How Budget Affects Bid Strategy Selection
Your budget directly impacts the bid strategy you should choose for your campaigns. Smaller budgets often work best with manual or semi-automated bidding, allowing for precise control and cost efficiency. Larger budgets can leverage automated strategies like Target CPA or Target ROAS, which rely on data volume for optimisation. Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Small Budgets (£500/month): Focus on manual CPC or Enhanced CPC for control and efficiency. Use negative keywords and optimise landing pages to maximise returns.
- Larger Budgets (£50,000/month): Automated strategies like Target CPA or Target ROAS help scale campaigns effectively. Shared budgets and Smart Bidding are great for managing multiple campaigns.
Key takeaways:
- Align your budget with your campaign goals and data availability.
- Smaller budgets benefit from manual control; larger budgets thrive on automation.
- Regularly monitor performance and adjust bids based on data insights.
Choosing the right bid strategy ensures your ad spend delivers the best possible results.
Set the RIGHT Bidding Strategies for Google Ads [with real examples]
Common Bid Strategies and When to Use Them
Understanding how bid strategies work – how your budget influences ad display based on platform, ad type, and marketing goals – is essential.
With over £106.5 billion spent globally on PPC advertising and Google Ads commanding more than 73% of the market, choosing the right strategy can make or break your campaign. The key is aligning your strategy with both your objectives and budget.
Here’s a breakdown of some key bid strategies and when to use them.
Maximise Clicks: Driving Traffic Effectively
Maximise Clicks is all about getting the most clicks possible within your budget. This automated approach adjusts bids in real time to achieve maximum traffic for your spend.
This strategy works best for campaigns prioritising traffic and brand visibility, such as launching a new product or service. Consistent daily budgets are crucial here. For instance, if your monthly budget is £1,000, spreading it evenly across the month allows for optimal bid adjustments.
However, while this approach can bring in more visitors, it doesn’t guarantee they’ll convert. If your goal is quality traffic or conversions, you might need a more targeted strategy.
Target CPA: Managing Cost Per Conversion
Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) aims to keep your cost per conversion steady while staying within your budget. You set a target amount for each conversion, and the system adjusts bids to hit that goal.
This strategy is ideal for lead generation campaigns and B2B sectors where managing acquisition costs is critical. It works best when you have sufficient conversion data to guide bid optimisation.
To make the most of Target CPA, you’ll need clear conversion tracking and a solid understanding of your customer lifetime value. It’s particularly effective for service-based businesses where lead quality matters more than sheer volume.
Target ROAS: Maximising Revenue from Ad Spend
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is designed to maximise revenue for every pound spent. It’s particularly useful for e-commerce businesses with strong product margins. With this strategy, you set a target return – for example, 400%, meaning you aim to earn £4 for every £1 spent.
This approach shines for online retailers who can directly track revenue from ad clicks. For businesses with varying profit margins, Target ROAS lets you prioritise higher-value sales instead of simply increasing conversion numbers.
To succeed with this strategy, you’ll need robust conversion value tracking and a budget that provides consistent sales data. Its flexibility allows you to adjust targets to balance conversion volume and value.
"Bid strategies help to maximise the chances for a campaign’s favourable actions." – Ian Dawson, HawkSEM Search Engine Marketing Manager
How Budget Size Affects Your Bid Strategy Choice
The size of your budget plays a major role in determining the most suitable bidding strategy. With average CPCs rising by 17% in Q1 2024, it’s crucial to align your spending with a strategy that ensures efficiency. Striking the right balance between budget and strategy is key to running campaigns that deliver results.
Small Budgets: Prioritising Efficiency and Returns
When working with a limited budget, controlling costs becomes vital. Manual CPC bidding is an excellent option, as it allows you to directly manage your spend and prevent overspending. However, this approach requires constant monitoring to ensure you’re not wasting money on underperforming keywords.
Enhanced CPC (ECPC) offers a middle ground by combining manual control with AI-driven adjustments based on the likelihood of conversions. While this can help minimise wasted spend and boost conversions, it does depend on having enough conversion data for the algorithm to perform effectively.
For smaller budgets with sufficient data, Smart Bidding strategies like Target CPA and Target ROAS can also deliver strong results. Considering that Google search ads typically see conversion rates between 3.1% and 6%, it’s important to allocate enough budget to gather meaningful data.
To make the most of a smaller budget, consider these tactics:
- Use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic and avoid wasting money.
- Focus on high-intent keywords that align with your business objectives.
- Leverage audience targeting and apply bid modifiers for devices, locations, and times.
- Ensure your landing pages are optimised to convert the traffic you’re paying for.
For early-stage accounts or tight budgets, controlled strategies like manual CPC or Maximise Clicks can be a safer choice. These methods allow you to maintain oversight while building a foundation for growth.
Larger Budgets: Balancing Reach and Performance
A larger budget opens the door to more ambitious strategies that blend reach with performance goals. Smart Bidding becomes particularly effective in campaigns with multiple ad groups and extensive keyword lists. Automated bidding strategies not only save time but also utilise historical data to predict outcomes and set bids accordingly.
Shared budgets are another tool worth exploring for larger campaigns. They allow you to pool resources across multiple campaigns, with search engines automatically distributing funds based on performance. Enhanced CPC (ECPC) can also be advantageous, offering a mix of manual control and automated adjustments based on factors such as user device, location, and demographics.
When using Smart Bidding with larger budgets, it’s important to give campaigns two to three weeks to stabilise after making adjustments. Even with a bigger budget, manual CPC can remain useful for ensuring bids don’t exceed your set limits.
The flexibility of a larger budget allows you to experiment with multiple strategies simultaneously. For instance, you could run brand awareness campaigns using Maximise Clicks while also managing conversion-focused campaigns with Target CPA or Target ROAS. This approach enables you to target different stages of the customer journey, creating a well-rounded and effective campaign strategy.
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How to Use Bid Strategies Within Your Budget
This section dives into how to effectively implement and oversee bid strategies while keeping your budget in check. The goal is to use your chosen strategy efficiently and manage spending wisely.
Portfolio Bidding: Managing Multiple Campaigns Together
Portfolio bid strategies are a smart way to manage multiple campaigns with shared performance goals. Instead of optimising each campaign separately, this method pools data across campaigns to make better bidding decisions using machine learning.
"Portfolio bid strategies automatically set bids to help you reach your performance goals. It automates the process of bidding and optimising for the best results." – TNASuite.com
To make portfolio bidding work, group campaigns strategically. Campaigns in the same portfolio should have similar goals and characteristics. For instance, you could create one portfolio for awareness campaigns and another for conversion-focused efforts. This approach avoids conflicting objectives and ensures resources are allocated consistently.
Linking shared budgets to portfolio bid strategies is another effective tactic. Set caps for individual campaigns to avoid overspending and review allocations regularly to fine-tune underperforming elements. Google Ads’ seasonality adjustments can help the algorithm adapt to sudden changes, while bid caps keep your cost-per-click manageable during high-competition periods.
To get the best results, ensure your Google Ads conversion values reflect the actual profitability of your products or services. Regularly auditing your portfolio strategies against benchmarks and setting realistic goals – whether you’re using Target CPA or Target ROAS – can prevent unnecessary complications.
In addition to grouping campaigns, fine-tuning bids for specific audience segments can help you get more from your budget.
Adjusting Bids for Different Audience Groups
Bid adjustments allow you to control spending more precisely by tweaking bids based on factors like device, location, time, and demographics. For example:
- If mobile users convert more often, you might raise a £1.00 bid to £1.20.
- Regions with higher conversions could see a 30% bid increase, while underperforming areas might get a 20% decrease.
- If your ads perform better on weekends, you could boost bids by 25% on Saturdays and Sundays.
- Demographic insights, like women aged 18–24 being more likely to purchase, could justify a 15% bid increase for that group.
Keep in mind that Google Ads prioritises ad group-level adjustments over campaign-level ones. When multiple adjustments are applied, they’re typically multiplied to calculate the final bid. Start with small changes, measure their impact, and refine your strategy based on performance data.
Tools for Monitoring and Adjusting Your Strategy
To keep your bid strategies effective, advanced monitoring tools are essential. PPC monitoring tools help you spot and fix campaign issues before they drain your budget. Look for platforms that offer detailed tracking, easy-to-read reports, and alerts for important metric changes. Features like advanced analytics and troubleshooting capabilities are particularly helpful.
Here’s a look at some professional-grade tools for different budgets:
- Opteo: Starts at £129 per month for a £25,000 spend across 10 accounts.
- Adalysis: Begins at £127 per month for a £50,000 spend with unlimited accounts.
- TrueClicks: Offers comprehensive monitoring from £208 per month for a similar spend.
Google’s native tools are a great starting point as well. The Google Ads Keyword Planner helps identify relevant keywords and provides bid estimates. Smart Bidding, on the other hand, uses machine learning to optimise bids for better conversions and return on investment. Monitoring campaigns in real time allows you to identify problems, improve performance, and adjust bids with clear objectives in mind.
Combining automated tools with hands-on oversight strikes the right balance, ensuring you maximise your budget while staying in control of your campaign strategies.
Conclusion: Matching Budget to Bid Strategy
To achieve PPC success, it’s essential to align your budget with the right bid strategy. Whether you’re working with a modest £500 per month or a substantial £50,000, the strategy you choose should reflect both your financial capacity and your business goals. This ensures that every pound you spend directly supports your campaign’s objectives.
For smaller budgets, Manual CPC and Enhanced CPC offer a great starting point. These methods give you tight control over spending while gathering valuable conversion data for more advanced strategies later on.
As your budget increases, automated strategies like Target CPA and Target ROAS become more practical. Research shows that approaches like Target CPA and Maximise Clicks can significantly increase conversions and sales. If CPCs rise too high with automated strategies, switching to Target ROAS can help maintain profitability.
When scaling your campaigns, consider increasing your budget incrementally – by 10–20% daily – to allow Smart Bidding to adjust without compromising performance. Regularly review your bids (weekly or bi-weekly) to monitor key metrics like CTR, conversion rates, and Quality Score. For Target CPA or Target ROAS, leaving a 10–20% margin can help Google’s algorithm optimise effectively. These small yet strategic adjustments ensure your bid strategy evolves alongside your campaign’s growth.
"By monitoring performance, you can decide to adjust your maximum conversions/target CPA to ensure more conversions or monitor your historical CPC to adjust your manual bidding to pay less for clicks."
– Ian Dawson, Search Engine Marketing Manager, HawkSEM
Ultimately, your budget and bid strategy should adapt as your data and objectives evolve. By staying informed and making data-driven decisions, you can ensure that every pound of your advertising spend is working to achieve your marketing goals.
For more expert advice on optimising PPC campaigns, visit The PPC Team.
FAQs
How do I choose the right bid strategy for my budget and campaign goals?
To choose the right bid strategy for your campaign, start by pinpointing your main objective. Are you aiming to drive conversions, boost website traffic, or enhance brand visibility? For campaigns focused on conversions, automated strategies like Target CPA or Target ROAS are designed to optimise your budget by prioritising specific actions. On the other hand, if your goal is to increase visibility, strategies such as Maximise Impressions or vCPM might be a better fit.
Your budget size also plays a key role in selecting the right strategy. Automated bidding adjusts bids in real time, taking factors like competition and audience behaviour into account, ensuring your budget is spent effectively. By aligning your strategy with both your goals and financial limits, you can achieve stronger campaign performance and better outcomes.
What is the difference between manual CPC and automated bidding, and how do they influence campaign performance?
Manual CPC (Cost-Per-Click) bidding lets advertisers set specific bids for each keyword, offering more direct control over how their budget is allocated. This method works well for smaller, niche campaigns with low search volumes or highly specific targeting requirements.
On the other hand, automated bidding relies on machine learning to adjust bids in real time, tailoring them to meet your campaign goals, such as increasing conversions or hitting a target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). This approach is especially useful for larger or more intricate campaigns, where manually tweaking bids would be too labour-intensive.
While manual CPC gives you precision and control, automated bidding often achieves stronger results in competitive or high-traffic campaigns by fine-tuning bids to match your objectives.
How often should I review and adjust my bid strategies to optimise performance and stay within budget?
To keep your campaigns running smoothly and cost-effectively, it’s a good idea to review and tweak your bid strategies on a regular basis. For most setups, this might mean checking in every 2–3 days or once a week, depending on how many conversions you’re seeing and the overall performance trends.
If you’re using automated bidding strategies, give the system enough time to collect data – ideally aiming for at least 30 conversions per month – before making any changes. When adjustments are needed, keep them moderate, around 10–15%, to avoid disrupting the system’s learning process. By staying on top of your campaigns, you’ll be better equipped to respond to market shifts and maintain steady results.
