Best Bidding Strategies
- Thread starter miguel82
- Start date
I am using bing PPC ads campaign right now. Normally I set add keywords and set the bid to 10 cents to see my ads are running or not. If they get approved by bing then I usually see which keywords are getting the impression. If I am satisfied with the impression and after calculating EPC then this is the time to increase by bid. Otherwise, it will remain the same.
my streategy is put lowest cpc, see next hour is it running or not? if get impression good running. then see get click or not. i am always see next day, is good click with lowest cpc? if yes, keep on it. if not, try to add one point. it is very slow but very controlled. some ads get conversion. very good. but some ads failed ttooo. many ads get crazy click but no conversion with lowest cpc. arrrrrrggghhhh... changet the products. yes, very simple just patient
Interesting strategy guys.
What would you do if a keyword gets clicks and conversions but is losing money, would you reduce the bid or remove the keyword?
Also; those of you using Bing and Adwords do you pay any attention to the CTR of your keywords or just solely focus on ROI? To me, CTR can be very misleading ie. a good CTR may have a negative ROI and a bad CTR my have a positive ROI.
What would you do if a keyword gets clicks and conversions but is losing money, would you reduce the bid or remove the keyword?
Also; those of you using Bing and Adwords do you pay any attention to the CTR of your keywords or just solely focus on ROI? To me, CTR can be very misleading ie. a good CTR may have a negative ROI and a bad CTR my have a positive ROI.
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tom804
Active Member
That's true. At the end of the day all that matters is how much you've made as a profit. However I still rely on CTR as an indication of how well my current lander is performing. I also make note of the CTR for the actual offer lander as well.
Google AdWords reps will recommend that out of the gate, you go aggressive with your bids to build up click data as quickly as possible, then start adjusting your bids appropriately based on their conversion rates and profitability. Of course this means you're losing a good amount of money up front, and hoping you can bring the account overall to a profitable state as soon as possible.
If you ask them to build some starter campaigns for you to get you going, you'll see that they also start with small but targeted keyword lists all set to phrase or broad match - usually three and four word phrases - not totally long tail, but not super high volume either. They will also include some obvious negative keywords that you don't want to be showing up for too.
Click Through Rate is important in terms of Quality Score so you need to pay attention to it, otherwise you will end up having to pay more to maintain a given position, because Google sees the response rates to your ad copy are poor, as well as perhaps your landing pages that you are sending the user too. They don't want low quality ads in their top spots, it makes them look bad, so they will keep charging you more and more until you're priced out of those top spots and can no longer afford them. Click through rates are also going to affect your overall estimated volume further down your sales funnel, so if you are doing projections on your spend, clicks, conversions and profitability, and you happen to launch some new ads which are performing bad, you will need to update your projections as a result.
As for calculating what I am willing to bid, I basically take the lifetime value of a sale minus whatever I want to make as a profit margin and multiply it times the conversion rate to give me a target cost per conversion, and then I back that into a maximum cost per click I can spend based on my conversion rates vs. clicks.
For high volume terms, I do this at the keyword level. For lower volume terms with not enough individual click data on their own, I will group them into buckets and come up with an overall average max CPC.
I also take into account the bid gap between what I am actually bidding vs. what my average CPC winds up being. So if I am bidding $5 and my average CPC is $2.25, I know my bid gap is $2.75. So if I can now spend up to $3 per click on that keyword, I will raise my Max CPC to $5.75 instead, maintaining that same Max CPC to Average CPC bid gap of $2.75.
For keywords getting little to no impressions and/or clicks, I will keep incrementally raising their bids by small amounts until they are either getting impressions and averaging around position one, or they are finally getting clicks and I can start using my previously mentioned bid strategies on them. There is no sense in continuing to raise a bid on a keyword if it's already averaging in position 1, even if it's not getting any clicks.
Also, it's good practice to do some keyword pruning/pausing from time to time. If you've got keywords that are getting poor click through rates, as well as ads with poor CTR's, then you may need to pause these as they could be bringing the rest of your campaigns down overall.
If you ask them to build some starter campaigns for you to get you going, you'll see that they also start with small but targeted keyword lists all set to phrase or broad match - usually three and four word phrases - not totally long tail, but not super high volume either. They will also include some obvious negative keywords that you don't want to be showing up for too.
Click Through Rate is important in terms of Quality Score so you need to pay attention to it, otherwise you will end up having to pay more to maintain a given position, because Google sees the response rates to your ad copy are poor, as well as perhaps your landing pages that you are sending the user too. They don't want low quality ads in their top spots, it makes them look bad, so they will keep charging you more and more until you're priced out of those top spots and can no longer afford them. Click through rates are also going to affect your overall estimated volume further down your sales funnel, so if you are doing projections on your spend, clicks, conversions and profitability, and you happen to launch some new ads which are performing bad, you will need to update your projections as a result.
As for calculating what I am willing to bid, I basically take the lifetime value of a sale minus whatever I want to make as a profit margin and multiply it times the conversion rate to give me a target cost per conversion, and then I back that into a maximum cost per click I can spend based on my conversion rates vs. clicks.
For high volume terms, I do this at the keyword level. For lower volume terms with not enough individual click data on their own, I will group them into buckets and come up with an overall average max CPC.
I also take into account the bid gap between what I am actually bidding vs. what my average CPC winds up being. So if I am bidding $5 and my average CPC is $2.25, I know my bid gap is $2.75. So if I can now spend up to $3 per click on that keyword, I will raise my Max CPC to $5.75 instead, maintaining that same Max CPC to Average CPC bid gap of $2.75.
For keywords getting little to no impressions and/or clicks, I will keep incrementally raising their bids by small amounts until they are either getting impressions and averaging around position one, or they are finally getting clicks and I can start using my previously mentioned bid strategies on them. There is no sense in continuing to raise a bid on a keyword if it's already averaging in position 1, even if it's not getting any clicks.
Also, it's good practice to do some keyword pruning/pausing from time to time. If you've got keywords that are getting poor click through rates, as well as ads with poor CTR's, then you may need to pause these as they could be bringing the rest of your campaigns down overall.
If you ask them to build some starter campaigns for you to get you going, you'll see that they also start with small but targeted keyword lists all set to phrase or broad match - usually three and four word phrases - not totally long tail, but not super high volume either. They will also include some obvious negative keywords that you don't want to be showing up for too.
Also, it's good practice to do some keyword pruning/pausing from time to time. If you've got keywords that are getting poor click through rates, as well as ads with poor CTR's, then you may need to pause these as they could be bringing the rest of your campaigns down overall
Also, it's good practice to do some keyword pruning/pausing from time to time. If you've got keywords that are getting poor click through rates, as well as ads with poor CTR's, then you may need to pause these as they could be bringing the rest of your campaigns down overall
I started a new campaign with Single Keyword Adgroups and noticed my CTR improved increasing my traffic no end. There is more grunt work creating ads etc but worthwhile.
I'm still trying to find a good bidding strategy, every time I think I'm going in a right direction I have a few bad days which set me back to square one. I've been setting my bids at CPA multiplied by average conversion rate to start for each keyword. Once the keyword has some clicks or conversions the bid will be re-evaluated and raised/lowered depending on the conversion rate with a adwords script.
I thought this was a good idea but then realised if I have a list of 2,000 keywords, it could be very costly finding the winning keywords.
Am I overcomplicating with scripts??
This is the strategy I use for RTB traffic networks
- Minimum bid RON campaign to collect data
- Use 1. to know where to create site-specific campaigns
- Use 2. to know where to create site-specific + keyword targeted campaigns
Do you ever stop buying data? I have over 60 keywords which have a conversion in adwords, should I stop looking for more and just milk those or continue to look for more?
I always have my minimum bid campaign going because new sources get added to the networks constantly but I'll block duds for sure
I focus on 38 keywords
I focus on 38 keywords
How do you know what the minimum bid is? I've heard others say what ever it takes to get in pos 1-3 or on the first page, but surely it should be what ever it takes to get a click.
I've always thought the minimum bid should be based on an average conversion rate for the campaign.
I've always thought the minimum bid should be based on an average conversion rate for the campaign.
I'm buying through traffic networks on CPM and they set the minimums themselves
tom804
Active Member
I totally agree, I think the minimum bid must be that one that make you convert and win money. Sometimes you bid and you are not on positions 1-3 but you still making money perhaps the payout of the offer is too low to bid for 1-3.
good luck
good luck
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