How Often Should You Change Bidding Strategies for Google Ads in 2023?

May 30, 2023

Implementing a smart bidding strategy can have a significant impact on optimizing your Google Ads campaign. Strategies such as Maximise Conversions or Maximise Conversion Value provide a powerful way to maximize conversions or revenue within your allocated budget.

To further enhance your results, you can incorporate Target CPA or Target ROAS goals. However, the question arises: How often should you change bidding strategies? In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of smart bidding and discuss the optimal timing for introducing and modifying these strategies.

Understanding Smart Bidding Strategies:

Smart bidding strategies, such as Maximise Conversions and Maximise Conversion Value, allow you to convey your objective to Google, aiming to achieve the highest number of conversions or revenue within your designated budget.

For example, with a $50 daily budget, you instruct Google to obtain as many conversions as possible within that limit. Google, using its data, optimizes your campaign by focusing on factors like search terms, users, days, hours, devices, and locations that have the highest probability of generating conversions at the lowest cost.

Effects on CPC and Daily Spend:

Implementing smart bidding strategies can lead to noticeable changes in your campaign data. Here's why:

  1. Impact on CPC: It's essential to understand that your cost-per-click (CPC) may increase due to the need to secure top ad positions for increased conversion potential. This means you might have to bid higher. Although an increased CPC may initially seem concerning, it's crucial to focus on the number of conversions rather than just the CPC itself. Consider this scenario: Would you prefer 10 clicks at $1 each, resulting in 1 conversion, or 5 clicks at $2 each, resulting in 3 conversions? Both cases involve spending $10, but the latter yields three times the conversions. Therefore, the key metric to focus on is the number of conversions.

  2. Fluctuations in Daily Spend: When you set a daily budget, Google treats it as a monthly budget, which can lead to significant daily spend fluctuations. For instance, if Google determines that Monday to Wednesday provides the highest likelihood of conversions, it may spend $15 to $20 each of those days, and then allocate a lower budget of $3 to $6 for the remaining days. This monthly budget approach helps Google optimize your campaign throughout the month based on the expected conversion opportunities.

When to Introduce and Change Bidding Strategies:

Before diving into smart bidding strategies, it is advisable to accumulate at least 30 conversions in your Google Ads account. This milestone allows Google to gather sufficient data to identify the most effective searches, users, days, and other variables that drive conversions specifically for your account.

Although Google may recommend using Max Conversions or Conversion Value before reaching this threshold, leveraging your own data alongside industry data tends to yield better results.

Optimizing your Google Ads campaign through smart bidding strategies is a powerful way to maximize conversions or revenue. By implementing strategies like Maximise Conversions or Maximise Conversion Value, and incorporating Target CPA or Target ROAS goals, you can drive better results.

Remember, it's important to be patient with fluctuations in CPC and daily spend, as these changes are intended to maximize conversions within your budget. Start with at least 30 conversions before adopting smart bidding strategies to leverage your own data for superior campaign performance.