Many time-stretched businesses utilise Adwords automated bidding to maximise the reach of an advertising campaign without the need for real-time input. There are critics of the system, however, who question its success in terms of control and management. To combat this and optimise clicks for a fixed budget, Google has announced a welcome improvement to Adwords automated bidding with a system overhaul.
What does this improvement look like?
There are two main areas of improvement: name changes and updates to functionality. “Flexible’ strategies will now be known as “portfolio” bid strategies. This has been implemented to demonstrate that a single strategy can be used by businesses across more than one campaign, ad group and set of keywords. A single campaign strategy is now referred to as a “standard” bid strategy. Target cost-per-acquisition replaces Conversion Optimizer but can still be used either for a single or portfolio strategy.
In terms of workflow, the update has allowed Target CPA to have different goals for ad groups within a portfolio so businesses can highlight significant keywords over others. Managers, meanwhile, are now able to use the Campaigns Settings tab to create or add to a bidding strategy.
Implementing the new system
Portfolio bid strategies group together multiple campaigns, ad groups and keywords so that businesses can streamline a single approach to achieve fixed goals. Google recommends some best practices to get the most out of your automated bidding system, such as setting bid adjustments to control when and where your ad shows and utilising custom ad scheduling to limit your strategy to specific times.
Saving money with this new system might be high on your list of priorities. Search Engine Watch suggests opting out of Enhanced CPC so that your bids aren’t automatically raised when a conversion seems more likely and utilising location reports to monitor click costs in different places in order to safeguard your Adwords budget. To save your business precious time, you can enlist the services of digital marketing experts, such as the website designer in Cheltenham http://www.16i.co.uk/, to manage your pay per click advertising.
As a balance to the update, Adwords has also added new reporting features that measure strategy performance over time and help businesses work out how long to wait before making significant alterations to their strategies.