There are different bid strategies in a Google Search campaign. What are the differences and what should you choose? We will break down each bidding method and give some tips on how to choose the right one for your goals.
- Maximize Clicks: Maximize Clicks is just like it sounds, Google will try and get as many clicks as they can within your target budget. This means that they are trying to get the cheapest clicks and therefore might not be getting the highest quality clicks.
- Maximize Conversions: Maximize conversions means that Google is going to try and make sure that the clicks that you get convert. Google is serving your ads by a mixture of which ad is getting the best click through rate AND best conversion rate, in that order. It will try and serve ads that convert more often.
- Target CPA: Google tries to serve ads that meet your Cost Per Acquisition goal, by serving ads that convert, and throttling ads that don’t convert. The main difference between Target CPA vs Maximize conversions is Google will throttle the campaign if it is not converting, with Target CPA, whereas with Maximize conversions Google will spend until it converts or hits your budget.
- Target ROAS: Target Roas and Target CPA perform just about the same, but you have to be passing through a revenue figure when people convert in order to use this bidding method effectively.
- Manual CPC: This takes all of the beauty out of Google’s bidding algorithm. When you set the bid to a static number, you can’t go up and down depending on the search. Some searches are more valuable than others and you can’t go up and down to fit the value of the search when using Manual CPC. There are some cases where you would use a Manual CPC method, for instance branded campaigns often utilize this to reach impression share goals.
- Target Search Page Location: All Target Search Page Location does is try to bid high enough to put you in the closest position to what you put in. This may mean higher CTRs this may mean lower costs, but it is only recommended if you have lots of prior data to show in what position your ads perform best.
- Enhanced CPC: When bidding on clicks and conversions Google will combine the two and bid based upon a mixture of CPC and Maximize Conversions with Enhanced CPC.
- Target Outranking Share: This method will try to outrank your competitors and should only be used to do so.
