AdWords Bidding Strategies

Whenever you start a new campaign, a big question you might wonder is how much you should pay per click.  

If you bid too low, then you don't get enough traffic.  And, if you bid too aggressively, then you might not get a high enough ROI.

The answer to what you should bid is it depends on your product and goals.

Here are some different sample scenarios:

*  You're just doing some testing.  In this case, you may want to test your offer and you're just using AdWords to drive quick traffic.  If this is the case, then you don't care as much about ROI.  But, what you do care about is getting the most targeted traffic.  As a result, you may bid agressively on your top keywords and possibly ignore less targeted ones.

*  The money is in the backend.  If you have a cheap front-end offer, then your goal might be to get as much traffic as possible coming-in the door.  If this is the case, then you may be willing to take a loss on the front-end product or service by bidding aggressively on a wide-range of keywords.

* Your main profit generator is the product being offered.  If this is the case, then you may limit the number of keywords you're bidding on and focus on optimizing them.

To be precise about how much you should bid, then you must know your conversion rates.  What percentage of traffic turns into buyers?  Get a basic idea of this by setting-up Google Analytics and using their "Goals" feature.  This gives you a ball-park of how much you can afford to spend.

As you go along, make sure Google conversion tracking is installed.  Then, adjust your bid prices based on the data that comes-in.  You can afford to bid more and drive more traffic from those keywords that perform the best.

Simply put, it's a numbers game.  The more you bid, the more traffic you get.  However, increased traffic isn't always quality.  Don't be afraid to test which keywords make you money and which ones don't.  You should also consider increasing your content network bids before bids on certain untargeted keywords.

Comments

[FloridaCNAonline.com]

Excellent way of laying things out in black and white. Thanks for the good advice and article!