← The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
Ranking Bid Strategies From Worst to Best (Episode 495)
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Foreign. Hello and welcome to the paid search podcast. My name is Chris and today I'm going to rank the worst to best Google Ads bid strategies so that you can make good decisions about how to manage your Google Ads accounts. I'm going to go through all of them, specifically search campaign bid strategies, because that's, that's really what matters here. That's what everybody cares about. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you, the number one bid strategy is going to surprise you. I'll leave it there, but I'm going to go through them. I'm going to make this a concise, focused episode and I'm going to jump right in after I tell you about optio.com PSP so Optio, if you haven't heard, is the best Google Ads management software out there, period. It can help you do more in a, in a short period of time than you can just getting things done right in the Google Ads interface. So what it is is a separate online software that you log in and you connect your Google Ads campaign or multiple campaigns and it gives you suggestions, optimization, hints, data. It feeds you information to make core decisions about improving your Google Ads account. This is critical because most people that are listening to a podcast like this or just trying to get more out of their Google Ads, they're trying to make clear concepts, concise decisions about how to improve their Google Ads campaigns. Well, that's, that's exactly what Optio does. The good news is you can try it right now. 2026 special offer, 28 day free trial. If you go to optio.com PSP that's O-P-T-E-O.com PSP and you can get a 28 day free trial. That's twice the time you would get if you signed up without that special URL. So go there, tell them you heard about it on the paid search podcast and check it out. I know you're going to like it. All right, let's get to it. Let's start with the basics. Bid strategies, as I'm sure nobody needs to be told, is the engine that runs your Google Ads account. There are multiple bidding strategies that you can choose from, and these bidding strategies decide how much you pay per click. Some you can decide exactly down to the penny how much you want to pay or how much you're willing to pay. And others you leave up to Google entirely. And others you kind of give it a suggestion, you give it a hint. All right, so I'm going to give my suggestion no matter who you are, no matter whether you're running E commerce lead generation branding campaign. I'm going to talk about. These are what I think are the best and worst Google Ads bid strategies for anyone and everyone. So let's go through it. Let's start with the worst. I think the absolute worst bidding strategy out there is maximize conversion value. So this is a bidding strategy where you choose to allow Google to place your bids with no cap, no bidding capacity is set at all. The sky is the limit. It can bid hundreds of dollars per click if it feels like it, and it does. And the only thing that it's supposed to do is get you higher value in your conversion purchases. So this is something that I think almost, I don't think anyone should use this, to be honest. I don't think anyone should use maximize conversion value. Why? Because it is essentially taking a credit card, a debit card, a bank account, and saying, hey, every time you feel like getting me a click that you think that you think will provide me value, dip into my credit card balance, dip into my bank account. Just scoop on out some money there, you know, every day. But don't take more than X amount every day. Right? Don't go over my budget. Right. It won't go over your budget, but it might get you 300% higher CPCs, your cost per click might go up significantly higher because it has, and that's going to be the reoccurring issue here about why I'm ranking these the way I'm ranking them. It has no boundaries. There are no boundaries. And for those of you who listen to the podcast long enough, you know, principle number nine, my ten principles of Google Ads is boundaries. You must have boundaries accounted for in your, in your account. And if you have no bidding structure boundary to say, you know, here's your goal, Google, here, here's a goal or here, here's a, here's a ceiling. Don't bid higher than this. Then it's going to do whatever it wants and it kind of just moves with the wind. It does good, it does bad. If, if you don't believe me and you have, and you have maximized conversion value as a bidding strategy, do this. Look at the past three months, six months, and compare it to the previous six months. And look at your keywords, look at your search terms. Notice how search terms, keywords just kind of move. There'll be three months where one keyword will just be spinning a ton of and then six months later that keyword will be spending almost nothing and another keyword will come up. And why? Well, it's because maximize conversion value can do whatever the heck it wants. It has no regulations, it has no bidding caps on it. Okay, so that's it. The absolute worst bidding strategy I think out there is maximize conversion value. No question. Sure it's automated, but automation without regulation, automation without bidding capacities, without some kind of boundaries is trash. It's trash. It's junk. Okay, so second worst bidding strategy out there is its brother, Maximize conversions. Maximize conversions is the second worst bidding strategy in Google Ads because the only reason it's any better, the only reason it's the second worst is because at least it has indiscriminate focus on just getting conversions. So maximize conversions is just going to get you as many conversions as possible. So it's going to try and rank up a whole bunch, as many as it can. It's going to maximize the total conversions that you get in a month, in a 14 day window, you know, whatever you're measuring. So why is it better? Well, because of this single factor, Maximize conversion value doesn't really know how much that purchase or lead quality is going to be. Okay, so maximize conversion value might see a certain search and assume, oh, this is a really valuable search. The past three purchases have been worth $300. I'm going to bid 150 because I know I can probably win and get a $300, $400 purchase from this. Based on the past, you know, three or four purchases. There is additional levels of, of, of variables that maximize conversion value will apply. That maximize conversions does not at least maximize conversions will try and just optimize to just move faster, just try and get you more indiscriminately. Whether it's a phone call, a purchase, a, a web form, a lead of some kind, it's just going to try and get you more. But why it's the second worst is because it is indiscriminate about what kind of leads it gets. Let's say you are selling a widget and you have a lead form on your website that says get, you know, get a free sample, something like that, and you're tracking that as a conversion and Google starts, it starts realizing that hey, if I get traffic that says free sample of widget, people will fill out this form and conversions go up, right? But for you as a business, that is extremely unprofitable for you because you know, you only convert about 10% of those, right? I mean, maybe it doesn't work or maybe, maybe you're a, you know, you're Doing a lead generation and Google's getting you a ton of phone calls directly from the ads. And most of these phone calls are unqualified because they've never been to your website. They're calling about the wrong things. They're totally unqualified. Maximize Conversions doesn't care. It tries to get as many conversions. Who cares what they are? Who cares what the quality is? It tries to get them to you as fast as possible, as many as possible. And screw your budget. It will, it will spend whatever it needs to spend per click. $100, $200 per click. I promise you, I have seen it endless times. I pull up the CPCs and the search terms and there it is. $75 click, $150 click, $300 click. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So that is why Maximize conversion value, maximize conversions are on the absolute bottom of the bidding strategy ranking. All right, so we're going to move to mid tier, mid tier strategies. I don't hate these, I don't love them. Let's start with the I don't hate you, but I'm close to hating you. Target Impression Share. Target Impression Share is at least somewhat accountable for what it does. It does one thing and I think it does it well, but it's almost useless for long term strategy. You know, actual application of things. It could be applied for very specific instances but in reality it's, it's not really appliable to many situations. It's not going to be a good long term strategy. What Target Impression Share does is you say, hey Google, I want you to maintain a 70% impression share for this campaign. Now the great thing is you can set a maximum CPC and you can set a certain position goal. But the only thing that makes this any better than some of the other ones is because it at least you have some boundaries in place and at least it has one thing it's trying to do and it's not trying to use algorithms and learning processes and jacking up your CPCs to crazy numbers. But believe me, it can still do that. I have seen Target Impression Share blow up people's budgets to, you know, really high cpc. So again it's on, it's on the lower tier of ranking. It's not something I recommend, but it does have its application. So that's why it is in the bottom three. So now, now we're looking at the top four. All right, so top four. The bottom of the top four is now something that I think is useful for a lot of people. But there is a Specific reason why I still put it at the bottom of the top four. That is Target roas, that is Target O R A S target return on ad spend. So that's marketing language there. But basically this is something that a lot of E commerce companies, people that sell widgets and products online, people that use shopping campaigns. It's, it's a great solution for a lot of them. But there is one thing that I find infuriating about this system and why it does not beat everything else, and that is because it's massive unpredictability. I like for my campaigns to follow my guidance. Whenever I change target ROAS from 150% target to a 200% target, I would expect it to react a certain way. Right. That's what's so valuable about Target ROAS is you say Google, I want to achieve a 200% return on ad spend. And if you Change it from 150 to 200 you would expect it to react a certain way. You would expect certain metrics to change in a predictable manner. As you might guess why it's the lowest of my top four. It doesn't. It does a really crappy job at that. I cannot tell you how many times I have adjusted my target ROAS in a fairly reasonable amount. 20% adjustment, 10% adjustment here and there. And the campaign goes the opposite direction. CPCS go up or CPCS go down or search impression share goes up or down or conversion rate drops tanks. That's not even the worst of it. Target roas is somehow mysteriously connected to my budget. And that's what really bugs me about it. The unpredictability that whenever I change my target it does not react in a predictable way. Although it does have boundaries. I love that it has a boundary. I love that I can tell Google achieve me a 200% return on ad spend and it will do its best to achieve that. But whenever I try and guide it, it acts like a toddler in a playroom. No, no, no. I want you to move this direction. It goes the opposite sometimes and it can be frustrating because you think you have control and you don't. You think you can control your CPCs, you think you can control your impression share and you don't. It very rarely does. What you want it to do is. And for that reason I have very little control, very little trust for it. But it does have a lot of applications. It could work great for a lot of people. Assuming you're okay with a steering wheel that doesn't work half the time. Okay. So what's the third highest? Third highest? Drum roll. Maximize Clicks. I cannot tell you how wonderful and easy to manage Maximize Clicks campaigns are because they react in a way that you would expect. It completely ignores conversions. So conversions are up, conversions are down. It doesn't care. It maintains a consistent CPC at a moderate, a moderate ad rank. It doesn't try and blow up your bids, it tries to keep them at a sustainable amount. It doesn't overreact if you drop or raise your budget. It is somewhat connected, but it doesn't go crazy. I find the way that Target ROAS does or any of these other conversion based bidding strategies are okay. So Maximize Clicks is great because it also has boundaries in place. It works because I can tell Google here's my maximum CPC that I want to pay and I put it in to the Maximize Clicks bidding strategy and I say don't spend, don't bid more than $5. And it respects that. Having respect from a Google Ads bidding strategy. The way I see it, there's only two that actually respect your wishes and I think maximize Maximize Clicks is actually in that very short list. There's one other, and I'll tell you what it is in a moment. But Maximize Clicks respects your boundaries. It respects your CPC capacities and it just runs. It doesn't overreact, it doesn't get crazy on you and start accelerating CPCs. It maintains consistency and you could even leave it with no boundaries. And it still does okay. It still does fine, mostly. So for that reason, the fact that it's easily left alone, the fact that it's easily something that doesn't need to be, you know, babysit and micromanaged and it just kind of does its thing, even if your conversions break or stop or double or triple or your budget goes up or down, it's going to maintain consistency. It has a boundary. Boom. Top three. Maximize Clicks is my number three. Okay, so here we go. There's only two left in my eyes. There's some other kind of gray area bidding strategies, but we're going to talk real world stuff. There's only two left. So it's now up to do I put target CPA as my number one bid strategy or do I put manual CPC as my number one bid strategy? Well, I'm going to tell you as soon as I remind you, Please check out optio.com PSP for a free trial. 28 day free trial. If you appreciate my years and years coming on a decade now of this Google Ads advice that I've been giving. If you don't want to sign up for their Software. At least 20. Tweet them, email them, reach out to them on social, something like that, and let them know, hey, I keep, keep supporting Chris in the paid search podcast. Thank you so much for doing that. Let them know that you at least you know about their software and they're hearing about it on this podcast. All right, so what is it? What is my number one? My number one is Target cpa. I told you, you might be surprised. My number one bidding strategy is Target cpa. So let's talk about Manual cpc, let's talk about why I love it, and then I'm going to tell you why I think Target CPA is just a little bit better. Okay, so Manual CPC is absolutely the second best Google Ads bidding strategy, period. No way. And it almost beats out Target cpa. I'll tell you why it doesn't. But let's sing the praises of Manual cpc. Manual CPC is the longest known bidding strategy ever. Nothing else that I've talked about has been around as long as Manual cpc. Manual CPC is OG original. It is. It's always been around. And what you do is you pick a bid, you put a number at the ad group or the keyword level and you tell Google, I want to pay $4.31 as a bid for this and it places you in that auction. And then you might pay $4.13. Really simple. You place the bids, you have micro control. You have absolute finite control of exactly what you want to achieve in Google Ads. There is nothing that can achieve that level of detail in Google Ads, period. You can never run a maximize conversions and get what you're expecting because Google's going to bid whatever the heck it wants on whatever keywords it decides. Manual cpc, I can run broad match keywords, phrase match keywords, exact match keywords, and have them bid at different levels of authority. I could bid my broad keywords at $2, my phrase keywords at $5, and my exact match keywords at $12. And it will therefore prioritize my traffic based on my keyword precision that I've chosen from the match types. You cannot duplicate that anywhere else. There's nothing practical that you can do with any other campaign that can achieve that. So because manual bidding has the most maneuverability, the most variability in its ability to achieve whatever you need from Google Ads, that makes it the number two Google Ads bid bidding strategy out there. Hands down. It is wonderful. It is unique, it is completely set apart from any other bidding strategy out there because you can do what you want. You can decide. You can start with 50 cent bids and see where that gets you. You can see if you can actually get clicks for 50 cents. I'll tell you, one of the most longest running, highest spending campaigns that I'd ever seen was running manual bids. And they had taken this strategy of, you know, having finite control over their CPCS to the max. And we're getting two cent clicks. They were playing, they were paying two pennies. They don't even make pennies anymore, guys, two pennies per click. And they were considering, you know, I was doing some, some consulting with them for a couple years and they were considering upping, upping their bid to three pennies. These guys had spent millions on Google Ads. I mean, forever, like 15 years, 18 years. It was an amazing account. No other system would have maintained a C.P.C. for nearly two decades like that. No other bidding strategy would ever be able to maintain the integrity of what they held to be most true was we want the cheapest bottom dollar traffic that we can get of this. And it did it. So why is it number two? Well, it's number two because it's, it requires a deeper understanding of how the Google Ads bidding strategies work, how the Ad Rank system works, how auction insights, search impression share position metrics. It requires a deeper understanding and therefore it can be completely screwed up. So that's why Target CPA is number one. Target CPA is number one because it does not. Unlike its sister Target roas, Target CPA maintains a bit more sanity. Whenever you Change something from $150 target CPA to a $200 CPA, it reacts in a predictable manner. If I were to go from 150 to $200 target CPA, my CPCs go up a little bit. My, my search impression share loss due to rank might go down a little bit. I would expect my positions to go up a little bit. Right. Predictable. I have, I don't have boundaries on cpc. I know that there's, there may be some ways to do that, but we're gonna leave all that off. But I don't have CPC boundaries. But for the most part, Google's going to play within the bounds of what I would expect. There absolutely are situations where Google might spend $150 in one click. And that makes me very upset when that happens. But the fact, and this is what brings Target CPA to my number one bidding strategy is because it doesn't have to be babysat, it doesn't have to be managed to the intensity to the consistency that that manual CPC does. Manual CPC can get out of hand. You know, you don't touch it for six months and you come back and you're losing positions, you're losing ranking because you know the markets changed, seasons have changed, things are different from summer to winter and your bids need to go up, they need to go down. New competitor comes in, you're being bit, you're being outbid on this one. You know, certain search terms have changed within the keywords and now you need to adjust it. Target CPA does that automatically and you have the ability to set a boundary of success. You can say I want you to achieve leads at $50 a lead, $100 a lead, $200 a lead, and it will try and do that. So that's my ranking. That is how I see all of the Google Ads bid strategies lining up. So I'm going to lay them out for you. Number one is Target CPA because it is automated, because it has boundaries, it has capacities of success that you can measure and react to and adjust and it reacts and moves how you would expect it to move. Second to Target CPA is manual cpc. I think it is absolutely superior in many ways to everything else. The only thing that makes it number two is because it requires micromanagement, but it can be astoundingly successful for someone who knows what they're doing and then a distant third, fourth, fifth from there. Next is maximize clicks, then Target roas. Then we start getting into the dumps with Target Impression Share. Maximize conversions is second to last with its buddy right beside it. Maximize conversion value in the dumps. Absolute trash bidding strategies. And I, I'm often, I'm shocked when I see high spending campaigns that are using maximized conversions to run, you know, accounts that are spending millions of dollars. It absolutely blows my mind the, the lack of control, you know, because I consider this to be bottom tier bidding strategy. So if you'd like to consider changing your bidding strategy, adjusting, getting more personal feedback on your Google Ads campaigns or having me manage your Google Ads account for you, say, Kris. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of Google Ads. I don't want to listen to your podcast anymore. I just want you to do it. Well, I can help you there. Chrishaefer.com to learn more about how I can manage or help you learn Google Ads yourself. Chrishaeffer.com to learn more about that. Otherwise I'll catch you guys here next week.