Instructor: Manual cost-per-click.
Manual bidding is the easiest bid strategy
to get a grasp on.
Advertisers set their bids manually at the keyword level,
and the bid stays the same
until the advertisers change them.
So the main objective of manual CPC
is to fully maintain control over your bids
in every single auction.
You're willing to pay what you're willing to pay
and that is the end of it.
If you set your manual cost per click at two pounds,
then you will never pay anything more than two pounds.
So how does it work?
So you have your default bid at the campaign level
and the ad group level.
You can also set individual keyword level bids as well.
And Google won't bid any more than your max bid
in any circumstance.
It's my favorite strategy
as it gives you the most flexibility, the most organization
and this is my bidding strategy of choice.
The only downside to the manual bidding strategy
is that you have to do everything yourself
as it's a manual strategy.
So this is the only bidding strategy
which has no automation in it whatsoever.
Google has zero influence at all on what it changes
and what optimizations are made.
It all comes down to you reviewing the data
and then making the decisions yourself.
You can add in what we call enhanced cost-per-click,
so ECPC, at any time
as well as changing your bidding strategy whenever you want.
It's really good to note as well that manual cost-per-click
is the best place to start
as it does not require conversion tracking to work.
You can simply create your account,
select manual CPC which is what I advise you did
when you created your account
and simply start running Google Ads
and generating some data.
It's far better to use this strategy
than use number one in the first instance
such as maximize clicks
as Google is just going to spend all of your budget
to generate the most amount of clicks.
Whereas with manual CPC,
Google will have no influence whatsoever.
So as a result, you make your own decisions
and you literally control
what is going on in your Google ads account.
This is the main reason for whenever I create
a new Google ads campaign or even a new google ads account.
I always start off with manual CPC.
So there is another version of manual CPC
where you add a little bit of automation into it
and that is what I referred to earlier, which is ECPC,
enhanced cost-per-click.
So when you select the manual CPC
from within your bidding strategy,
you're also going to get this little box below which it says
help increase conversions with enhanced CPC.
So this only becomes available if you tick this box.
If you don't tick this box,
then you won't have the option
to go for optimized for conversions
or optimize for conversion value.
And you must select at least one of these
to use enhanced CPC.
I always recommend that you go for optimize for conversions.
It's really important to note as well
that to use enhance CPC,
you must have conversions in the Google Ads account.
This is why you can't use ECPC straight off on the start.
So the main objective of enhanced CPC
is to maintain tight control
over your individual keyword level bids
whilst also putting some trust in Google's algorithm
to optimize CPCs for more conversions.
So how does it work?
So Google will automatically raise your bids as much as 30%
or decrease your bids as much as 100%
based on how likely they think
the click is going to lead to a conversion.
ECPC does sometime work to maintain
or increase conversion volume
whilst decreasing cost per conversion.
You still set your maximum cost per click bids
at the keyword ad group or campaign level.
ECPC starts off with modifying 50% of your traffic,
reviewing the data and then adjusting based on performance.
So let's look at a scenario
where you might want to use enhanced CPC.
Let's imagine your company has strict guidelines on budget,
and you want as much control over how much you pay
for any given keyword.
Every keyword represents a different type of buyer.
You're also tracking conversion
and you feel that your bids can be more optimized
than they currently are.
ECPC is a good place to start experimenting with automation.
This would be a great place to start
then to go for maximize conversions
as you still want the bulk of control
over your Google Ads account.
So as you can see, enhanced CPC and manual CPC,
they're pretty similar.
The only difference with enhanced
is you add a little bit of Google's automation
and use an algorithm and put a bit of trust in it.
And in summary, when it comes to bidding strategies,
what I recommend is you go for manual CPC to start off with
to give you full control and really review what's going on.
And then once you have a bit of data,
I recommend you move over
onto your first automation bidding strategy
which is going to be enhanced CPC.
And as enhanced CPC
isn't a fully automated bidding strategy,
it actually comes under a manual bidding strategy.
So let me go over to a Google Ads account
and I'll show you exactly what I mean.
So as you can see,
we've got target impression share right here.
If we look under automated bid strategies
which is all these ones at the top,
you do not see enhanced CPC.
That is because it comes under the manual bid strategy
of manual CPC.
So once I give us a click,
you can see we have the option right here.
But like I said, to use this,
you need to have conversion tracking set up on the account.
But that covers everything there is to do
with bidding strategies
and I'll see you in the next section of the course.