Choosing the right bidding strategy for your Google Ads campaigns is a crucial decision!

Does your current bidding strategy align with your marketing goals?

Are you missing out on ad impressions because keyword bids are set too low?

Are you missing out on clicks because your cost per click (CPC) is too high?

These are all questions that should be explored, and your bidding strategy is a great place to start.

There are use cases for every bidding strategy available in Google Ads, but manual bidding should be the exception, not the rule.

For more information about bidding strategies, and a comprehensive list of other simple but necessary Google Ads optimizations, sign up to receive our Ultimate Google Ads Checklist.

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Video Transcription

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hey this is Riley with Main Street ROI
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and today I just wanted to talk about
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one of the biggest mistakes that I see
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when auditing accounts and it has to do
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with bidding strategies so bidding
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strategies are set at the campaign level
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and these bidding strategies indicate to
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Google what the goal is here so is it to
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maximize the number of clicks that
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you’re getting or get as many
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conversions as you can you know what is
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the what is the goal here for this
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campaign the mistake that I see is that
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a lot of campaigns are using manual CPC
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or enhanced CPC bidding
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now this is something that used to be a
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best practice and we used to really try
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to be very careful about what keyword
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bids were set to and so you would go to
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the the keywords tab here and you would
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set very specific bids for individual
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keywords and say you know I’m willing to
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pay four dollars a click for this
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keyword and not a penny more or three
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dollars for that one that would be
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manual CPC enhanced CPC does allow for
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some wiggle room but both of those
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together
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suggest that you know you’re really
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optimizing for the cost for each click
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which suggests that the only meaningful
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criteria for whether or not this is a
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valuable click is how much you paid for
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it and nowadays with automated bidding
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there are just other options so for
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example with something like maximize
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conversions bidding
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Google will take into consideration what
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are called contextual signals so where
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was the the user physically located
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relative to the business when they did
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that search what device were they on
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what does their search interests look
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like you know are they more likely to
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convert in which case Google will
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increase the bid or are they less likely
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in which case Google will decrease the
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bid so that’s really the benefit of like
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in this case a maximize strategy and
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generally speaking the the lead gen
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accounts that I work on
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I generally go with a maximized bidding
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strategy because it’s ultimately going
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to get them more conversions which is
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what they want they want form
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submissions and phone calls and Max
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conversions is a good way to do that
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a quick word of warning though is uh if
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you do
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opt in to maximize conversions and you
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change campaigns to that bidding
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strategy very quickly you’ll probably
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get a recommendation here in the
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recommendations tab to add what’s called
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a Target CPA
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and what that is is Google’s trying to
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get you to add a a number a dollar value
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for you know we we understand you want
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to maximize conversions but is there a
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particular cost that you’d like to get
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those conversions at so if for example
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ten dollars per conversion was an
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attractive amount to pay for each
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conversion then I could add a Target CPA
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to uh you know my campaign bidding
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strategy and so that would change the
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bidding strategy to maximize conversions
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with the target CPA the problem with
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that is that the way maximize bidding
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strategies work is you set your average
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daily budget for the campaign and you’re
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on Max conversions and so you tell
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Google okay here’s my budget get me as
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many conversions as you can within that
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budget
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that differs from Target CPA bidding in
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that if you say Okay Max conversions if
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they’re ten dollars
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then that tells Google okay if there are
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conversions for ten dollars get me all
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of them and what ends up happening is
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that
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um oftentimes you know small accounts
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that add a Target CPA to their campaigns
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will be limited by budget like right
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away and then Google will hit them with
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a recommendation that they like triple
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their budget
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um because oftentimes you know small
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business owners small accounts they
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don’t have very large budgets and so you
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know they’re not gonna they’re not gonna
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be able to just triple their budget
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um
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so that’s why you know I typically
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recommend not adding a Target CPA if you
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decide to go with Max conversions
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there’s a lot more about bidding
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strategies I could go into but I think
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that pretty much covers the big mistake
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just don’t use manual CPC bidding in
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2023 and um of course if you have any
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questions about bidding strategies or
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anything else please reach out to us and
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I’ll see you guys the next tip
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