It’s not always easy to make the right choice when it comes to bidding strategies on Google Ads. While Smart Bidding allows you to take advantage of the power of Google’s machine learning, there’s a first time for everything: without campaign history, machine learning can do almost nothing for you. And in order to launch an effective campaign for your business, some bidding strategies make more sense than others. And often, it’s the “Target Impression Rate” and “Maximize Clicks” strategies that advertisers are most interested in. Should you start with the former or the latter? Which strategy might work best for you?
What about bidding strategies based on impressions and clicks?
Google Ads offers many different bidding strategies. These include impression-based bidding and click-maximizing bidding.
– The “Target Impression Rate” bidding strategy offered by Google Ads allows you to automatically set the bids to show your ad in the absolute top position. This can be at the top of the page or anywhere on the Google search results page.
– The “Maximize clicks” strategy ensures that as many clicks as possible are delivered within budget. This strategy is available in standard form, in a single campaign, or as a bid portfolio strategy for multiple campaigns.
What are your goals? What exactly are you looking for?
If you’re looking to make a name for yourself, the “Target Impression Rate” bidding strategy will enable you to benefit from Google’s virtually infinite pool of qualified potential customers ready to take action.
However, if you’re primarily looking to convert, wouldn’t the real issue be the quality of the traffic? What’s more, it’s important to bear in mind that Google also wants to make as much money as possible. The consequence? First and foremost, it wants to get as many clicks as possible. So the better your ads perform, the more clicks you’ll get, and the better Google will tend to rank you.
The best strategy: the right audience
In short, it’s all a question of organization: first and foremost, find the right ads for the right people, to get the best possible click-through rate. If you haven’t yet determined your personas, now’s a good time to do so. Only then will Google position those same ads strategically, which will only increase the impression rate.
As is often the case, the prerequisite for a good bidding campaign is sufficient preparation, thanks to accurate demographic data, but also a good knowledge of Google’s affinity audiences, your market’s audiences, and so on.
