of all you will have to take a step back to determine the objective of your campaign, it can be:

• To  generate traffic  to your website
• To  solicit the conversion  of site visitors (an action that visitors could make on your website. Example: a purchase) – Improve your notoriety  with your target

Choose a bidding strategy according to your level of mastery of the platform

The level of knowledge of the Google Ads platform (formerly called Google Adwords) will be an additional element to take into account in this choice. Indeed, some auction strategies turn out to be  more complex than others to understand and implement. There are including manual bidding strategies and automated bid strategies or Google engine will itself cost optimization with its algorithm.

Manual bidding strategies

Manual CPC auctions

CPC bids are based on the cost the advertiser is willing to pay for a click on their ad. Here, the advertiser determines through the max CPC (Maximum Cost Per Click) up to how much he is willing to pay for a click on his advertisement. However, depending on the vagaries of the competition , the max CPC set today may not allow it to position itself at the top of the page tomorrow. This is why this strategy requires frequent monitoring of campaign performance and therefore a human resource present.

Smart bidding strategies

Maximize clicks

This bidding strategy, as the name suggests, is perfect if you want to get a  lot of clicks  on your ad for the  best price . This will allow the advertiser to  create traffic on his site at a lower cost.

On the other hand, as Google Ads will get the cheapest clicks, this  traffic will certainly be less qualified  than in the other strategies.

Maximize conversions

The objective of this strategy is to attract as many visitors as possible who will  convert to the site . To achieve this, the algorithm will  analyze the keywords  with the best conversion rates and  increase the bids  on them. However, this system must collect a certain  volume of data  before it is really  efficient, which  is why it may be  unsuitable  for small campaigns or it may  take time to be efficient (and therefore be expensive over time).

Cost-per-acquisition bidding strategies: target CPA

The “Target CPA” (Target Cost Per Acquisition) strategy is an extension of the “Maximize Conversions” auction strategy and seeks to stabilize the cost of conversion. The target CPA is the cost targeted by the advertiser in order to generate this action . Example: the advertiser wants each new subscriber to his newsletter to return to a maximum of € 3 and will therefore give this information to Google so that it generates as much of this action as possible within the overall budget allocated .

Bidding strategies taking into account the return on advertising spend: target ROAS

This strategy is particularly suited to the e-commerce sector, in fact the system must be able to bring up the conversion value of the shares (example: purchase of the object X which will generate Y €). If you have the soul of a manager and return on investment  is an indicator that you obsess over, this strategy is for you. Indeed, you will define the amount that the campaign should bring you for each euro invested. This way, if the ROA you set is realistic and works, you can be sure that  every euro invested will pay off . This can allow you to see the advertising tool as an  investment  rather than an expense item and therefore generate profits with certainty.

Target location on search page

The objective of this bidding strategy is to make your ad appear  at the top  of the SERP page . The logic here is to guarantee your ad  maximum visibility  and therefore clicks. Be careful, however, this strategy can be  expensive  because it is directly subject to the vagaries of  competition . In this case, optimizing the quality score of  its campaigns can be a source of savings for this strategy.

In summary

The bidding strategy is the keystone of controlling the budget of your Google Ads campaigns. However, as a novice it can be difficult to understand the workings and even more to put them in place. If today Google Ads represents a large part of your traffic or if you want to acquire your leads through this, get support from a  Google Ads specialist , this will undoubtedly allow you to save money and optimize the performance of your campaigns.