Does the idea of bidding put you off running the likes of Google Ads? 

Do you just wish someone or something could do all that hard work for you?

Well hey, I’m Anna, and if you want to hear what I have to say about Smart Bidding (*spoiler alert* you do), then stick around.

Let’s kick things off with an explanation, shall we?

What is smart bidding on Google Ads?

Great question! Smart Bidding is a set of automated bid strategies that essentially use machine learning to maximise on conversions!

So basically, the robots do it for you, saving you the stress of working it all out!

How does smart bidding work?

Google will take a look at the technical things such as historical search behaviour and contextual data.

It will then use this newfound knowledge to predict the likelihood of a conversion, based on your objective and budget, and increase your bids when it seems more likely.

You can set your smart bidding up to either:

• Maximise conversions
• Maximise conversion value
• Target CPA
• Or Target ROAS

Smart, right?

Why should I use smart bidding?

The benefits of using smart bidding can be narrowed down to:

• It saves you time
• It allows you to “set and forget” campaigns so you can get on with other things
• It makes it more accessible to smaller businesses 
• And, well, Google knows a lot more than you do (no offence)

The only negatives are that you know your business better than Google does, or at least I hope.

Therefore putting your efforts into manual bidding might guarantee better results for you if you have the time to be continually monitoring and optimising them.

So you should use smart bidding if time is something you don’t have much of, or if you just want some easy-to-run campaigns.

They’re great campaigns to have if you’re looking to build brand awareness, increase traffic or even increase conversions.

What smart bidding methods are there?

As I mentioned before, you can break your bidding methods down to objectives such as conversions, conversion value, target CPA and ROAS. Let’s explore these.

Maximising Conversions

• this method will try to get the most amount of conversions for you regardless of their value. This a great option for things like list-building for email marketing, or downloads.

Maximise Conversion Value

• this method will do what it says on the tin, it will maximise conversion based on the value of each conversion.

Target CPA

• this method will try to get you as many conversions according to a target cost per acquisition that you’ve set.
  For example, if every person signing up for your pottery workshop has a value of £200, you might be willing to spend up to £20 in order to acquire that sign-up.

Target ROAS

• this method will try to optimise the bidding based on how much that person is likely to spend based on a whole host of different data.

Google Ads smart bidding is a really nice way of getting some adverts up and running in the digital sphere without consuming too much of your time.

Safe in the knowledge that Google is handing your budgets and doing what it thinks is best.

That is, until the machines try and take over the world… 

Get in touch if you have any questions!