For home services businesses like yours, Google Ads pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are an integral part of a successful digital marketing strategy—an effective way to drive traffic and leads to your website with targeted advertisements. With PPC, advertisers create ads and bid on specific keywords. Then, when users search for those keywords, the ads are displayed alongside the search results. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad. As the search engine results page (SERP) has evolved, Google has developed and introduced various bidding strategies, each with its own pros and cons. How successful each approach may be depends on several factors, including an individual business's goals and paid search strategy. Keyword bidding is constantly evolving, which is why it’s important to work with the right team. You need advocates who not only understand your business but also understand the technicalities of keyword bidding.

One such strategy is automated bidding, a feature available on Google Ads that allows you to set bids based on your goals, such as increasing clicks, improving visibility, and maximizing conversions, as opposed to manual bidding, where you set the maximum bid amount based on your entire ad group, individual keywords, and/or placements. With manual bidding, you have more control, but it also takes more time and effort to create, adjust, and maintain your bidding strategy. On the other hand, when you use an automated bidding strategy, Google’s algorithm automatically finds an optimal bid for your ads based on your budget and targets. Different automated bidding strategies can help you improve ad performance, increase website traffic, or maximize conversions (leads). Two of the most popular options are Target CPA and Maximize Conversions. Target CPA (cost per action) uses past data to set bids for each auction, with the ultimate goal of hitting a chosen cost per acquisition, while Maximize Conversions focuses on driving as many conversions as possible within a daily budget. It’s important to note that gathering the maximum number of leads can mean significantly increasing your CPL, which isn’t always the best option.

Automated bidding has many pros: It can be a great tool to drive lead flow, help keep cost-per-lead (CPL) down, and free up time and energy that would otherwise be used on manual bid adjustments. It can help improve the efficiency of ad campaigns overall and increase ROI. Putting bidding in Google’s hands means access to their algorithm and insights that outsiders don’t have; in our experience, we’ve seen results indicating that Google favors companies that use their automatic bidding strategies. If your company has the budget for it, automatic bidding can be a very effective strategy.

However, when implementing a PPC strategy that includes automated bidding, there are a few caveats to consider as well. Ultimately, it takes power out of your hands and gives it to Google. Automated bidding can lead to less control over ad campaigns and less transparency in the bidding process. Additionally, for those with smaller ad budgets, automatic bidding might not be the best strategy. Budget constraints can limit the system’s ability to make necessary adjustments in real time to compete effectively in bidding auctions.

Here at Coalmarch, we’ve found that automated bidding works best when it’s one segment of an overall strategy. In other words, you can’t just hand the bidding process off to Google and hope for the best; automated bidding does not guarantee success on its own. Other key factors, including ad quality, landing page optimization, campaign structure, and more, play crucial roles in achieving peak performance. With all of that in mind, when we craft PPC strategies for our clients, automated bidding plays a small but crucial part. Our team looks at goals, budget, competition, etc. and creates a customized, unique bidding strategy based on each client’s unique needs. We also constantly monitor and evaluate so that we can adjust campaigns as necessary. Utilizing automated bidding helps free up time for our team to invest in each client’s account and focus on moving the needle in other ways.

All in all, automated bidding can be a great tool for streamlining your PPC campaign, depending on your ultimate goals. It offers many opportunities to test and optimize an effective bid strategy that can bring in more conversions and improve ROI. As the digital landscape continues to evolve and rely more on automated learning machines, automated bidding strategies will become more prevalent, and it will become increasingly important to partner with a team like Coalmarch – a team that will design the right bidding strategy for your company’s specific goals. 

Ready to learn more? Let’s talk about how Coalmarch can help your company grow with our data-driven marketing platform. Schedule a consultation today!