Smart bidding has been around for a good amount of time now which hopefully means you’ve been able to play around with it on your accounts. Everyone always seems to jump to their largest search campaigns to test it out but there are some really creative ways to use these strategies across the funnel.
As a reminder, there are some recommendations and best practices to keep in mind when deciding to opt into these strategies. For a month in-depth summary, check out a previous post of mine that takes a closer look at smart bidding.
Specifics to Look At:
Automated bidding will not work just because you have to put it in the right environment for success. Some specific things I like to keep in mind when deciding on a strategy are as follows:
- Have we had at least 15 (but closer to 30) conversions in the last 30 days?
- What is our impression share and overall goal of the campaign? A low impression share means maximize conversions will likely work better.
Here are some unconventional ways you can start to think about using automated bidding.
Display Remarketing:
Since you’re already filtering things down to a qualified audience, you may have never thought about tapping into Google’s bidding features here. Let’s face it, you’re likely spending a lot less here too than going after new customers too.
Display can be a bit of a tricky area with weird placements, a pretty large variance in CPCs depending on the website, and a whole host of other things. By using either Target CPA or Maximize Conversions, Google should do a lot of the placement work for you and really go after the best customer at the end of the day.
You’ll want to ensure you’re not excluding quality traffic mistakenly but this could be a great option to extract some additional performance out of Display.
RLSA:
Similar to Display Remarketing, RLSA can be a great way to go after those people who continue to search for products. Let’s take a look at which strategy would work best before jumping in.
By using some of these strategies, you may be able to open up your keywords and target some pretty broad categories. You can then lean on Google to purposefully target people who are more likely to convert on your site. This may allow you to bring additional people into the buying process as they’re searching so you don’t miss out on them!
Top of Funnel Display Campaigns:
Display can be a tricky thing to get actual results from, especially if you’re asking customers to do something beyond a simple form fill. If you are seeing conversion volume, opting into Target CPA should provide some guidance to Google to go after the person behind the keyboard rather than just filling ad space.
I’ve had some really great successes being able to scale Display campaigns by passing over more control over to Google and having a conversion goal that is attainable.
Final Thoughts:
You’re not going to see success across the board by simply shifting to an automated bidding strategy. Ensure that you’re testing these in an environment that is conducive to a smart strategy (minimum number of conversions!).
By thinking outside of the box, you’ll be able to not only embrace these new options from Google in a cool way but continue pushing your accounts forward. Maybe you’ll save money that you can allocate elsewhere or scale a campaign you previously couldn’t. Over time, these changes add up and you’ll be on your pathway to success!
