When it comes to digital marketing, Google Ads are one of the best ways to boost your business. With 8.5 billion searches a day, there’s no reason not to use Google Ads. Besides, many eCommerce platforms like Shoplazza and Shopify integrate with Google and allow store owners to manage ads in a seamless manner.
However, for your ads to be profitable, you need to know about automated bidding strategies and how to use them.
But what is it exactly, and how can automated bidding help an advertiser? All of this and more will be discussed in this article.
What is Google Ads Automated Bidding Strategy?
The best way to understand Google ad bidding is to think of it as an auction. However, instead of naming your price for an art piece, you’re telling Google how much you are willing to spend per click. And usually, the more you’re willing to pay, the more exposure your ad will get.
Also, there are two main types of bidding:
- Automated bidding
- Manual bidding
And from the explanation above, you might already understand their differences:
- With manual bidding, you type out the bid yourself.
- But with automated bidding, it’s all done by Google! The AI uses machine learning and data processing to find the most cost-effective bid.
Is Smart Bidding the Same as Automated Bidding?
However, when talking about automated bidding strategies, you often hear about Smart Bidding. You might be wondering if it’s the same thing.
The short answer is no!
While they might sound similar, they are different from each other.
That’s because smart bidding is a subsection of Automated Bidding strategies. With Smart Bidding strategies, your main goal is to increase your conversions. And while this could also be the goal of an Automated Bid strategy, there are more to choose from. These include:
- Brand Awareness
- Getting Clicks
- Getting Leads, etc.
How Can Automated Bidding Benefit Advertisers
Now that you understand what Automated Bidding is and how it’s different from manual and smart bidding, it’s time to talk about the many benefits you’ll reap! Here are just six of them:
#1 - Save Time Managing Campaigns
The core benefit of Google Ads' Automated Bidding is that you can save time managing your ad campaigns. You no longer need to check your ad performance and constantly change your bids.
Instead, Google takes care of all that, leaving you with daily monitoring only. Then, with the freed-up time, you can plan out the digital marketing strategy that will help you make a strategic move for your next ad campaign.
#2 - Get Access to More Data
It doesn’t matter how much market research you do daily; Google will always have more data about your customers and competitors. Instead of solely relying on your team’s research, you can take advantage of Google’s massive data collection.
With this, you could learn more about your current market you wouldn’t have known otherwise. For example, with Google, you can learn about:
- Your Customer’s Preferred Device
- What Operating System They Use
- When the time of day they’re browsing
- And so much more.
And not to mention the fact that you could find new markets to sell to.
#3 - Accurate Prediction Models
One of the problems with manual bidding strategies is that it’s prone to human error. That makes it harder for you and your marketing team to make wise decisions.
But with Automated Bidding strategies, that’s the exact opposite. Thanks to its advanced machine learning algorithms, Google helps you make more accurate projections about your campaigns, leading to smarter decision-making.
#4 - Fill in the Skill Gaps Of Your Teams
It’s no surprise that marketing is a difficult job to do. It’s a blend of extensive research, analysis, storytelling, and content creation. When your marketing team is more storytelling-centric, then it might be a bit difficult to perform as well. And that’s where Google comes to help.
With it, you can leave the match and research mainly to Google, which frees up your time to do what your team does best-storytelling and content creation.
However, some might argue that doing this will not work, as Google might not know your business well, or you’ll lose a lot of control. While that might be true to some extent, you shouldn’t let this be your justification for not using Automated Bidding strategies.
That’s because even the best marketers make mistakes, it’s best to leave this to the machines.
#5 - Find new Opportunities
As briefly mentioned above, getting access to Google’s massive data pool can help you find new markets to sell to. However, it doesn’t end there.
For example, you could uncover new keywords you might not have thought of during your research process. That’s all thanks to machine learning and the algorithm for constantly searching for keywords with low CPC, high conversions, and low competition that help reduce your cost per acquisition.
#6 - Easily Create a Negative Keyword List
In Google Ads, keywords are king! You can choose exactly who to target with them, which helps you get the correct audience in your online store. However, in addition to targeting your ideal clients, you also want to create a negative keyword list.
With this, you can eliminate your ads being shown in front of people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer. And that will reduce your CPC costs and give you better quality traffic in return.
It’s best to use Automated Bidding strategies. With it, you’ll know precisely which keywords to include and which to avoid.
When Should You Use Automated Bidding?
There are many benefits to using Automated Bidding strategies. However, if you’re an intelligent advertiser, you know there’s a time and place for both bidding strategies.
Manual Vs. Automated Bidding Strategies
To understand when to use Automated Bidding strategies, we should first understand the benefits and cons of both bidding strategies. That way, we can choose the correct one and be more profitable. Let’s start with manual bidding pros:
- Better with Smaller Budgets: Manual bidding is best used when you have a limited budget. This way, you have more control over how much you spend per day.
- More Control Over Your Campaigns: In addition to being more budget-friendly, you’ll also have more control over your ads. With it, you can make instant changes that could boost your ad performance drastically.
- Better Knowledge of Your Market: Since you’re doing things manually, you’re bound to find out something about your market. That could include which keywords they use more often and how much bigger your average bid needs to be to stay competitive.
However, all of that comes with a massive con. Since you’re doing the bidding manually, you will need to plan more time for it. That’s because you’ll need to check and adjust your bidding accordingly constantly.
Besides, it becomes more challenging to keep your ads performing well as your campaigns get bigger. That’s because you’ll have to do more work, which could lead to human error.
But at the same time, manual bidding is the best way to learn about your audience and the dashboard when starting. If you’re a beginner, use manual bidding first.
Before Launching Your First Ad Campaign With Automated Bidding…
From the previous section, you learned that manual bidding is best for ad campaigns with low budgets and beginners. However, before you launch your first ad with Automated Bidding strategies, you need to make sure you have met a couple of conditions:
- First, you should have a clear understanding of who your customer is. This way, you can give Google the necessary information for it to find the correct audience and target them.
- Then, you should also know the acquisition costs of a customer. This way, you can start TCPA (Target Cost Per Acquisition) bidding strategies that help you acquire customers most cost-effectively.
- And lastly, you should have enough data for Google to work with. For this, we recommend you have data worth at least 30 conversions within a month.
Once you meet these conditions, you can start using Smart Bidding strategies.
Conclusion
Automated Bidding strategies are fantastic for any marketing team. You can save a lot of time and see your business skyrocket, even if it’s relatively new.
To recap, Automated Bidding strategies help you improve if:
- You’ve got a mid-to-high budget.
- You’ve got data worth at least 30 conversions within a month.
- And you understand your market.
In other circumstances, it’s best to stick with manual bidding strategies.
(Contributed by Andreas Ojala & Hermes Fang)
Comments / 0