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Digital marketing provides businesses with a wide range of tools to reach a targeted audience and maximize leads from potential new customers. Among these tools, Google Ads‘ Smart Bidding represents one of the most potent solutions.
The PPC campaigns carried out for one of our clients demonstrated how Smart Bidding strategies, combined with meticulous Web Analytics efforts to ensure data quality, can increase valuable leads and optimize investment.
Google Ads Smart Bidding: Definition
The term “Smart Bidding” refers to Google Ads’ automatic bidding strategies aimed at optimizing conversions or conversion value. Unlike manual strategies where advertisers must manually update bids (such as manual CPC), Smart Bidding utilizes machine learning to adapt bids during each individual auction based on the objectives set by the advertiser, such as increasing conversions or achieving a specific ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
In setting bids, Smart Bidding strategies also rely on a range of indicators, including user location, device, time of day and day of the week, language, browser, and more. The ability to analyze a vast amount of data and adjust bids in real-time provides a significant competitive advantage, capable of maximizing the ROI of PPC campaigns.
Primary Smart Bidding Strategies
The Smart Bidding strategies available in Google Ads include:
- Maximize Conversions: Sets bids to maximize the number of conversions within the available budget.
- Target CPA: Sets bids to achieve the maximum number of conversions at the advertiser’s target Cost Per Action (CPA).
- Maximize Conversion Value: Sets bids to maximize the total campaign conversion value within the available budget (Note: Conversion values must have been associated with the conversions at the time of setting up tracking).
- Target ROAS: Sets bids to achieve the target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as defined by the advertiser.
Google Ads also offers other automated bidding strategies with objectives not tied to conversions but rather website visits or visibility:
- Maximize Clicks: Sets bids to achieve the maximum number of clicks within the available budget.
- Target Impression Share: Sets bids so that ads are displayed in Google search results (at the top or anywhere on the page) at a specific frequency.
Smart Bidding to Increase Leads: A Case Study
Selecting the most suitable bidding strategies and working with the available data volume was crucial in helping us increase the number of leads (forms, calls, emails) for a client specializing in domestic water purification systems.
We applied a precise strategy with the goal of boosting available data and enabling machine learning to effectively optimize bids based on the objectives.
Step 1 – Manual CPC to Gather Data
We designed a custom landing page with a highly enticing offer for the user. However, given the limited budget, product price, and high competition, we knew that conversion volumes wouldn’t be sufficient to immediately utilize Smart Bidding.
For this reason, we launched the campaigns using the manual CPC bidding strategy to begin collecting data that would be useful for Smart Bidding later.
Step 2 – Monitoring “Micro-Conversions”
To increase the number of conversions available for machine learning, we implemented tracking for “micro-conversions,” which are actions less significant than contacts but still indicate user interest (e.g., brochure downloads, page engagement). During implementation, however, we assigned these “micro-conversions” a much lower value compared to Contact-type conversions to indicate the different levels of importance of the monitored actions.
Step 3 – Maximize Conversions
Increasing the total number of recorded conversions allowed us to have sufficient data to transition to the “Maximize Conversions” strategy and begin utilizing Google Ads’ Smart Bidding.
The applied strategy began optimizing bids to achieve the maximum number of conversions within the available budget. This further increased the conversion volume and provided Google Ads with enough data to understand which factors contributed to generating higher-valued actions (contacts).
Step 4 – Maximize Conversion Value (with Target ROAS)
Once a solid data foundation was built, we switched to the “Maximize Conversion Value” strategy with a target ROAS. Since it wasn’t an e-commerce scenario, we hypothesized the value generated by the number of form submissions/contacts we aimed to achieve and calculated the desired ROAS. The new bidding strategy then prioritized Contact-type conversions, which we had assigned higher values to.
The Results of Smart Bidding
The outcome of the strategy? The number of Contact-type conversions immediately increased by 71% compared to the average of previous months, with the same budget investment.
Do you want to increase leads for your business too?
Learn more about our Google Ads campaign management service or contact our agency to request a consultation with our specialists.
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