Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 34 - Changing bid strategy

There are a dozen different bid strategies in Google Ads. While picking the right bid strategy for your campaign can be a challenge, knowing when to change your bid strategy can be an even bigger challenge. 

And what should you change it to? And how should you go about changing it? Let's get into it. 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.

This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 34: Changing Bid Strategy. 

Our first question today comes from Hypeless Marketing Kyle Coats on TikTok, and they ask, after 30 in 30, would you switch over bid strategies using an experiment or not? 

Not.

Let's explain. What is 30 in 30?

My advice and prevailing wisdom about Google Ads is that you need at least 30 conversions in 30 days for Smart Bidding to work, so an average of about one conversion per day.

If you're on a Maximize Conversions bid strategy and you're averaging one conversion per day and the results are good, meaning it's at or near your desired CPA, then I recommend switching to Target CPA. 

You can set your Target CPA at your actual CPA for the last 30 days. So, let's say your actual CPA for the last 30 days has been $24. When you set your Target CPA, you want to set your target at $24. Then, you give it 5-7 days to stabilize, depending on your budget. 

After that, you can adjust your CPA target in 10-20% increments, if needed. So, let's say your CPA has been $24, but you'd like it to be $20. Don't just set your Target CPA at $20. Start with $24, let it stabilize, make sure that in your first week using Target CPA you're still getting about one conversion a day and you're still averaging about a $24 CPA. Then from there, maybe move it to $22. Give it a week, maybe two weeks. Make sure it stabilizes and achieves that, and then move it on down to $20. 

I would not run an experiment because when you run an experiment, what's actually happening behind the scenes is Google Ads is creating two separate campaigns, meaning you need sufficient budget and learning for two campaigns. 

If you have a large budget and your current bid strategy is not driving desired results, then running an experiment may be a cost-effective way to test a new one. For example, if you want to test Target ROAS vs. Target CPA and you have quite a large budget - hundreds or thousands of dollars a day - you're not getting the results you want, that could be good.

But when you're on a Maximize bid strategy, changing your budget actually changes your bids. So I wouldn't use an experiment when testing a Maximize bid strategy like Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value, since what it's effectively going to do is cut your budget in half, split it across your control campaign and your experiment campaign, and as a result, each of those campaigns is going to have to adjust your bids downward. 

If you want to change bid strategies, and your current results are at or near where you want them to be, then just go ahead and make the change.

If you're not achieving the results you want, well, we're going to dive into that later in this episode. 

Before we get to our next question, Inside Google Ads is now exclusively sponsored by Optmyzr, the ultimate platform for managing Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and paid social ads through automation layering.

All month long, Optmyzr is releasing a series of global studies unveiling key findings around Optiscore, Ad Strength, Performance Max, bidding strategies, and what they mean for your Google Ads account. 

Some of this stuff is jaw-dropping and completely counterintuitive. You definitely want to check this out as it may completely change the way you manage your ad campaigns. 

If you want to learn more, sign up to be notified as each new Optmyzr study goes live. The link is in the episode description. And if you want to test Optmyzr for yourself, just like I have, they offer a free full functionality trial.

Our next question comes from The Magnet Mommy on TikTok, and they ask, what if my Maximize Click is getting impressions and clicks but no conversions, and I want to move towards Maximize Conversions? 

So before you change your bid strategy, if you're not getting the results you want, you need to try to fix that first. The bid strategy could fix it for you, but it most likely won't. 

In this circumstance, we are getting impressions and clicks, but no conversions. Let's find the source of the problem. There are four main culprits: low volume, wrong traffic, poorly converting website and conversion tracking issue. 

Let's start with website. What is your conversion rate from other sources? You can find this in Google Analytics or your online store dashboard. If you're in Google Analytics, conversions are called key events now. If you're an ecommerce business, you can also look at the ecommerce section of Google Analytics, but go there and find out, is your direct traffic converting? Is your organic search traffic converting? 

Depending on your top organic keywords and the keywords you're using in Google Ads, you might expect a similar conversion rate in Google Ads to your organic Google traffic. So if you find that you're not getting conversions from other sources either, well, that's the source of your problem. It's not a Google Ads problem. And if you find that you are, but your conversion rate is really low, that might bring us to our next one, low volume. 

Let's say you saw that your conversion rate from other sources on your website is 1%. So if you've gotten clicks and impressions from your campaign, but you've only received 102 clicks so far, it may just be too soon. 

Remember, conversion rates are averages. So on average, we would only expect one conversion per 100 clicks with a 1% conversion rate. If you get to 300 clicks and still no conversions, maybe then we would start to worry about traffic quality. Or if you're only running a Brand campaign, we would expect a higher conversion rate, so I probably would get worried about that one if after 100 clicks, there were no conversions, but you’ve got to have enough volume to see results. 

That brings us to number three. If your website converts well and you've driven enough traffic to expect some conversions, but they're not there, you may have a conversion tracking issue. This can be trickier to diagnose, but checking your conversion summary in Google Ads under Goals is a good place to start. 

It's also possible you're facing an issue I saw in a coaching call recently. You could be tracking conversions in the account, but not in this specific campaign. So you would want to add the “All conversions” column to your campaign view, in addition to “Conversions,” And then you can add the segment for “Conversion action.” 

When you do those two things, you'll be able to see all the Google Ads conversion actions that have been driven by this campaign, regardless of whether those conversion actions are set to Primary or Secondary, or if you use an account-level goals or campaign-specific goal.

This stuff is confusing, right? 

Look at “All conversions,” at the segment for “Conversion actions,” and you'll be able to see everything. 

What happened for the client on this coaching call? It turns out when they set up the campaign, they had used a campaign-specific goal to only track phone calls from ads. So although phone calls from the website and lead forms from the website were set up as conversions in the account, this campaign wasn't tracking them. So it was good news; they actually were getting hundreds of conversions, and that was a simple fix going forward. 

Okay, the final issue could be traffic quality, meaning sending the wrong people to the website who are just not interested in what you offer. The best way to diagnose this, for Search at least, is to check your Search Terms Report. Remember, your keywords just give Google an idea of the types of searches you want to advertise on. Your Search Terms Report, under Insights and Reports, shows you the actual user searches you advertised on, and the results there can sometimes be shocking, especially if you've never looked at it before. 

If you need a refresher on keyword match types and how that works, by the way, you can check out Episode 14 of this podcast. 

And there you have it. If your campaign is getting impressions and clicks, but no conversions, your issue could be that you don't have enough traffic yet, you're getting the wrong traffic, your website doesn't convert well, or there's a conversion tracking issue. If you tried all of that and still can't figure it out, just switch from Maximize Clicks to Maximize Conversions.

In Episode 15, I shared why I usually start new campaigns on Maximize Conversions rather than Maximize Clicks, and perhaps that's the jolt your campaign will need to get into shape for you. 

Our final question today comes from adwordsnur on Instagram, and they ask, could you clarify one thing? If I check the last 7 days, it's showing a CPA of $25. But if I check the last 30 days, it's showing a CPA of $3.50. So which one should I use for my target CPA? My campaign bidding is Maximum Conversion. 

So to summarize, we're on Maximize Conversions. We want to switch to Target CPA, but our CPA has changed a lot over the last month. Over the last 30 days, it's been good. Over the last 7 days, I'm assuming here, not so good. 

So either, adwordsnur, there's been a big change in your campaign during the 30-day period, or your conversion volume is really low. Like, maybe you were getting a bunch of conversions towards the beginning of the month, but just one conversion in the last seven days. That can really swing your numbers. Or maybe you added some negative keywords so your traffic got more relevant more recently, but also more expensive CPCs. This can happen. 

So that 30 in 30 rule, you want at least 30 conversions in 30 days for Smart Bidding to work. And by the way, Maximize Conversions is still Smart Bidding. You want stable results. So getting 20 conversions one day, 10 conversions the next, and then no conversions for 28 days, doesn't really count as 30 in 30. We want on average about one conversion a day. It's okay to get 3 in one day and none for two days and then 1 the next day and 1 the next, but relatively stable before switching bid strategies to something like Target CPA. 

Based on the volatility in these results, it sounds like this campaign would not be ready to switch yet and should stay on Maximize Conversions.

In general, though, when you do switch from a Maximize strategy to a Target strategy, whether you're going from Maximize Conversions to Target CPA or Maximize Conversion Value to Target ROAS? I recommend using your last 30-day CPA as your target CPA or your last 30-day ROAS as your Target ROAS. 

Changing your bid strategy in Google Ads is one of the key levers you have to improve performance because your bid strategy is how you communicate to Google what you're looking to achieve. But your campaign has to be ready for the switch. Otherwise, you could pick a new bid strategy and completely tank your results. 

Bid strategies are the most popular Google Ads topic you ask me about on social media, which is why this is the fourth Inside Google Ads episode about bidding. You can check out Episode 1 for more about picking the right bid strategy in the first place, Episode 15, which is all about Maximize Conversions bidding, and Episode 26 about bidding without conversions. 

Today's Insider Challenge is this. You're on a Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy and you're getting 28 conversions a month, on average. It's been that way for a few months and you can't increase the budget. You're hitting your CPA goal, but you are not hitting your ROAS goal, not even close. What do you do? Do you change the bid strategy? If so, to what? Or do you keep the current bid strategy? 

You can participate by sending me your response to this challenge or any episode’s challenge. The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real-life Google Ads problem solving.

Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram.

The last episode's challenge was this. You have a new client and you take over management of a Google Ads account that is using a SKAG strategy, single keyword ad groups, thousands of them: thousands of ad groups, thousands of keywords, thousands of ads. Your client came to you not because the account wasn't performing well, but because they didn't like the agency. They said they had poor communication. The SKAG is working. Do you keep the existing SKAG structure or do you gather the data and build a new, modern structure? What's your reasoning?

To be clear, as with all Insider Challenges, there is no right or wrong answer. For me, personally, I would not keep the SKAG because in order to keep it working well, it's going to be so time consuming and we're not making use of the benefits of automation, which is the whole reason I don't like SKAG. I did a whole episode about it last episode, Episode 33. 

I will absolutely use the data about what ad assets are performing well and which search terms. I will probably use a lot of the same building blocks, so to speak, but I will use them to build one big, strong, wide tower rather than a whole bunch of skinny little hills, to continue the building block metaphor. It's going to be able to use the best of Google, like Smart Bidding, and it's going to be so much easier to manage when we have a more consolidated, automation-friendly structure. 

Now, since I know communication was an issue, I would over-communicate to this client. I'd rather they tell me to shut up and leave them alone rather than them having to reach out to me and ask how things are going, because we might see a drop in performance initially when we're changing structure, and what client likes that?

So over-communication, especially at the start. Weekly check-ins. I’d probably even make this client a Looker Studio dashboard so they can see what's going on without having to log into the account, because the last thing I want is to see my client's name in the change history. 

What do you think? Would you consider the same things or something different? 

Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.

Sign up to get the Inside Google Ads episode transcripts delivered to your inbox each week, for free.