Leveraging Bid Modifiers for PPC Success

Leveraging Bid Modifiers for PPC Success

April 8, 2016 6:20 pm

Setting up a pay-per-click on advert account on a search engine requires lots of work. Consider this simplified guidelines, which might be typical of a brand new marketing campaign launch.

  • Campaign identify. Needs to be descriptive and match established naming conventions.
  • Campaign sort. Where will advertisements seem? Do you need to embrace search companions?
  • Budget. What are you prepared to spend day by day, weekly, month-to-month?
  • Ad rotation. This will have an effect on your advert testing and outcomes.
  • Delivery technique. Can be normal or accelerated.
  • Bid technique. Are you controlling the bids or letting the platform take some liberties?
  • Language concentrating on.
  • Location concentrating on.
  • Ad copy. Include at the least two variations in every advert group to make sure you’re testing for optimum messaging.
  • Keywords. Which match varieties will you goal?
  • Keyword bids. Tiered by specificity but in addition needing to satisfy sure thresholds for visibility.

And that’s simply to get a brand new marketing campaign out the door. Then the work begins. You’re spending actual cash and it’s essential present a return.

You ought to dig into your knowledge and begin making sensible optimizations. I might write a whole submit about leveraging the search question report to enhance key phrases, and easy methods to keep a strong advert testing technique. However, on this submit I’ll concentrate on bid modifiers since they are often mathematically derived and are instantly related to your monetary outcomes.

What Are Bid Modifiers?

Years in the past, for those who needed to bid in a different way for, say, California and Kansas you needed to create separate campaigns for these geographic areas. This was additionally the case should you needed totally different bids for cellular units versus desktop-laptop computer computer systems versus tablets. You had complete management over bids, however you additionally had a whole lot of nearly equivalent campaigns. Then Google introduced Enhanced Campaigns for AdWords.

Enhanced Campaigns have been met with a lot angst by the pay-per-click on advert business. This was primarily as a result of Google grouped tablets with desktop and laptop computer computer systems. In reality, most PPC professionals have based the advert outcomes totally different on tablets than on desktops and laptops.

Regardless, Enhanced Campaigns launched the idea of bid modifiers, which was useful. This allowed a person marketing campaign to switch bids for various system varieties or geographies with a easy bid adjustment starting from -one hundred pc to +300 %. So how are you going to leverage these bid modifiers for higher outcomes?

How To Calculate Bid Modifiers

Bid modifiers are useful as a result of they are often calculated with basic math. As an instance, think about this marketing campaign in AdWords.

Bid modifiers — for Devices, in this example — simplify AdWords campaign management. <em>Click to enlarge image.</em>

Bid modifiers — for Devices, on this instance — simplify AdWords marketing campaign administration. Click to enlarge picture.

Say the press-via price and common place of cellular is just like computer systems, however the fee-per-click on and conversion price are a lot decrease on cellular. This is producing giant distinction in value per conversion — cellular is less expensive. There are two totally different approaches right here.

  • Lower value per conversion on computer systems however keep cellular. Start by decreasing the default bids by, say, 20 %, which can scale back your bid costs on computer systems. Then you add a constructive bid modifier for cellular to counteract. If you began with a $B bid on computer systems, the brand new bid can be $zero.eighty. To modify the cellular bid again to $B.00, you want a 25 % improve.
  • Be extra aggressive on cellular because it has a fascinating value per conversion. Just calculate the rise spending degree based mostly on the aim. If computer systems are assembly the objective, calculate the bid modifier by dividing pc by cellular. If the price per conversion on computer systems was $N.sixty two and the fee per conversion on cellular was $H.seventy four, the maths can be $N.sixty two/$H.seventy four = 168 %. Therefore you’d place a +sixty eight% bid modifier.

If the price per conversion is greater on cellular than computer systems and also you need to scale back it, use the identical math as above and divide pc/cellular. This time you’ll get a proportion lower than one hundred. Subtract from one hundred and set as a destructive bid modifier.

Setting and Changing Bid Modifiers

Bid modifiers for Locations, Ad schedule, and Devices are within the Settings space of your AdWords’ campaigns. Here’s a pattern AdWords’ interface.

Bid modifiers for locations, ad schedule, and devices in the Settings area of your AdWords' campaigns.

Bid modifiers for places, advert schedule, and units within the Settings space of your AdWords’ campaigns. Click to enlarge picture.

The “Bid adj.” column will probably be seen by default and can seem as dashes for those who haven’t set it. Just hover the mouse over the worth till the cursor modifications and you may edit these inline.

Remember these ideas:

  • The vary is restricted. Minus one hundred pc on the low finish successfully turns one thing off; the utmost improve is 300 %.
  • Locations and advert schedule modifiers will solely present up in case you’ve focused them particularly.
  • You can modify something you’ll be able to goal, corresponding to state, county, DMA area, metropolis, and postal code.

In brief, bid modifiers are a strong approach to optimize a marketing campaign’s efficiency by system, location, or time of day with out having to create new campaigns. Simply calculate the distinction between your present metric and the aim and set modifiers accordingly.


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