Nowadays, thanks to the internet’s inclusion in our everyday lives and the constant increase of digital areas in different companies, the number of advertisers in Google Search continues to rise, and if you work in the field of Insurance, Travel, Education or Retail, you will know that the game rules are changing. It’s no longer enough to have a well-structured campaign, relevant ads or even a good landing page, since if your cost-per-click is higher than 1 dollar, then you need to be aware that your daily budget could run out in less than 100 clicks.

 

However, the most famous search engine couldn’t just stand there and today, Google offers an alternative that will maximize the clicks and requests on our campaigns. Its name is Smart Bidding and in this article we will walk you through everything you need to know about this function and how it (and us!) can help you improve your exposure.

 

Before we dive into this new tool, it’s important that we know Automated Bidding. So if you’re not familiar with it, now is the time.

What is Automated Bidding?

Automated bidding is a setting within the campaign panel that makes optimization easier and has different functions to aid the different objectives, as required.

 

Among those functions we have:

  • Increase visibility in the first page search results.
  • Increase visibility versus other domains in the search results.
  • Obtain more conversions with a CPA objective.
  • Increase the return on investment.
  • Increase conversions and at the same time maintain control over keyword bidding.
  • Increase site visits.

 

Most functions are available at Campaign level, Ad Sets and Keywords, but some of them are restricted to this last item. Besides, each one of these alternatives has a flexible bid, which means that we define the maximum amount for our clicks and/or requests. Now let’s dive right into Smart Bidding.

How does Smart Bidding work?

We have three available options for Automated Bidding that make use of Smart Bidding, these are Target ROAS (Return of Ad Spend), Advanced Cost per Click and our favorite Target CPA (Cost per Action) bidding.

 

The good thing is that you don’t need to activate any extra options for Smart Bidding to work, we could say it’s more like an update to AdWords. One of those Automatic Offers that make things better. Maybe it doesn’t sound so impressive yet, so we’ll show you why you shouldn’t wait to start using it.

Why use Smart Bidding?

1.   Automatic Advanced Learning

The algorithms use large scale data to perform more accurate predictions, the platform calculates different maximum CPCs and the effect that these changes could have in conversions.

2.   Wide Range of Contextual Indicators

Indicators are attributes of each user or context at the moment of a bid (remember this can be the case for both Search and Display). Contextual indicators have so many variables that we could dedicate an entire article to them alone, but we’ll share three of the most impressive that relative to this article:

  • Physical location: AdWords can optimize up to the City level, taking the surroundings into account. In other words, if an user looks up “Vehicle Loan” and the advertiser is a bank, the platform will move the bid in a city with the highest number of physical locations.
  • Remarketing Lists: AdWords can optimize according to the Remarketing lists the users belong to. For example, Smart Bidding would make a higher bid for those who were in the shopping cart yesterday than for those who were there two weeks ago.
  • Seasonality: AdWords optimizes offers according to the season when the user performs a search. For example, if the user searches flights and trips on dates close to New Year’s vacations, it will increase the bid since it predictively knows that there is a better conversion rate at that time.

 

Among other variables we have: Operating System, Browser, Day of the Week, Time of Day, etc.

3.   Flexible Performance Controls

Remember that we can modify the maximum CPC from within the Automated Bidding options, as well as the cost per acquisition, ROAS, among other factors. Thus, even though it automates part of the process you still have control over what really matters.

4.   Transparent Performance Reports

Google puts at our disposal tools that help us obtain a vision of the performance of our bids, among which we have:

  • Campaign Drafts and Experiments
  • Bidding Simulators
  • Alerts and Notifications

 

In order to get started with Smart Bidding for Google AdWords, contact 4Spot Marketing today.  You can email us at Info@4SpotMarketing.com or call us at 702-721-9763.  We offer a free consultation to determine what approach will serve your company best.