The very thought of managing bids in a PPC campaign is intimidating since there is no such straightforward answers available. We all follow certain patterns which are based on assumptions.
This is the reason why majority of Adwords marketers fumbles when they are asked some simple or not-so-simple questions like – “How many times you are going to tweak the bids?”, “Do you believe that first page bid estimates are accurate?”, “What if I use Google Automated bidding?” etc. Ask two PPC marketers and you are most likely to get two different answers. So, to make your task easier, here I am going to present some cool tips that may prove extremely helpful when you are trying to manage bids effectively, at least to some extent:
Change the Bids based on the Scale of your Project:
You would not have to buy a bid management system for a website that makes a small $10/lead with 50 leads in a month. Since the website is not making huge money, there is no point in making such huge investment. However, large sites with several thousands of leads can make such investment, as a small change in the bidding system can cause significant change in the whole marketing process. Preferably, a custom management system is what you need to manage bids for such large projects.
Stick to a Schedule:
You should not be tweaking the key metrics of your PPC campaign all the time. Depending on the number of clicks and conversions, you should create a schedule. Based on the schedule, you should pull the data from Adwords and then start making changes in the bid amount.
Do Not make Changes All The Time:
To make an informed decision on bidding, you need to look at the data available in Google Adwords. So, you should not be obsessed with the performance of the campaigns and start making changes in them every minute. If you are making changes in the bid all the time, you are simply not gathering enough information about these changes.
To be able to make the most informed decision, you should stop fiddling with the keywords and bids. Leave them for a day or two, so that they gather enough historical data. However, the time frame may vary depending on the campaign budget, match type, keywords bids and several other similar factors.
Keep Experimenting:
You should not stop making changes in the bids and other areas of a PPC campaign as you never know which might work for you. Fear of falling should not be bothering you otherwise you will be missing out on opportunities.
When Your Intervention is required:
You should not be overtly depends on automated bid management. There will be times when you need to make changes in the bid manually. For say, when your products are not available or when the sales volume starts gathering steam, your intervention is required. During seasonal time like the beginning of December, you may see that the bidding cost has started skyrocketing; and if you feel that bidding at such high rates is not longer an option, you should stop the campaign or make necessary changes to them so that you are not ripped apart.
Bid Sensibly:
It is not about being on the top because if the targeted keywords are not driving conversion, it will be just sheer wastage of money and efforts. So, do not increase the bid amount at the drop of a hat to be on the top in a given search query rather you should find the perfect Goldilocks position where rates are reasonable and conversion rate are impressive. It is all about finding the sweet spot and not spending your hard earned money, when it is not absolutely needed.
Enhanced CPC Bidding:
It is a part of an automated bid management feature that will help you see a steady spike in the ROI on your PPC campaign. This feature will automatically raise and reduce Max CPC bid based on the likelihood of your ad will convert. It does this complicated thing by checking the past conversions of the campaign along with other similar factors. Geographical locations of the users, queries, operating systems, browsers etc are some of these factors that are also taken into account in this process. So, you can give this a try if you wish to reduce the cost per conversion.
Bid Simulator:
This is another powerful feature integrated with Google Adwords. It lets you have a preview of the advertising results based on the Max CPC bid. You can find this tool right next to the bid amount in the Max CPC column.
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