Question

Search Ads - manual bidding | Do you raise your bid until your IS% is close to 100% or do you aim to have a little more IS% than your competitors in the auction report?  

Answer 1

Depends on you target CPA. that's your lighthouse. Think more strategically. Start from YOUR numbers!  

Comments

@disjoint410 So no need to bid higher than the competition or even aim for 100%, just focus on your CPA?  

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@disjoint410 And what if you‘re only getting a few conversions while your IS is, say 60%? Are you looking to improve the IS with higher bids or looking at other things like creative, landing page etc?  

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Yes, because at the end of the day you are doing lead generation, and your ultimate goal is to get leads under a certain cost per lead.  

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@discontent I would work on improving my LP's conversion rate, or the consistency between the search terms and the landing page (are people getting what they are searching for? ).  

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@disjoint410 So when are you using IS% and the auction report for campaign optimising?  

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@discontent I can use it in different contexts. The better situation that make sense for you is when you want to "defend" your brand image. Maybe there's a competitor bidding on you your trademark, and you want to appear at the very first position just for a sake of of prominence on the customers' eye. Well, in that case, I would optimize by abs. top IS.  

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@disjoint410 So other than that IS% has nothing to do with bidding? I think I’ve been misinformed for a long time and used manual bidding like automated bidding for top position  Thank you for this insight!  

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@disjoint410 But I would want to bid as much that I’m on first page, right? Only not perse in top or absolute top position?  

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Yes, it's related to bidding. the more you bid the higher the chance that you win an auction, right? The point is that you must be driven by numbers not just by, let me say ego. If your priority is to make paid advertising profitable, you need to buy for a certain amount and you expect another amount in return. that's the point.  

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@disjoint410 So to clearify: I bid as high as is possibly to win the auction as long as the CPA is still profitable?  

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Exactly, that's at least the principle behind.  

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@disjoint410 Somehow I’ve always thought that conversions exists mainly in the first 3 top positions, so I’ve always raised max CPC to get there - hoping the CPA would lower in the end by getting more conversions. I guess that’s not a good ‘tactic’ then  

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@discontent do you know why it's wrong, especially nowadays? Because my SERP is different than yours. In fact Google get rid of the position metric.  

Answer 2

What's your main goal? I have some markets we're up near 100% and others closer to 50%, but both are fine as we're getting good quality leads at a cost per lead that is good for our niche and fits the clients budget

Answer 3

For brand terms I like to be at the 90% and up IS range and for non brand terms, at least 30% This allows my brand to stay at the top of page on results and for nonbrand it’s still competitive enough to show against competitors.  

Answer 4

Got for 100% initially- as long as you're not missing KPIs and blowing through budgets to do it- why not? Yes, second place is often best but aim for 100% and see what happens. You want to picking up sales meantime if that's the goal

Answer 5

We do a lot of lead gen, and our manual bids are based on our ad positioning. We like to stay top of page and adjust bids based on keyword conversion rate, cost and value. Total IS is a secondary consideration. I am more worried about the keyword top and abs top IS%.