How to Choose an Effective Bidding Strategy for Google Search Ads in 2021

Is there a great bidding strategy for e-commerce and lead generation? Yes! But it will strongly depend on your business and goals. So, instead of giving you a one-size-fits-all bidding strategy, we’re going to discuss the best strategies for your business, the pros and cons to each, when to use them, and some “side effects” you’re going to have with each strategy.
Buckle up! Get ready to take notes because in this video, John and Kasim discuss the different bidding strategies you can use and how to make the most out of each:
Target CPA
Target ROAS
Maximize Clicks
Maximize conversions
Maximize conversion value
Target Impression Share
Manual CPC
Shoutout to Rob Sanders who left a comment on one of our videos and inspired us to create this video.
Got any questions? Ask us in the comment section below!
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[@alexfroloff6353]

Its literally gold content

[@solutionseight]

Thanks Alex 😊

[@husseinfarghaly9524]

Thank you for this video it helps a lot! I even told my grandma to watch it

[@solutionseight]

If your grandma knows about bidding strategies for Google Ads then she is an absolute rock star!

[@isaacmaurice31]

Awesome discussion guys! Truly appreciate this content! This is a huge topic with tons of opinions. Most of the discussion was which one to pick for which situation. I was a "always start manual, give Google data, then move to tCPA to test" kinda guy but John's insight about how keywords are now all blended together and how that impacts the effectiveness of manual totally makes sense...so time to shift more quickly to tCPA as a baseline. I think a cool and much needed part two follow-up to this topic is: Once you set your tCPA or whatever smart bidding strategy, how do you optimize it in terms of budgets and targets? So a couple topics to cover: 1. How often do you make changes or do you make changes at all? How long does it take for the machine learning to get in the groove (Google now says 14 days, they used to say 30)? Especially to budget or the CPA target (ROAS target, IS target). 2. I've found that making certain types of changes (especially large budget swings which are sometimes necessary for budget pacing) "mini-resets" the machine learning...causing a dip in performance...even if the tCPA insight report doesn't say so. Or, for example, Google loves alerting "limited by budget" for tCPA campaigns but when you bump it up to their recommended budget...you can see very clearly that it couldn't support that new daily budget. 3. Do we make tiny changes more frequently or large changes less frequently? And a cool discussion after that would be (because I've never been with an agency that uses any of these...but other agencies swear by them): 3. What happens to Kenshoo (Skai), Marin, Acquisio, etc. - all those 3rd party "auto-bidding" vendors when manual CPC goes away? Even at this very moment, are they even relevant with the "broader" match types? Are they effective if we have Google's own smart bidding options that uses massive amounts of data points that Google has on each individual and optimizes on the query level on our behalf? Sorry for the long-winded comment but hope this gives you some video ideas! Thanks again for the awesome content you guys put out!

[@johnmoran5680]

Hi Isaac! Thank you for the great ideas! I will definetly try to shoot a video soon as a Part two to this. To answer the second part of your question, I think the auto-bidding vendor days have been numbered for a while now. Since broad has now come back into the fold as a real strategy, theres no way an autobidding company could keep up unless they are using search terms instead of keywords.

[@solutionseight]

Thanks for watching, Isaac!

[@sociallyfound-googleadvert6823]

Thanks for the shoutout guys and yet again, another cracking video. Loved the expansive versus restrictive analogy, as well as the explanation of the various bidding strategies. Got a campaign in mind that I can compare the Manual v tCPA, so looking forward to analysing the effects of the change. Thank you Batman & Robin.

[@solutionseight]

You got it!

[@admariner]

Google Rep: These are my recommendations Me: Why Rep: Exactly kzbin.info/www/bejne/fX2UiZ-MpdNrncU

[@stephenessex4515]

Great, very interesting video. I have two questions (1) can Google still track conversions if there are cookie blockers or a cookie has been declined? (2) is there a way to tell Google - in the example of Target CPA - if a conversation (let's say a b2b client form submission) is not a good conversation e.g. it was a student asking you questions via the contact form? Many thanks. Ste

[@abhijeetnogia9100]

Nice video! Quick question, now since Target CPA & ROAS strategies are gone and available in Conversion focused strategy (that use Max conversion strategy with optinal Target CPA), so are this new kind of strategy will work exactly same as old Target CPA Strategy?

[@solutionseight]

It is relatively the same as it was before in terms of Google trying to adhere to your target CPA's. The setup is slightly different, but the outcome is largely the same from what we have seen so far.

[@zacharyryder4080]

This is the most in-depth bidding video I’ve seen! Question, one of my mentors recommends starting with maximize clicks and then transitioning into target cpa. (This is for local service based lead gen). Do you think this would be a good strategy? And if not why?

[@solutionseight]

Hi Zachary, good question. Max clicks would be good to get ads out their quickly and you could make decisions based on that performance when you get conversions, to know what to set a tCPA bid at. The problem with Max Clicks is that it could spend your budget much faster then you'd like. What about manual CPC then transition to tCPA

[@zacharyryder4080]

@@solutionseight ok thanks. Yeah I’ll look into maybe manual cpc.

[@jdrumm4325]

I’m running google ads now on max clicks for 3 weeks. What whould you recommend max clicks or max conversions. I have no data in account . How long do u run max clicks for. I’m not getting any conversions from these clicks. Should I just change my bid strategy now and if so, what to?

[@motivate_k3766]

please talk about future of Google Ads? Where will be digital marketing in 5-10 years

[@solutionseight]

I think in about 5 years or so, google will be fully automated with 80% efficiency. But, the ones who need to extract the most out of their campaigns, there will always be ways to think outside the box of automation.

[@akashloomba3661]

Thanks for the video.you guys are making some amazing content.I always used to start with ecpc but switched a relatively new campaign(just 5 conversions) to target CPA.I gave Google enough room and put target to $200.Now I am getting conversions at like $50-$70 daily.How aggressively should I decrease my target cpa from 200 to let's say 70?looking forward to your suggestions and again thanks for some amazing content.

[@solutionseight]

Hi Akash, start your decrease gradually. This ensures that you are giving Google enough time to test and learn!

[@chainlift.official]

If the account is 100% new, with zero conversion data in the account whatsoever, should you start with Target CPA?

[@solutionseight]

Start with Maximize conversions first, but, limit your spend so that if the CPAs are too high in the beginning, you are not blowing too much budget while waiting for conversion frequency to increase.

[@geodigitalmarketing9747]

Love it guys. Gold mine of information. The tCPA and Manual CPA comparison was pure gold.

[@solutionseight]

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching.

[@kiranmehta4128]

With Target CPA and Target ROAS being restrictive would using exact match keywords make it even more restrictive? Should we look to use broad or phrase match keywords if we are using one of these 2 bidding strategies?

[@7nauris]

Seeing as Target CPA is no longer present as a bidding strategy, what is the way to go now for a small budget eCommerce campaign?

[@solutionseight]

Target CPA is still present as a bidding strategy. It's manual CPC that'll be going away soon. With a small budget ecommerce campaign you can still use maximize conversions at first and then transition to target CPA or target ROAS when you have enough data.

[@heidishannon8182]

Question guys - do you always run your campaigns to Sales or Lead Gen - do you ever just use website traffic? Thanks in advance.

[@bojansamardzija5569]

Hi John, When you choose Maximize Clicks, you are essentially telling Google to get you as many clickers as possible. Google knows who clickers and buyers are so if you tell it you want clickers, they will give you clickers. I A/B tested Maximize Clicks vs. Target CPA with exactly the same ads, keywords, settings... and Target CPA always outperformed. My hypothesis is that if you want conversions, go with conversion centric goals because Google knows who converts and who doesn't. I agree with you about mostly using Target CPA. What are your thoughts?

[@johnmoran5680]

That’s very true. Maximize clicks favors a lower placement so they are more exploratory and less urgent users clicking on the ads.

[@solutionseight]

Thanks for watching, Bojan! :)

[@joaopedrof.soares2727]

Hello, first of all I would like to thank you for this magnificent content! I want to start advertising on Google Ads because I currently only use Facebook Ads for sales of infoproducts and physical products as an affiliate. The doubt is; Do I start advertising with Maximize Conversions or Maximize Clicks? My goal is to sell and I don't have any data on the account! Having answered that, I also intend to start Discovery campaigns, as they use the same idea of ​​Facebook creatives and I identify more with this type of campaign. Should I start with target CPA or maximize conversions? remembering that I don't have data Every video I've watched about this has said that we should always start by maximizing clicks, but I wonder if that's really true as my goal is to sell and not disqualified clicks.

[@etiennedayer5938]

So for a brand e-commerce shop, maximize conversions is the way to go, right ?

[@solutionseight]

That will depend on a couple of things. By default, Google will set a 200% ROAS if you set it maximise conversion value. If your account is not achieving that, then your campaign will not spend. Then you change the conversion objective to maximise conversions. If your account (if it has enough data) Google will recommend a ROAS for you, set that. If you have little to no data, set it to maximise conversions.

[@piecesofme8531]

Hmm, in the beginning, when we have no conversion data, wouldn't it be cheaper to just do Manual CPC (or, as John suggests for the future, Max Clicks with CPC Bid) and target long-tail buyer keywords that are affordable, rather than go straight to tCPA? It seems that the name of the game is to feed Google the data that it needs, and then the Google AI can take the baton and run the distance without much help.

[@solutionseight]

TCPA gives a sort of protection net over Manual CPC in case your campaigns go haywire. If you do know your long-tail keywords will for sure convert, then that's really great! For most, especially at the start of the campaign, when you don't know necessarily which keywords are going to convert; for manual, you will need to start adding the negative keywords, but for TCPA, Google will just start to shy away from those keywords and not spend as much there. So, they're both feeding data to Google at the end of the day, but TCPA will just have more protection and spend less money to get there compared to Manual CPC. Check out 33:55 in the video!

[@dana-stanescu-mentor]

Does this still apply considering your latest videos?

[@solutionseight]

Some things in this video apply and some don't! We will keep posting updated videos so stay tuned!

[@etiennedayer5938]

So for a brand e-commerce shop, maximize conversions is the way to go, right ?

[@kinvestornetwork]

Very interesting and insightful chat. Is your recommendation now to just completely ignore Manual CPC and use Target CPA to start a campaign as described here?

[@solutionseight]

Not really. We start with Target CPA first, and, if we can not get it to work, we choose a different bidding strategy based on performance. Its always fluid, but, now we just start with Target CPA first.

[@VijayKumarIM]

Absolute Value Bomb!

[@nzm617]

John, Any concerns using tCPA for a campaign with somewhat low daily budget compared to the target CPA (e.g. an existing campaign using max conversions with an $80 budget converting at around a $50 CPA)? Thanks in advance.

[@solutionseight]

So, for low daily spends, I would still use Max Conversions. tCPA usually does best with more than 20 weekly conversions and it may atrophy too much if you tried to use it on a campaign with low weekly conversions.

[@sheronda1731]

As always, thanks guys!! The info is always incredibly informative & helpful!

[@solutionseight]

Glad you found it helpful! Thanks for watching, Sheronda :)

[@tinlay9386]

How to tou scale target cpa without increasing it?

[@solutionseight]

Have you tried adding more budget first?

[@cryosystemsrefrigerationeq7769]

awsome

[@solutionseight]

Thanks!

[@eduardofernandes9881]

Thank you John!

[@davisberzins9786]

How many conversions should I get to change strategy to CPA?

[@solutionseight]

Good threshold is 30 conversions per week with a few weeks worth of conversions.

[@ch9osx96]

So you start fresh with Tcpa? You dont graduate to it after the first month to get conversion data so it can optimize to that thing?

[@solutionseight]

It truly depends on the campaigns and how much history is in the account, either strategy could work.

[@patientmagnet5348]

Ouch -- I tried this with a local dentist and set the target CPA to $100. We started getting $40 clicks ($150/day budget) and our average CPC went up 400%. Any thoughts on this?

[@solutionseight]

Have you started to lower the CPA goal? The key is to start a new campaign high, not change an existing one FYI. When you start high, you need to start lowering the CPA as the conversions come in daily.

[@sheronda1731]

Ok, so if I have an old smart shopping campaign running- max conv - should I delete it & create a new Target CPA campaign?