Google Ads Bidding Strategies EXPLAINED for 2023

One of the hardest things to get right in your Google Ads campaign is your Bidding Strategies

This is because getting your campaign bidding strategy wrong will have the biggest effect to your total campaign & account performance.

Yes, that’s right, it’s more important than your ad copy, images, and product titles! This is because your bidding strategy affects how Google approaches your bidding, and ultimately this is where you tell Google what you want your account to achieve. 

Currently, there are 3 main automated bidding strategies being:

• Target Impression Share
• Maximise Conversions
• Maximise Conversion Value

Today I am going to focus on Maximise Conversions & Maximise Conversion Value, which both have a targeted option with:

• Maximise Conversions having the ability to be upgraded to Target CPA
• Maximise Conversion Valve having the ability to be upgraded to Target ROAS

You need to be very careful when you set up a Target CPA of Target ROAS bidding strategy as if you set the target too early or too high, it can negatively impact the performance of your campaign.

Before we go any further, there are some core principles that you need to take into account

1. Wait until you have at least 30 conversions before you engage a maximise conversions or conversion value strategy

This is because they way that these strategies work is that take into account indexed data from your competitors and also your the conversion data in your own account. 

So you first need to build up your own conversion data so that Google’s AI has an understanding of the best:

• Search terms
• Audiences
• Demographics
• And days of the week, times of the day 

That generates the most conversions for you.

This Account data brings us to the next point is that when you add in a Max Conversions or Max Conversion Value bidding strategy it is.

2. Highly likely that your CPC will increase

This is because when a user completes a search term who is part of a high-converting audience or demographic, Google’s AI will become more aggressive in its bidding to increase the chances of winning the auction, to get the click and the sale.

You will also get situations where Google may spend double your daily budget.

For example, if your conversion history shows that you get 50% of your conversions on Fridays & Saturdays, don’t b surprised if you Google spends 50% of your weekly budget on those 2 days.

This brings us to our last point that

3. Bidding Adjustments should only be changed after you have reviewed 90 days of data

This is because Google’s data looks back around 90 days, so you want to make sure that any target ROAS or CPA that you lock in needs to be in line with the previous 90 days of data with you checking over the previous 30, 60 & 90 days

This process of checking your bidding strategy every 90 days is one of the most important actions in my Google Ads eCommerce Optimization checklist, which not only lists every optimisation action you need to complete for your Google Shopping & Performance Max campaigns, but it also lets you know exactly when to complete them.