As more PPC tasks become automated, marketers must understand that while automation may be an attractive alternative to constant manual updates and bidding, there are certain limitations. In this day and age, it simply isn’t necessary for someone to do manual pay-per-click bidding around the clock. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can just flip a switch, and let things go on their own. In fact, automated PPC bidding has its own unique challenges that still needs active involvement by an account manager. So, let’s look at a few of the most common pitfalls marketers should avoid when making the jump from manual to automated bidding:
- Automation isn’t a magic fix – First and foremost, you must understand that automation won’t magically fix your business. Automation only works best when you start off with targets that are similar to recent performances. It’s only from there that automation will be able to drive incremental improvements. If you’re seeking drastic change, then it’s time to re-examine your entire conversion strategy (i.e. make changes to your landing page, the offer, the price, etc.)
- Machines have learning curves – That’s right; your system learns from your manual work. Automation relies on machine learning, so before it can take over management, it has to learn from your history and data about an account before it can start to run on its own. This means that you must first run manual campaigns to get them to a point where performance is consistent and conversions are abundant.
- You have to have the data – If you don’t have enough data for your system to learn from, automation won’t serve you well. For those who have run campaigns for some time, there will be enough data to turn on machine learning-driven bid automation. But, having enough can be tough for smaller accounts. They often struggle to meet the minimum thresholds for the data the system needs. For instance, Google says that smart bidding can work with 15 conversions in the past 30 days, but the higher the number, the better the results. Now, for advertisers with smaller budgets, this can be a tough target to meet.
- Inferior tools might miss the bigger picture – One major pitfall of automation is that it lives in a vacuum. For instance, the “maximize clicks” bid strategy isn’t a Smart Bidding strategy, and so it has no context for the quality of conversions. In other words, it won’t know if a click is a good click or a bad click. But, because this strategy operates on the same auctions where many of your competitors will be using conversion tracking to distinguish between the good and the bad clicks, the outcome for advertisers using the inferior strategy can be harmful. So, sure, you can get a lot of cheap clicks, but remember, they’re cheap for a reason.
- You can’t just set it and forget it – The extent of automation is in the gap that’s bridged between the CPC bids Google uses to rank ads in each auction and the CPA and ROAs goals that most advertisers have. Its capabilities don’t go beyond that. An account manager is still needed to figure out the correct target. More than determining these initial settings, targets should also be periodically adjusted to account for short-term factors that are likely to change your typical conversion rates, like if, for example, you’re running a huge sale. You can’t simply wait for automation to catch up; you’ll just end up losing potential sales and conversions. You have to take charge.
While automation can be incredibly valuable to your PPC strategy, it’s important to understand that there are limitations. So, when in doubt, ask the pros! Contact us to learn how we can help.
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