You may opt to set bid limits when you’re getting started or are in a highly competitive sector, but keep these tradeoffs in mind as you evaluate performance.
Note that bid limits are only used in Search Network auctions and only available for portfolio bid strategies.
Budget Constraints – Ensure Enough Fuel
If you’re using a target ROAS, make sure your budget isn’t constrained. Otherwise, it’s like trying to drive a long distance with very little gas. You won’t get very far.
A restrictive budget can limit the system’s ability to participate in valuable auctions and achieve your desired return. The system needs a sufficient budget to effectively optimize for your target ROAS.
More Optimization Tools
Use these additional tools to help you optimize your value-based bidding campaigns:
Bid Simulators
These simulators allow you to experiment with different ROAS targets and see the estimated impact on key metrics like conversions and cost when adjusting your targets.
Bid Strategy Report
This report provides insights into your campaign performance over time. It helps you understand how your bids are performing, diagnose any unusual fluctuations, and identify areas for improvement.
The conversion value delay shows how long it takes for customers to convert. This amount of time is the recent period to exclude when evaluating performance, as some conversions may still be reported later.
This also is where you’ll find the “Actual ROAS” metric, which represents the actual ROAS that this strategy was able to achieve. Keep in mind that small fluctuations in performance are normal.
Performance Planner
Forecast target and budget scenarios across your campaigns.
Performance Planner simulates relevant ad auctions over the last seven to 10 days, including variables like seasonality, competitor activity, and landing page.
It also includes conversion delay estimates for Search and Performance Max impact estimates.
Portfolio Bidding & Shared Budgets
These features enable you to allocate spend across a group of campaigns. They can be especially useful when using a target ROAS since a shared budget will automatically reallocate any underused budget to budget-capped campaigns.
Only apply shared budgets to campaigns that share the same goal (e.g., don’t have campaigns with different targets or bidding strategies sharing a budget).
Also, note that shared budgets can’t be applied to campaigns that are part of an experiment.
Embracing The Journey
Optimization is an ongoing process.
As your business evolves and your understanding of your customers deepens, revisit your conversion values to ensure they still accurately reflect the worth of each lead.
Adding “value” to your advertising strategies will allow you to go beyond customer (or lead) acquisition costs, focusing on driving return in your campaigns.
You’re now equipped with the knowledge and tools to bid to value.
By focusing your budget on finding the leads that align with your goals, you can drive meaningful results for your business.
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