Competitor Bidding: Yay or Nay?

Competitor bidding in paid search: yea or nay?

It depends!

🛑 My initial answer is usually nay, because most advertisers aren’t ready to bid on competitor names.

Competitor bidding can be expensive:
✳ Keywords automatically get low quality scores, pushing CPCs up.
✳ Conversion rates tend to be low – after all, the user was searching for someone who isn’t you.
✳ Competitor keywords can eat up your entire paid search budget!
✳ Close variants mean you might match to other competitors or even your own brand terms 😲

Here’s how to do it successfully:
✳ Set aside a dedicated budget for competitor bidding, separate from your main budget. Look at it as a test. Set reasonable ROAS metrics that are likely worse than your regular search campaigns.
✳ Create a landing page that shows why you’re better than the competition. Name names. It’s critical to be bold here – if you don’t want to name your competitor on your landing page, you’re not ready to bid on their keywords.
✳ Use keywords like “cancel [competitor]”, “alternatives to [competitor]”, and other variants that indicate the user is looking to make a switch. These can be high-converting keywords.
✳ Monitor search queries daily. Relentlessly add negatives to keep things tight. This is going to be even more of a game of whack-a-mole than your regular SQR work, so dedicate yourself to it.

I’d love to hear how you handle competitor bidding!

Originally posted on LinkedIn on January 16, 2024

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Keys to B2B PPC

This week’s #PPCChat on February 6 was all about B2B PPC, a topic near and dear to my heart. It was a great chat, with lots of helpful information shared.

Here are a few keys to B2B PPC that came out of the chat.

B2B isn’t the same as B2C.

It may seem obvious, but it’s a distinction that I’m not sure the search engines understand. B2B PPC is usually focused on lead generation rather than a final sale. Leads are handed off to a sales team, or put into a nurture funnel. The buying cycle is long, making it challenging to close the loop from lead to sale.

Personas are important.

In B2C, personas are often irrelevant. Your customers are whoever buys your stuff. But for B2B, personas are important to understand, as they’ll drive a lot of your strategy – especially if you’re running paid social. Defining your personas early in the planning process will help you decide how to segment your audiences and content.

Audiences are a great way to hone in on the B2B user.

A lot of PPC Chatters mentioned audiences as a way to reach their target. While keywords are important, audiences are crucial to ensuring a successful B2B campaign. Spend some time researching your audience, and thinking about the best way to reach them.

For upper funnel campaigns, content is king.

You’ve probably heard the saying about digital advertising: Don’t ask the prospect to marry you the first time you meet. In other words, don’t hammer a first-time visitor with offers to buy, buy, buy!

Nowhere is that saying truer than in B2B PPC. Users are not going to buy a six-figure piece of industrial equipment, or an enterprise software package, or whatever B2B businesses are selling, on the first go-round. Search is often taking place higher up the funnel, when people are just beginning to research solutions to their problems.

Content is king for upper-funnel B2B PPC campaigns. You must have good content to sell your audience.

B2B measurement is tough, but can be done.

Front-end measurement for B2B PPC is easy: just slap Google Analytics or another package on your site, and you can track visits, user behavior, and even website conversions. The problem is, website conversions are usually not a purchase – they’re a lead. What happens to those leads once they convert online?

That’s the loop that’s surprisingly difficult to close. B2B advertisers tend to be behind the times when it comes to tracking systems and processes. A shocking number of businesses are using old-school CRM systems, or even pencil and paper, to track leads. They have no idea what happens to them once they go to the sales team.

I encourage you to read Heather Cooan’s tweets from this week’s chat on measurement. She worked in-house at a B2B organization for several years, and has great insights into how to make this work.

In fact, I encourage you to read the entire tweet stream from Tuesday, February 6. There are a lot of great nuggets about B2B PPC there.

What’s your number-one key to B2B PPC success? Share in the comments!

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Top 5 Facebook Ads Experts To Follow On Twitter

Here it is February, and I hope you all are full into the swing of 2018. I’m resolved to get back to regular blogging, health permitting. I’ve missed all of you.

One of my goals in 2018 is to become more proficient in Facebook Ads. We’ve acquired a couple of large Facebook advertisers over the past year, and while I’m comfortable managing the accounts, I know there are nuances that I still need to learn. And I’m guessing many of you are in the same boat.

A few months ago, the hashtag #FBAdsChat emerged on Twitter. I immediately created a column for it in Tweetdeck. While the tweet volume isn’t as high as on #PPCChat, it’s still worth following.

In addition to following #FBAdsChat, here are the top 5 Facebook Ads experts to follow on Twitter.

Susan Wenograd@SusanEDub. Susan started the #FBAdsChat hashtag and hosts the chats that happen periodically on Thursdays at noon Eastern time. Susan has emerged as the premiere expert on Facebook Ads. She’s spoken at just about every search conference out there, sharing epic Facebook Ads knowledge. If you follow just one Facebook Ads expert, Susan is the one. She recently started her own company, too – find her online at susanwenograd.com.

Matt Mason@MattMasonPPC. Matt is Senior Client Manager at PointIt. He’s active on the #FBAdsChat hashtag, asking great questions and sharing knowledge. He often hosts the chat when Susan isn’t available – he’s even done some spontaneous chats just because people want to. He’ll be speaking about Facebook Ads at the upcoming Hero Conf, too!

Timothy Jensen@timothyjjensen. A longtime participant in PPC Chat, Timothy has been actively contributing to #FBAdsChat as well. He’s Campaign Manager at Clix Marketing. If you want nuggets on both PPC and Facebook Ads, give him a follow.

Akvile DeFazio@AkvileDeFazio. Akvile has done everything, from working at Third Door Media to agency work to owning her own social advertising firm, Akvertise. Since she focuses on paid social, she shares lots of great tips on Facebook Ads on Twitter. She’s super nice too – someone great to know.

Michelle Morgan@michellemsem. Michelle is Director of Client Services at Clix, and a frequent poster in #FBAdsChat. She’s always finding new features in the Facebook Ads UI, and isn’t shy about sharing. Michelle has been around the PPC Chat scene for a while and still posts there too.

Bonus: JD Prater@jdprater. JD works for AdStage, a social ads management platform. He’s got his finger on the pulse of new Facebook Ads releases, and shares the info freely. AdStage has a great e-newsletter, too – go sign up at www.adstage.io.

What about you? Who are your must-follow Facebook Ads experts on Twitter? Share the love in the comments!

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PPC Ad Test Settings: The Great Debate

PPC ad testing is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. It’s one of the most fun aspects of managing PPC campaigns: learning what ad copy performs best. It’s always fun to try something wild and crazy and have it perform well, or to prove an insistent client right or wrong with test data.

Lately, there have been several opinions thrown around regarding which PPC ad test settings should be used for best results. It’s been interesting to watch the debate play out in blog posts and on Twitter. And to add confusion to the mix, Google recently announced that they were reducing the options available for ad rotation to two: optimize and rotate indefinitely. Google claims the change was rolling out in September, but I’m still seeing 4 options in my campaigns.

Anyway, there are a few PPC experts who have suggested that it’s better in the long run to use the Optimize settings, rather than Rotate Evenly. PPC Hero recommends running 3 or more ads per ad group, and letting Google choose the winner. This is also Google’s recommendation, incidentally. Their argument is based on a case study showing that clicks increased when they chose the Optimize setting and ran 3 or more ads.

If you’re optimizing for clicks, you probably have bigger problems than choosing ad rotation settings.

At HeroConf London, Marty Röttgerding gave a presentation on ad rotation. I wasn’t at the conference, but his deck is up on Slideshare. I strongly recommend you check it out – while paging through Slideshare isn’t the same as hearing the presentation in person, you can get the drift. He talks about statistical significance and essentially says it’s a red herring. He also points out that the search partner network, and its low CTRs, throws things off. So does ad position and the fact that quality score and other factors are determined at the time of the auction. Marty also advocates letting Google handle ad rotation.

I disagree.

Now before you dismiss me as a Luddite who wants to manually control all aspects of Adwords, let me remind you that I wrote a post not long ago advocating for using bid management tools. I’m a big fan of automation. Just not when it comes to ad copy testing.

I’ve tried using optimize for conversions, more than once. We’ve inherited accounts full of campaigns with that setting. And when we’ve evaluated results, we’ve always come to the same conclusion: Optimize for conversions is flawed.

It’s flawed for the same reason that Facebook ad “rotation” is flawed. Both systems pick winners too soon. (To be clear, I’m not talking about the brand new split testing feature that FB just announced here.)

I’ve seen Adwords choose a winning ad that’s had 10-20 clicks. That’s just not enough clicks to be significant at any level. I’m not looking for 99% confidence, but when an ad could get 5-10 additional clicks and show a totally different result, that’s not a winning ad in my mind. There isn’t enough data to confidently say that the ad Google deems a “loser” won’t actually perform better with more clicks.

I’m not a fan of the “run at least 3 ads” logic either. We inherited a client nearly 2 years ago that was running 5-10 ads in every ad group. Each ad had a handful of clicks. There was no way to see which ad was winning – and no tests would ever come close to statistical significance. Here’s what happened when we took over and started running systematic tests, 2 ads at a time:

Of course, we were doing other optimization here, but ad copy testing was a huge part of it.

Here’s the bottom line. I get that automation is great and helps us focus on strategic PPC management. But why hand all your automation over to Google? We all know Google has Google’s best interest at heart, not ours.

I prefer using third party tools. For bid management, I like Acquisio. For ad copy testing, I’m a huge fan of AdAlysis. AdAlysis tells you when you have statistically significant test results, and can even automate your ad testing. It’ll pause losing ads, based on the KPIs you choose:

You can also set up draft ads that will automatically start running when loser ads are paused:

You can test a whole new ad, or have AdAlysis pick up elements of the previous ad. In the example above, I’m testing descriptions, so I want to keep the headlines the same as before. Just check the box, and the tool will do that.

It takes some time and thought to set up the automation, but the same is true of setting up tests via Google. And Google won’t automatically pause losing ads, unless you run a script telling it do to so. AdAlysis has so many other features besides ad copy testing, but is worth it for the testing tools alone.

When it comes to PPC ad test settings, I like to choose Rotate Indefinitely and make my own decisions on winners and losers.

What do you think? Are you in the automation camp for PPC ad test settings? If so, do you let Google automate, or are you using a tool? Share in the comments!

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What Type Of Info Really Sells Your PPC Audience?

In previous articles on PPC audiences, I’ve talked about the importance of audiences, who is the audience, and audience segmentation. All are necessary when conceptualizing a PPC campaign that’s using audience targeting. But once you set up the campaign, what type of info really sells your PPC audience?

If you’re a B2C ecommerce advertiser, the answer is easy: give them a deal! Countless articles have been written about using special offers in remarketing to lure customers back to your site to make a purchase. Here are just a few offers you could try:

• Exclusive deals or offers for returning shoppers
• Free shipping
• Customer rewards
• BOGO – buy one, get one offers
• Free products with purchase

There are many more. It’s fairly easy to brainstorm ideas, figure out which ones make business sense, and test them with your audience.

But what about B2B lead generation advertisers?

As usual, B2B is tricky. Many advertisers are not selling a physical product, or if they are, it’s high-consideration and not going to be purchased online in an ecommerce fashion. Offers like free shipping and customer rewards don’t make sense. What sells the B2B audience, then?

Valuable information.

Offering a valuable piece of content is a common tactic for B2B – because it works. An in-depth white paper, ebook, or guide that talks about common customer problems and potential solutions is an effective way to generate leads. Gate the content behind a form, or use data connectors like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google forms to collect contact info. High-value content is a tried and true way to get leads that ultimately turn into sales.

Free trials.

If you’re selling software or SAAS products, free trials are highly effective in converting prospects to leads. Trials let potential customers try your product risk-free for a period of time, usually 14 to 30 days. The premise is that once they get used to using your software, they won’t want to stop, so they’ll buy it. I’ve personally become a customer of more than one product this way.

Personal attention.

Nowadays, with so many things being automated, a little personal attention from a real human goes a long way. Offering a free consultation, a conversation with a specialist, or even just an appointment with sales can be an effective way to get your foot in the door. We’ve had more than one client see success with using a “contact sales” or “free consult” offer, especially for high-consideration products or complicated services that require an individualized approach.

Price quotes.

Another simple, yet effective offer is to provide a price quote. B2B products and services often do not conform to a simple one-size-fits-all price. There are nuances, service levels, and add-ons that make it impossible to even put a pricing sheet on the company website. Using a form to give a price quote is a great way to not only get a lead, but to guide the prospect into the sales funnel.

Comparison to competitors.

If you’re the market leader, or if you have a feature that your competitors lack, using a landing page with a comparison grid is very persuasive.

Whether you choose to bid on competitor keywords or not, using a comparison grid helps show how you stack up, and convince a prospect to choose you over someone else. While a grid like this isn’t an offer per se, it’s a gateway to pique a user’s interest and convince them to provide their contact info to learn more. Try it on a landing page with an offer, as an added boost.

What about you? What type of info or offers have you tried that really sell your PPC audience? Share in the comments!

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PPC Reports: We Can Do Better

Creating PPC reports is a big part of every PPC professional’s job. Whether you work in-house or at an agency, it’s almost always necessary to report on campaign performance.

When I started doing PPC in 2002, reporting usually involved downloading raw data into Excel and trying to make sense of it. Today, there are countless tools available to help create PPC reports. Some are paid, like Optmyzr, Swydo, and reporting tools within bid management platforms like Acquisio. Others are free – Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, and the reports section of Adwords, to name a few. Most reporting tools include a WYSIWYG editor that helps you easily create graphs and visualizations.

I’ve been writing about PPC reports since 2011. And yet, in 2017, I still regularly see reports like this:

If I needed to quickly answer the question “how are my campaigns doing?”, I couldn’t do that with this report.

Folks, we can do better.

A good PPC report should tell a story, It should immediately make its key points clear, with visuals. Use graphs and color coding to help tell the story:

Contrast this image to the previous one. At a glance, I can tell that we are below our target for responses, and that our CTR and budget are below target as well. From that, I can infer that we are below target on responses because we have not spent what we thought we would. As an agency, this isn’t a great thing to report to a client, but it’s immediately clear what is happening and what needs to be done about it.

Visuals like this make it easy to focus on insights and recommendations: why are we underspent? What are we going to do to fix the issue? That’s the info that clients are looking for from a report – not a dump of numbers without context.

If you’re creating reports consisting of numbers in Excel, it’s time to rethink your reporting. Even adding a simple Excel graph showing KPI performance over time can make a difference in how easy the data is to digest. Resist the urge to throw data into the report just because it exists. Every element of the report should have a purpose and should illustrate how the campaigns performed against goals and objectives. For example, is performance by device really necessary? If you’re not going to do anything different in the campaign as a result of the data, don’t include it.

And if your campaigns don’t have clearly defined goals and objectives, stop everything and read this post.

Creating good visuals in a report doesn’t require fancy BI tools. The health check in the example above is a simple Excel chart with added circles created in PowerPoint. Mountain graphs aren’t necessary either – you could use two lines and achieve the same objective.

The point is, we can do better. PPC reports shouldn’t require a math degree to decipher. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.

What are your favorite PPC reporting tactics? Share in the comments!

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Top 5 Articles on PPC Audiences

I’ve been writing a lot about PPC audiences this year. PPC audiences have been the talk of marketers for a couple of years now, and with good reason. We used to have keywords, and paid social – and the two didn’t cross paths. Now, we have RLSA, remarketing, in-market audiences for search, and loads of other great ways to combine the intent of keyword search with the targeting of paid social. Here are 5 great articles from around the web on PPC audiences.

No, Paid Search Audiences Won’t Replace Keywords by Kirk Williams. A thought-provoking post about why keyword search is still important, even in the face of so many audience targeting options.

Why I like it: “Now, before we get into the throes of keyword philosophy, I’d like to reduce the number of angry comments this post receives by acknowledging a crucial point.” It’s vintage Kirk, and still tees up the premise of the article.

In-Market Audiences For Google Search Campaigns by Dan Roberts. An excellent overview of the recently-launched in-market audiences for Adwords.

Why I like it: The post lays out the details on how to use in-market segments for search – and then points out that, while this is a cool feature, it shifts the power from advertisers to Google. Right on.

PPC Audience Targeting From Google To Social by Alaina Thompson. A detailed post on branching out into paid social targeting, with a link to another detailed article on search audiences.

Why I like it: Alaina talks about why customer match is so powerful.

Podcast: Michelle Morgan, Negative Audiences and Audience Shaping, an interview of Michelle by JD Prater. OK, this isn’t technically a post, but podcasts are cool too. Michelle goes in-depth on negative audiences and why they’re so important.

Why I like it: It’s a podcast! With Michelle, who I’ve enjoyed watching her career take off over the past few years.

Getting Started with Audience Targeting in PPC by me. OK, I wrote this – but you should still read it! This post has a little bit of everything about audience targeting.

Why I like it: I wrote it! (Just kidding!) Unlike many how-to posts, this one talks about offers as well as choosing audiences.

PPC audience targeting is here to stay. Have you read any great posts about PPC audiences? Share in the comments!

 

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Expanding Your Adwords Account With The Google Display Network

When you want to expand your Adwords account, and you’ve exhausted your options in Google Search and remarketing/RLSA, you may want to consider the Google Display Network. The Google Display Network, or GDN for short, can be a great way to generate incremental traffic and sales.

Approach the GDN carefully, though. Ads in the GDN are not search. They’re shown based on the relevance of advertisers’ ads to the content on the website. Users viewing the ads are reading content, not actively asking questions.

That said, the GDN offers high impression volume and incremental exposure for your business.

Targeting on the GDN.

To target your ads on the GDN, you can use keywords, placements, topics, interests and remarketing, or demographics; or any combination of these.

Keyword targeting.

Keyword targeting sounds just like keyword targeting in search. It’s similar, but not exactly the same. Keyword targeting in the GDN enables advertisers to tell Google what keywords represent the topics and interests they’d like to reach. For example, if you sell cookware, you may choose keywords like:

• Gourmet cooking
• Recipes
• Cookware
• Food network

This list of terms seems random, but it’s not. Websites with this type of content will be relevant to your target audience. Remember, users aren’t searching on these keywords – they’re used directionally by Google to help match your ads to site content.

Placements.

Targeting by placements allows advertisers to choose the websites or placements on which they’d like their ads to appear. In the cookware example above, you might choose placements like:

• Foodnetwork.com
• Cookingchannel.com
• Epicurious.com
• Gourmetmagazine.com

Remember that high-traffic, well-known placements will have significant competition for ad space. If you choose popular websites for placement targeting, be prepared to bid quite high to be able to generate impressions. Still, for advertisers who know where their target audience hangs out, placement targeting can be an efficient way to target on the GDN.

Topics.

Instead of choosing keywords or placements, you can target ads in the GDN by topic. Here are some of the food-related topics for our cookware example:

You can select as many topics as you’d like. Make sure they’re relevant, of course.

Interests & remarketing.

In addition to remarketing, the GDN also offers interest targeting, based on either affinity audiences or in-market segments.

Affinity audiences are developed by Google, based on long-term behavior of users. For example, the food-related affinity audience is made up of people who frequently visited food and cooking-related sites over time. Here are some examples of affinity audiences:

In-market audiences, on the other hand, are users who Google has determined are actively shopping for a particular product or service. Affinity audiences tend to be focused around high-ticket, high-consideration items like autos and finance:

If you are an auto dealer, think how valuable it would be to serve ads to people who are actively looking to buy a car!

Demographics.

If you took marketing courses in college, you probably studied demographic targeting. Advertisers can target GDN ads by gender, age, and parental status.

You can also exclude demographics; for example, an advertiser targeting business owners might exclude users in the 18-24 and 65+ age groups, as these ages are less likely to be business owners.

Using multiple targeting methods.

If you find that you’re getting too much untargeted GDN traffic, you can combine multiple targeting methods to narrow down your audience. In the cookware example, you could target by placement, and then add keywords to cover the items you sell: cast-iron skillets, saucepans, utensils, etc. This will help prevent your ads from showing on pages that aren’t relevant to what you sell. Combining keywords and placements works particularly well on large sites that cover a lot of topics, such as CNN and YouTube. Adding keywords helps your ads to show only on relevant content.

Be aware that layering multiple targeting options will greatly reduce the number of impressions you’ll receive in the GDN. Try to strike a balance between quantity (impressions) and quality (targeting).

Watch your performance and adjust.

The GDN drives much high impression volume and lower click-through rates than those seen in Google search. CPCs are usually lower than search, as well. But it’s important to monitor performance and exclude any targeting options that are not driving converting traffic. While this is true in any search campaign, because ads in the GDN lack the intent of a searched keyword, it’s crucial to keep a close eye on GDN campaigns to avoid wasting money.

Many search pros avoid the GDN, but I’ve found it to be a valuable add-on for many clients. When targeted correctly, the GDN is an effective way to expand your Adwords account.

For more on the GDN, check out these posts:

3 Ways To Profit From The Google Display Network
Yes, The Google Display Network Can Drive PPC Conversions!

How have you used the GDN successfully? Share in the comments!

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PPC Data Analysis and PPC Goals

This week’s PPC Chat was all about PPC data analysis. It was an interesting chat, as they usually are. (If you’re not participating in #ppcchat on Twitter, stop reading right now and go mark your calendar for Tuesdays at noon Eastern time! You’ll learn something new every week.)

This week’s chat was about data analysis in PPC. We got into what types of data you analyze (anything from time of day to locations to product-by-product results) and whether a PPC manager can handle the data analysis vs. bringing in an analyst.

One of the intriguing questions was this:

Most people said they spent about 70% of their time doing analysis and 30% new builds. For me, it’s probably 80% analysis and 20% new builds. If you take your time to analyze a problem or situation in a PPC account, the optimizations themselves take little time. Unless you’re constantly adding new products to a PPC account, most of your time should be spent on analysis.

Another interesting question centered around analysis paralysis:

People made good suggestions such as stepping away for a while, asking someone else for perspective, and using a preset amount of time to work on PPC data analysis to help focus.

As I thought about my answer, I realized I rarely have analysis paralysis. Partly because I’m so busy I don’t have time to! I do remember the days of working in-house and losing hours diving into data, only to realize I couldn’t draw any meaningful conclusions. Interesting data is not always useful data.

But I think the bigger reason why I rarely have analysis paralysis is because I’m almost always working on accounts with specific goals and KPIs. If your campaign goals are clearly defined, your PPC data analysis is easy – you’re digging into whether you met your goal or not, and why or why not.

There are nearly endless ways to slice and dice PPC data. That’s what makes it so much fun. But few of us have time to just poke around to see what’s there. In order to be efficient, goals must be defined. Goals are your roadmap – without them, you’re just driving around aimlessly!

If your client (or you, as the advertiser) lacks specific PPC goals, that’s ok. You can set goals at any time. Many of our clients come to us with goals in mind, and even specific KPIs if they’ve been doing search for a while. If not, start asking questions.

We ask new clients to fill out a brief. The first question is “What is your business challenge – the problem you’re trying to solve?” This gets them thinking about why they want to use PPC in the first place. Everyone has a reason – you just need to get them to articulate it.

We also ask for their primary business goal: what does search need to accomplish? Is it awareness, traffic, lead capture, sales, or something else? The answer drives campaign setup and data analysis. If the primary KPI is lead generation, all data should focus on showing how many leads were generated, how much they cost, which keywords and ads drove the most leads, and so on. Recommendations should focus on how to get more leads: by increasing impression share, improving conversion rates, etc.

PPC data analysis is relatively easy if you know what questions you’re trying to answer. Sure, the nitty gritty of pulling data, especially if it’s coming from multiple sources, can be a challenge. But you’ll spend your time gathering data, rather than going down the rabbit hole of endless numbers that may or may not be meaningful.

For more on crafting your PPC strategy, check out my Ultimate Cheat Sheet on PPC Strategy.

Do you always establish goals with your clients, and do you find it makes PPC data analysis easier? How do you make analysis more efficient? Share in the comments!

 

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PPC Bid Automation: A Must In 2017

Seems like every year, I write a post on PPC bid automation and bid management. Manually managing bids used to be practically a full-time job when I started doing PPC in 2002; now, it’s almost an afterthought due to automation.

Two years ago, I was asking if PPC bid management was still a thing. Adwords Scripts, automated bid rules, and bid management solutions were my alternatives to manual bid management at that point, and they’re still good suggestions. Last year, I talked about the best times to use automated vs. manual bidding. This year, I find myself wondering if anyone should be using manual bidding at this point. I’m thinking the answer is no.

10 years ago, the only way to use PPC bid automation was through a tool, like Marin, Kenshoo, or Acquisio. Today, with free tools like Adwords Scripts and bid automation rules in both Google and Bing, even smaller advertisers can take advantage of bid automation.

Google was the first PPC engine to launch bid automation within the interface. Several options are available, including:

•    Maximize clicks
•    Target page location
•    Target CPA
•    Target ROAS

Most strategies are available both as individual campaign strategies, and as portfolio strategies across multiple campaigns. Portfolio bidding is a useful strategy that helps advertisers maximize profits across campaigns or sets of keywords. I used a homegrown type of portfolio bidding back in 2005 when I worked in-house; we created a spreadsheet that calculated our profitability on every product we sold, and cranked out the right PPC bids for each product. It was a manual process, but very successful for us. Read more on portfolio bidding in Adwords at Search Engine Land.

Not to be outdone, Bing Ads rolled out with PPC bid automation shortly after Google did. The rules are essentially the same as Google’s.

If you’re going to use scripts or engine automation, you’ll want to do some homework first. Frederick Vallaeys has a great article on Search Engine Land with an overview of setting up bid management rules. If you’re using scripts, or Frederick’s tool Optmyzr, you’ll need to think about things like lookback windows, ROAS, and target CPA. These metrics are important to understand, even if you’re using a paid tool that does some of the calculations for you.

Automating bids in the engines seems easy – and it is. But you’re giving up some control to the engines, which is a little like the fox guarding the hen house. Not all experts are in favor of using PPC bid automation through the engines. Wordstream has a thought-provoking post on why you should never use Adwords automated bidding. It’s from 2014, but I still tend to agree with most of the article. We’ve often seen automated bidding hurt client performance, either by limiting impressions or click volume, or by inflating click cost to where campaigns become unprofitable.

We’ve had the best luck with paid bid management tools. The benefit of a paid tool is that it’s a third party, so there is no vested interest in gaming the system or inflating CPC. Paid tools tend to have algorithms built in that reduce the number of manual calculations PPC managers have to make. The tools learn quickly, yielding performance improvements within a couple of weeks. Here’s a typical example of results seen before and after implementing a paid bid management solution:


Bid management was implemented in April 2014; immediately the client saw an increase in clicks and a large decrease in CPC. All else equal, this is a win for any client.

Bid management solutions can also optimize mobile bid adjustments. We use Acquisio, and here’s an example of how mobile performance improved with their Bid and Budget Manager tool:

Prior to implementing the bid management solution, mobile performance was erratic. With bid management, cost per conversion stabilized, and total conversions increased significantly.

There are many paid bid management solutions out there – here’s one list, although I don’t agree with their rankings. For instance, they list Marchex, which is a call tracking software, not a bid management solution.

Most bid management software providers offer a free trial. I’ve found that the time I save in calculating targets and setting up rules more than pays for the software.

Paid PPC bid automation tools aren’t for everyone. With all the great free options out there, there’s really no reason to be manually managing bids these days.

Can you think of a situation where manual bid management makes sense or where automation has gone wrong? Or is automation the only way to go? Share in the comments!

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