When it comes to creating ads for your own sites, if you don’t know exactly what to do, you might find yourself spending more than you’re prepared to. A lot of people think that creating ads for their sites can help increase revenues by driving targeted traffic to their site. In a sense, they are right. However, if you spend more on your ads than you actually earn from them, it defeats your purpose for the ads. This is when you need to find a PPC agency that can help.

For us, this is where we utilize our smart bidding strategies. By using this method, we are able to bring in the revenues without bidding beyond what is reasonable for the keywords that we are targeting. We also increase the site’s visibility with the help of this strategy by adding to our arsenal our tried-and-tested optimization methods and tweaks.

Before we talk about the strategies that we used, let’s first understand what exactly is a smart bidding strategy? Is there really such a thing?

A smart bidding strategy is something that a good number of ad specialists turn to when they want to reduce costs but not reduce results. In short, these are tactics that a PPC Agency uses in order to get the revenues that they expect from their efforts but without burning a hole in their pockets or their client’s pockets, for that matter, so to speak. We will discuss this further as we go into the nitty-gritty of what we did for one of our clients in this case study.

Client: Gift Site

Industry: Gift and Specialty

Campaign Type: Site Optimization and Google Ad Campaigns Using Smart Bidding Strategies

Project Background

Just like in our previous case study, our client in this one is an online store that sells personalized gifts online. While this is a different site altogether, it occupies the same niche as the previous site we evaluated. Much like their competition, they are aiming to increase traffic and revenues to their site by asking the help of a PPC Agency in utilizing Google Ads. The main difference between this client and the previous one is this latter site doesn’t have the deep pockets that the other one has in terms of ad spending. This is where the challenge lies for the team.

Project Objective

The main objective for this project is to increase traffic as well as the income of the site but with the caveat that we don’t have an expansive budget. In short, we needed to achieve the goals we set for this client without going beyond what we stated we will be spending on ads. Also part of our objective here is to optimize the site to appear better on search.

As with other sites that we handled as a PPC Agency, optimization is also part of the task here. Without optimization, your ads may not appear too relevant to your target market since your site doesn’t show up on organic search results. Being able to appear twice on the first page of search will help solidify your site’s reputation as a store worth visiting as opposed to simply appearing on ads.  

Project Challenges

Much like every site we handle, this particular website had numerous challenges that we had to overcome before we could succeed in our goal of increased traffic and revenues. The challenges we faced as their new PPC Agency included undoing the work done by another agency before us and being able to appear on organic search results as well as Google. Add to this mix the fact that we were in the middle of a pandemic and people weren’t really into gift-buying when budgets were tight and jobs were on pause.

The biggest challenge that we faced here was the limited budget that we were given by the client to achieve the goals that they wanted to reach. Since we didn’t have the kind of budget that we could experiment with, our only recourse was to find effective ways to get things done without running out of funds before the week was over. This is where our innovativeness and creativity kicked in.

We also needed to bring in more sales via organic traffic to augment the income brought in by our ads. This will help us meet the target monthly revenues that the site wanted to reach. This meant that our multi-pronged approach to such a project was required here.

The Usual Solutions a PPC Agency Uses

The solutions we used for this site are similar to what we used for the other gift and specialty items site. The only difference is we did not have the kind of budget we had with the other one. This is where we had to rely heavily on smart bidding strategies. As a PPC Agency, we did use this same strategy on the previous client, but we did not have the same freedom we had to run with our plans. This is due to, as mentioned earlier, budgetary constraints.

Much like what we do with all of the clients we take on, we first did an audit of the site and listed down what flaws needed to be corrected before we could move forward. We also had to assess what work was done on the site by previous agencies, both in terms of ads and optimization. Apart from this, we also formulated plans for PPC ad creation following some of the smart bidding strategies that we often use when we’re faced with budgetary challenges.

To show you how we achieved a marked increase in visitors and revenues in only three months, read on.

Site Analysis and Optimization

Being a PPC Agency that strives to meet our goals, we began working on this site by conducting an audit of its online ad work and the site itself. We saw what was lacking in both aspects and recommended changes that would help increase not only the site’s visibility but also the appearance of the ads in better positions on SERPs and on Google Shopping. Once we finished auditing the site, we then began the actual work needed to get the site to where it needed to be.

As with all of the work that we do as a PPC agency, we started with keyword research. We based this on the site’s niche and expanded it with the help of keyword suggestions as well as the products that were being sold on the site. We also checked on other items that needed optimizing, like URLs, alt tags, and other meta information that was needed for better ranking on SERPs.

Next, we formulated plans for tackling the ads that the site needed. Since we were working with limited funds, we had to employ the smart bidding strategies that we mentioned earlier. What smart bidding strategies did we use? Read on so you will find out.

Google Ads with Smart Bidding Strategies

For those who are not familiar with Google Ads, it’s a pay-per-click advertising medium that requires you set a bid for the keywords you are targeting on the platform. This is why we are called a PPC Agency, among other things. It’s because we handle pay-per-click ads. Now, to continue, depending on the popularity of the keyword, this bid can go really high. When you’re working with very little money, you have to be smart about your bidding strategies, and this is where our smart bidding strategies come in. What are these strategies? Here are some that we frequently use, which we also used for this site:

Maximize Conversions – This is a smart bidding strategy that automatically sets your bids for you. This is to help you get the most conversions possible without exceeding your budget. What happens is the machine learning used by Google Ads will analyze your ads and use the data it comes up with to optimize your bids for you. This allows you to maximize your budget by getting the most conversions you can out of it.

Maximize Conversion Value – For the untrained eye, this may seem like it’s the same as the previous bidding strategy mentioned above. For those who know their PPC, like a PPC Agency, this is actually very different. With Maximize Conversions, your bids are set automatically based on the activity on your ads. With Maximize Conversion Value, however, you can set the parameters for your bidding strategy. You can do this with the use of values such as profit margins, sales revenue, and the like.

Enhanced CPC – This shows up on your google ads dashboard as CPC Enhanced. What this does is it gives you more conversions while giving you limited control over how you set your bids. This is similar to Maximize Conversions in that it also adjusts your bids to help you get the most out of your ads. This can be used on both Search and Shopping ads, with the latter presenting you with increased conversions for overall spend. This is as opposed to increased conversions while keeping your CPA at a set level.

Other smart bidding strategies that we use for this client, and for other clients that have a rather tight budget, include Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Maximize Clicks.

Constant Checking and Tweaking

While using smart bidding strategies semi-automates the work, this doesn’t mean that we should just leave these ads to run on their own. Checking, tweaking, assessing, and realigning with goals is a constant, therefore these have to be done weekly, if not daily. This is what we do as a PPC Agency. Keywords have to be researched every week as well to check for trends and possible new keywords that can be used in new ads or in reworking existing ones.

The work of tweaking ads is often more marked when there are holidays in the offing. For instance, for Valentine’s Day, we had to rework specific ads so that these will show when people search for “valentine’s day gifts for dad” or “valentine’s day gift for wife”, to mention a few. Tweaking usually involves the addition of holiday-specific terms. This will always require fresh keyword research to get keyword volume, suggestions, and competition.

Another thing that we do as a PPC Agency when it comes to the checking and tweaking of ads is the pausing of good performing ads that are no longer relevant to the season. We pause these instead of deleting because we reactivate these ads when the same season is about to happen again. Why delete great ads when these work real well during the right time of year, right?

Why We Use Smart Bidding Strategies

The use of smart bidding strategies when we create ads for some of our clients helps us to not only maximize a rather tight budget, but also to help our specialists handle such accounts better. It helps them see the benefits of trusting in what Google can do when it comes to these automated options and how you can get great results without having to check on your ads and your competition every hour of the day.

Of course, you still have to take a hands-on approach to the work here since automation can go wrong sometimes. You need to be able to use data that you get from analytics and from your perusal of your reports to tweak your campaigns when needed. The use of smart bidding strategies should only be done in conjunction with a carefully planned and executed campaign.

Key Takeaways

At the end of the day, using a combination of Smart Bidding Strategies and carefully crafted ads partnered with sound knowledge about how these ads work will help you achieve certain goals. You still need to be vigilant when it comes to these ads that are running with automation behind them. Just letting these run without you checking on them every now and then can result in you eating up your budget without actually generating the kind of results that you are aiming for.

Our strategy of using this approach coupled with our vigilance with our work has resulted in a notable increase of traffic to the site by a whopping 5,000%! All of this in a matter of three months of ads on Google Shopping and on Search. If that isn’t a win, particularly with a rather limited budget, then I don’t know what is.

If you want to learn more about what we can do as a PPC Agency and to help your website in terms of ads and increased traffic as well as revenues, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can show you what we do and how we can help you in a deeper sense when you schedule a consultation with us.

 

Note: Our case studies don’t come with the usual screenshots of our analytics and ad backend pages due to existing NDAs with the clients being mentioned in them.