How to get your Google Ads Bid Strategies in Pole Position

Smart and non-smart bidding strategies – what’s the difference?

The simple difference is that smart bidding strategies use your previous conversion data to help set a bid. Google’s algorithm uses machine learning to understand how likely someone is to convert after clicking your ad. If a user is likely to convert, Google might bid more for that user, but if a user isn’t likely to convert, it might not show your ad to that user at all. Non-smart bidding doesn’t use any conversion signals to aid its bids – these bids can either be set by yourself or by the native set up of the non-smart bidding strategy.

Manual CPC and Enhanced CPC

Manual CPC is where you decide the bid of the keyword you want to target. For example, if I wanted to bid £1, Google Ads will only ever bid £1 for my chosen keyword. Enhanced CPC is a semi-automated strategy and slightly different to Manual CPC, so it means that if my bid is £1, Google could potentially double the bid to try to reach a user it feels would convert on my website (therefore this bid strategy should only be used if you do have conversions set-up in your account). This is one of the most popular strategies for new campaign launches because it allows the marketer to control how much they spend on clicks, safely knowing Google will never overspend for a click.

Note, however, that as of October 2024, new campaigns will no longer be able to use an enhanced CPC bid strategy since this is being sunsetted by Google. Existing campaigns running eCPC will then switch to manual CPC in March 2025, when this bid strategy will be phased from all campaigns.

Maximise Clicks

Maximise Clicks is similar to Manual CPC, except the goal here is for Google Ads to literally go after as many clicks as possible. You can set a Maximum CPC limit here – for example, a £1 limit, which Google Ads will never go over. The difference from manual CPC here is that the keyword bid is set at the campaign level, rather than the keyword level. Beware, setting a campaign-level CPC can limit the performance of specific keywords, especially if the CPC limit is set lower than the individual keyword’s estimated cost.

Target Impression Share

Target impression share is one of the least used bid strategies in Google Ads. It allows you to tell Google to go after a specific search impression share. This is particularly good for branded campaigns, i.e, you want your brand campaign to rank on 80% of all searches for your brand. Google will then optimise its bids to rank towards that percentage. 

While all of these strategies have great uses, your Google Ads environment can change, and sometimes switching to a more optimal bid strategy that better suits your circumstances can yield better results. Remember, an F1 team will always take a pit stop (maybe even two or three times a race) to change the tyres to a compound that’s better suited to the race conditions.

Google Ads Smart Bidding Strategies

Conversion tracking through a web pixel or GA4 (we’d recommend Google Tag Manager) is required to use Google Ads’ smart bidding strategies. These goals should marry up with the key performance indicators you want to achieve through Google Ads whether these are purchases through an e-commerce site, business-to-business lead generation form fills, or charities and non-profits looking to increase donation revenues or volunteers.

If your conversion tracking is set up correctly, once you’ve seen a sufficient number of conversions, you’re going to want to move your campaigns across to one of the following bid strategies. Google recommends you should wait til you’ve seen at least 15-30 conversions per month before using smart bidding.

What if I’m struggling to achieve 15 conversions a month?

It may be that you only achieve a couple of high-quality leads a month, so your conversion numbers are low. While you might only be targeting macro conversions in the account, consider if there are any opportunities to include micro conversions too. For example, before a user fills out a contact form, are they downloading PDFs or resource files about your services – could these events be something you could include on your landing pages that may help drive your conversions column above 15 per month?

If you’re struggling with the setup of your Google Ads conversion tracking, please reach out to our Marketing team – we’d be happy to help.

Maximise Conversions

Maximise Conversions is the most popular bid strategy to use when switching from a non-smart bid strategy to a smart bidding strategy. This bid strategy will use your previous conversion data to aid the bids, using audience signals to determine how likely a user is to convert on your website. If Google’s algorithm believes the user is likely to convert, it may be that Google bids higher for that user, but lower for a user if it believes they will not convert. Because of this, you have no control over the bids Google sets, and this can often lead to higher CPCs compared to a non-smart bidding strategy. Hence, it’s crucial that correct conversion tracking is in place, so Google is using the correct data to aid its future bids.

Maximise Conversion Value

Maximisise conversion value works basically the exact same as maximise conversions, but will prioritise the conversion actions that contain a value. This is mainly used by e-commerce businesses which have product values assigned to their products. Google will bid more for users who it believes will return a high conversion value (i.e. it will bid more for a user wanting to make a £100 purchase compared to a £20 purchase).

These two bid strategies are the most aggressive on Google Ads by far. It’s because you give the full reigns to Google Ads, and allow the algorithm to deduce the bids on its own. It’s the equivalent of Pete Bonnington telling Lewis Hamilton “it’s hammer time” on the F1 track, knowing full well that it’s the best way to get peak performance out of a tyre.

Target cost-per-acquisition (target CPA or tCPA)

tCPA is where the marketer sets the CPA for Google’s algorithm to aim for. This should be set based on recent performance, likely over the past 30 or 90 days. By setting a tCPA, you’re telling Google to use your conversion data to only go after users who are highly likely to return the tCPA you’ve set. This strategy is relatively safe, as you’re telling Google to “maintain” performance, rather than go after as many conversions as possible.

Target return on ad spend (target ROAS or tROAS)

tROAS is the same as tCPA, but instead of providing a tCPA, you’re telling Google to go after a ROAS percentage. ROAS is your conversion value (revenue) divided by your costs. 

The danger with these target bid strategies is that if the CPA/ROAS is set quite high and is ambitious, Google Ads will be even “safer” with who it shows its ads to; these users will likely be highly likely to convert on your site. The algorithm will rarely show your ads to ‘cold’ traffic, and therefore not allow any top-of-funnel marketing activity via your PPC ads. 

Back on the Formula One track, it’s like the lead engineer telling the driver to nurse the tyres and not push them too hard so the car makes it to the end of the race comfortably. The harder you push the tyres, however, the higher the risk of tyre failure. 

In the case of a Google Ads account, if you find that your campaigns are struggling to meet your tCPA or tROAS goals, you’ll notice that your spend on these campaigns will be falling. To combat this, you might want to relax your targets.

If your campaigns’ performance suddenly drops, it might be a sign to switch your bid strategy either back to max conversions or even a manual bid strategy; just as an F1 team would pit for new tyres.

Extra Tips: Bid Strategy Learning Status & Bid Adjustments

If you’ve launched a Google Ads campaign before, you might have noticed your campaign receives the status “Bid Strategy Learning”. This often occurs when you’ve changed your bid strategy, launched a new campaign or paused a top spending keyword. 

This status typically lasts five days on your account, and is to inform you that the Google Ads algorithm is learning the new data due to the variable changes you’ve made to the account. It’s best to leave your campaigns in this time and not make any account changes. 

Performance at this time should also be taken with a pinch of salt, as the Google Ads algorithm will be re-learning keyword performance. This is also the same in F1, as tyres need to be warmed up before reaching peak performance.

Our final tip is that a smart bidding strategy will ignore bid adjustments made to campaigns. For example, increasing bids for London by +50% will be ignored by maximise conversions or target bid strategies, as well as target impression share, but will not be ignored by manual CPC, enhanced CPC, and max clicks bid strategies. This is because Google’s algorithm prioritises its own smart bidding signals over manual strategies.