Manual CPC is what always works in the beginning or at least it creates the grounds to make things work. It is generally the most profitable and flexible strategy.
To select Manual CPC, go to Bidding and click the dropdown. It is the last item on the list.
- CPC stands for Cost Per Click. You get to decide how much you want to pay per click.
- You can set the Max Bids
- You have full control of bids
- It’s best at gathering clean data
- You’re going to need to have conversion tracking activated
- You don’t need any previous data for Google to allow you to do this
- Bid is calculated from profit margins
- You have customizable bids that work according to the structure or hierarchy
- Choose to use Manual CPC at the campaign level and in the ad group level, that is where you set the actual bid or set your default bid which Google will not override.
- The default bid is going to affect the keywords, but you can set a specific ad group to have a specific default bid
- A default bid can always be overridden by using a custom bid for a specific keyword.
- If you select Manual CPC, you’ll see this note
- You can ignore this. Manual CPC is the only way for you to optimize your own ads in order to get as much as possible but paying as little as possible.
- There’s an option to enable Enhanced CPC (ECPC).
- ECPC is a semi-automated bidding strategy. This means you can still set the default bid but at the same time giving Google the ability to lower your bid or increase it.
- To use Enhanced CPC, you’re gonna need at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days. The more data you have for Google, the more conversion tracking that they are able to do, and the better they are going to be optimizing their old bidding strategies. You’ll need to set up conversion tracking before you can select this option.
- Should you be using Enhanced CPC or not? Start gathering data then set up conversion tracking and start getting some conversions. Then do a split test by creating one campaign with Manual CPC and another with Enhanced CPC then compare.
- 80% budget to be spent on what's working and 20% budget for split testing.
- Portfolio Strategy – enables you to use an existing portfolio strategy which Google has created or choose to create your own.
