In today’s digital marketing landscape, harnessing AI is not just an option—it’s a must. Nearly 90% of marketers are set to increase their AI investment, with a strong focus on boosting their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). If you’re not maximizing your ad budget with AI tools, your competitors might already be gaining an edge. Google Ads Smart Bidding is a highly effective AI-driven tool for ad budget optimization, allowing marketers to achieve better results without increasing ad spending.
Here, we’ll explore five crucial Smart Bidding strategies to help you increase revenue and improve campaign performance.
What is Google Ads Smart Bidding?
Google Ads Smart Bidding is an AI-powered bidding tool that automatically adjusts your bids in real time to help you achieve your campaign goals. This system analyzes patterns and trends quickly, enabling optimized ad spending and allowing your team to focus on revenue growth.
1. Align Your Bidding Strategy with Revenue Goals
Google Ads offers multiple Smart Bidding options tailored to specific campaign objectives. Selecting the right strategy is essential for meeting your revenue goals and adhering to your budget:
- Maximize Conversions: Focuses on increasing actions like sign-ups, purchases, or form submissions, ideal for campaigns aimed at high engagement.
- Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): Lets you set a specific cost per acquisition, helping to maintain cost efficiency by acquiring customers at a set price.
- Target ROAS: Adjusts bids based on expected conversion values to achieve a target ROAS, prioritizing revenue maximization.
- Enhanced Conversions: Uses machine learning to optimize for valuable actions, delivering improved conversion rates—typically around 5% higher, according to Google.
2. Use Advanced AI Tools for Broader Reach
Google’s additional AI tools can significantly enhance your Smart Bidding strategy by expanding your audience reach:
- Broad Match: Widens visibility by covering related searches and synonyms, ensuring potential customers using varied search terms are reached. Marketers using Broad Match in Target CPA campaigns have seen 35% more conversions.
- Performance Max: An AI-driven tool that optimizes ad formats and placements across all Google networks, including YouTube and Google Maps, delivering more conversions and better ad spend.
Combining Broad Match with Performance Max allows you to maximize your query coverage on Google, boosting conversions and reaching a wider audience.
3. Supercharge Smart Bidding with Revenue Execution Platforms
AI in Smart Bidding thrives on data. For industries that rely heavily on phone conversions—like healthcare, automotive, and telecommunications—tracking these conversions is crucial. Missing phone call conversions can result in underperformance. A revenue execution platform, like Invoca, enables you to capture these conversions, feeding complete performance data back into Google Ads for more accurate bid optimization.
4. Optimize Retargeting with First-Party Data Insights
Retargeting those who have already interacted with your brand is a cost-effective way to drive conversions. Using first-party data, especially insights from phone conversations, allows you to build rich customer profiles for personalized retargeting. Platforms like Invoca can analyze customer conversations, providing insights on product interests, price sensitivity, and purchase behavior. Examples of effective retargeting include:
- Targeting Non-Purchasers: Retarget callers who didn’t make a purchase with ads for products they discussed.
- Upselling Current Customers: Show complementary product ads to callers who recently made purchases.
- Price-Sensitive Offers: Present ads with discount codes to callers who displayed price sensitivity.
5. Detect and Resolve Call Experience Issues
Poor call experience, from missed calls to long hold times, can result in lost revenue. A revenue execution platform offers insights into call handling, showing the total number of calls, answered calls, agent performance, and conversion success. High unanswered call rates at specific locations, for example, can indicate areas needing improvements in staffing or call routing. Analyzing call recordings and transcripts can also help improve sales scripts and overall conversion rates.
By addressing these issues, you can increase conversion rates and drive more revenue from your ad campaigns.
Conclusion
Implementing these five Smart Bidding strategies, alongside a revenue execution platform, enables marketers to harness Google’s AI capabilities fully. This combination helps drive conversions, optimize ad spend, and maximize revenue from every dollar spent on ads.
