Determining a bid strategy based on your goals

AdWords offers several bid strategies that are tailored to different types of campaigns. Depending on which networks your campaign is targeting, and whether you want to focus on getting clicks, impressions or conversions, you can determine which strategy is best for you.

• Drive customers to your website with cost-per-click bidding (manual or automatic).
• Ensure that customers see your message with cost-per-impression bidding.
• Maximise conversions on your site with cost-per-acquisition bidding.

AdWords essential

The auction: How Google decides which ads to show, and in which order Each bid strategy is suited for different kinds of campaigns and advertising goals. For the purposes of bidding, you'll want to consider three basic types of goals, along with your current campaign settings.

• If you want to generate traffic to your website, focusing on clicks could be ideal for you. Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding – manual or automatic – may be right for your campaign.
• If you want to increase brand awareness – not drive traffic to your site – focusing on impressions may be your strategy. You can use cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) bidding to put your message in front of customers.
• If you want customers to take a direct action on your site, and you're using conversion tracking, then it may be best to focus on conversions. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding lets you do that.

Tip

Save time and effort on managing your bids by trying flexible bid strategies. You’ll be able to apply bid optimisation more strategically to entire campaigns or specific ad groups and keywords (where applicable) of your choice. How to use flexible bid strategies.

Focus on clicks with CPC bidding

If you're focusing on gaining clicks to generate traffic to your website, there are two cost-per-click bid strategies that you should consider:

• Automatic CPC bidding is the simplest and most commonly used bid strategy. All you have to do is set a daily budget, and the AdWords system automatically manages your bids to bring you the most clicks possible within your budget.
• Manual CPC bidding is the default strategy to let you manage your maximum CPC bids yourself. You can set different bids for each ad group in your campaign, or for individual keywords or placements. If you've found that certain keywords or placements are more profitable, you can use manual bidding to allocate more of your advertising budget to those keywords or placements.

Choose or change your bid strategy

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.co.uk.
2. In the Campaigns list, click the campaign name.
3. Select the Settings tab.
4. Click Edit next to the bid strategy.
5. Select your new bid strategy.
6. Click Save.
   

Next steps

• Edit your bid.
• Learn more about CPC, CPM or CPA.