Almost 80% of companies are focusing on creating strategies from Google Ads. If you haven’t started to create a PPC campaign, you are behind the times. Without an optimized strategy for PPC, you are missing out on needed leads and conversions for your company. In order to have a successful PPC campaign, you need to have a PPC bid management strategy. This strategy (Google Ads Bid Management) will allow you to drive your campaign forward to greater success.
In this article, you will learn what PPC bid management is, how to set your bid amount, and the factors to consider when you are optimizing your bid.
What Exactly is Bid Management for PPC?
We want to start off by explaining what PPC bid management is. Basically, it is the process of raising and lowering the bids of your keywords to get as much from your Google Ads budget as you can. This strategy results in how your Google Ads appear in the results of a search; the bid impacts how much you pay for each click on the ad.
To get the most out of whatever your budget may be, it is important to practice bid management for PPC. This will help you customize your campaign to keep the results driving high consistently. It helps you choose amounts that will work best for the campaign, resulting in more success for your business.
There are a few key terms you need to be aware of before you can start managing your bids for PPC.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
CPC is one of the more common acronyms that you will encounter when you are refining your PPC campaign. It is the maximum bid for a specific keyword that you are willing to pay. When your ad is clicked on by a user, you pay that set amount.
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
CPA is the amount you pay per conversion. With CPA, you are either going to specify a max amount or a target amount for each ad group. It is basically dependent on how much is spent by your business to obtain new customers.
CPM (Cost Per Mille)
Cost Per Mille, or CPM, is a bid model that is the cost per thousand impressions. Basically, your business is going to pay for every thousand people that see your ad. You aren’t paying for the clicks, but instead, when your ad makes an appearance in search results.
Quality Score
Quality score is a grade that is given by Google based on the relevancy of the ad and keywords (as well as other factors). The placement in search results of your ad is dependent on this score.
These four terms are important, and you will encounter them when you are designing your PPC ad campaign. Make sure you study these terms and learn about them in detail so you can have a more efficient PPC campaign.
Maximizing Return By Setting Your PPC Bid Amount
Now that we have given you a little bit of insight as to what PPC bid management is, let’s talk about setting the PPC bid amount. If you haven’t set a PPC bid amount before, you may be in the dark on how to do it. So, for the best results, let’s set your bid amount.
Research Tools for Keywords
The first thing you want to do is to discover the right keywords for the campaign you plan on running. Keyword research tools help you find the keywords that are relevant to your industry. You can find a free keyword planner tool on Google Ads. This planner tool helps you to identify relevant keywords. However, there are various other options for your business.
With these tools, you are able to gather new keywords to use in your campaign. You are probably wondering, “What do these keyword tools have to do with setting my bid amount?” Well, when you use these tools, you can get suggested bid amounts for each keyword and keyphrase. This will give you a bit of an idea of how much you should expect to pay for these keywords. All in all, it helps you optimize your campaign’s strategy.
With these keywords, you have the chance to reach relevant leads.
Bid Management Goals
If you want to be able to measure the success of your campaign, you must have goals set for the bid management strategy you are designing. Here are some goals you should set:
- Increasing Traffic By Driving Clicks for your Website
- Driving impressions for Brand Exposure
- Driving Conversions by Increasing Sales & Leads
The above-mentioned goals are only a few that you can aim for on your PPC campaign. Goals give you an idea of what you want to achieve while offering a chance to measure actual results. However, there is more to it than just setting goals.
You want to select the strategy you want to use for bid management. With Google Ads, you will find several ad Management options that you can use for your business. Let’s look at these options.
- Target CPA- Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) will allow you to identify exactly how much you are wanting to spend to make an action. For example, you may want someone to sign up for an e-mail list through the PPC ad you put out there. You can decide that the ad is worth $20. With this number in mind, you are able to set the PPC bid accordingly.
- Manual CPC- With manual CPC (Cost-per-click), you can set a maximum amount that you are willing to pay every time an ad is clicked by someone. You pick an amount to set that is comfortable for your business and never pay out more than that set amount.
- Conversions- Maximize conversions will focus on optimizing the bid strategy you are using to help earn as many conversions as possible. Google works with the budget you set in order to aid your campaign’s focus to be on obtaining even more conversions.
- Target ROAS- Target return on assets (ROAS) specifies the type of return you want from ads. This is commonly used by e-commerce businesses. You get to establish what you are expecting to get from ad spend.
- Target Search Page Location- This is an ad management option; it is used to target the search page location. In this situation, Google helps optimize the bids you make to get a specifically placed ad to rank. If you want to position your ad in a certain place on search results, this is the ideal option.
- Maximize Clicks- You can adjust your ad management option for maximizing clicks. Google will make changes to the campaign to help you get as many possible clicks as they can. This all happens within your budget, so you can earn as much as possible.
- Enhanced CPC- If you want to reach more valuable leads by maximizing your budget, enhanced CPC is ideal. It allows you to move your bid down or up to optimize conversions.
- Target Outranking Share- With this, Google lets you choose how often you want to have a higher rank than your competitors. Like other options, it stays within budget. You get to pick and choose when is the best time to outrank the competition.
Important Note: If you want to have complete control of the bidding amounts, you want to use Manual CPC. It is the only option that allows it. The other options are automated or smart bidding options. With the above-listed PPC bid management options, your ideal CPC is calculated by Google’s algorithm.
Research Amounts
Lastly, before finalizing the bid amount, you must do some research. You want to research the average bid amount for each keyword you have decided on. You don’t want to bid too high or too low. You can also research similar keywords. Compare them to see the difference in bid amounts. If you focus on specific keywords, while it will give you a lower bid amount, you will also receive less traffic. What traffic you do get will be qualified, however.
When you research bid amounts, you are ensuring that you are bidding on the right keywords that are relevant to your campaign. You want to make sure what you are bidding for is appropriate.
PPC Bid Management Factors You Have to Keep in Mind
When you are managing your PPC bid amount, it can be difficult to determine where to set the bid amount that would be best for the campaign you are running. You want to get as much from your campaign as you can, but spending too much to get conversions or leads can be bad.
Here are a few important factors that you should consider when you set the PPC bid for your campaign:
Keyword CPC Average
When you are working with Google Ads Bid Management, one important factor is the CPC average of the selected keywords. Depending on the level of competition and volume of the keyword, there will be different costs for them.
You will have to place a higher bid for keywords with more competition. All your industry rivals will be going for the same keywords. If you want to remain in the bidding war, you’ll have to adjust accordingly to the bid amount.
Another beneficial opportunity you can have is seeing the frequency of a keyword’s search history. With a keyword that has a high volume of traffic, you will have to bid more. The CPC for lower volume keywords tends to be cheaper too. The lower volume keywords may be more qualified to bring in leads for the business. So, invest in these keywords over the highly competitive ones. The average CPC of any keyword can make a big difference in advertising campaigns. It is important to know that average.
ROI
ROI (Return on investment) is crucial to your campaign. With a Google Ads campaign, the main goal is getting an ROI. You have to determine what you wish to get in return from the campaign; that is the only way you will succeed with it.
Set the projected ROI first, then you have an idea of what you should expect to be returned from the campaign. Make sure you are taking into account the cost of your service/product and the amount it will cost you to reach out to leads with advertisements.
You are able to shape your campaign to better reach out to your audience with a set expected ROI. You also have Google Ads to help you meet your goals with the campaign you create with them.
Budget
Your budget is something you need to be mindful of when you run an ad campaign. It will determine how to run the campaign, as well as what you can afford.
If your budget is smaller, then bidding for competitive keywords may hurt you. It could drain your budget faster than you get the qualified leads you need. With less competitive keywords, you are bidding less and possibly getting more leads.
You have to know your budget to have successful PPC bid management. Work with the budget and make it stretch the best you can for maximum results.
