Automatic Bidding – Google is just a dude looking for answers
Google’s automatic bidding has bad rep. Most PPC experts will tell you that Google does everything it can to make money and that automatic bidding is one of its tactics.
Automatic bidding is an option in campaign settings where you tell Google to do whatever it wants as long as the maximum cost for each conversion is X.
The problem is that when you start your Google Ads account by choosing automatic bidding the results are often erratic. Your costs go up and down, and conclusions are quickly made: “Google is mean, Google Ads don’t work, you can’t trust Google!”.
But what if Google wasn’t mean? What if Google was just a friendly business consultant looking for a few answers?
What does a business consultant do?
If you contact a consultant to help drive more clients to your business, he will start by asking as many questions as possible to understand your current setup:
- What do you do?
- What value do you bring your clients?
- Who are your clients?
- How are you currently reaching your clients?
- What does a conversation with a client look like?
And then the consultant will create a workshop with your team to help develop your answers. Progressively you will build a growth marketing plan to scale your business, and an execution plan to reach your goals in a reasonable amount of time with a reasonable amount of ressources.
As soon as the consultant leaves... results vary. Normal business life takes over and it’s not always easy to stay on top of the new strategies in place. But good consultants will follow up and offer tools to track progress. This is a trusted method to help businesses grow.
And for that, you will happily pay this consultant a hefty £XXX/day fee.
What does Google do with Automatic bidding?
Google may have the thinking power of thousands of consultants, is never tired and can work 24/7 without a coffee break but Google is NOT HUMAN and has absolutely NO EMPATHY.
- Google will NOT go the extra mile to put itself in your shoes and understand your business if you don’t give any information.
- Google will NOT interview your sales team to find out what are your clients' most common complaints.
- Google will NOT call your clients to find out what they are thinking about.
- Google will NOT question you if you just give only give a vague idea of what you need.
And when Google doesn’t know something, it just guesses!
Guessing is what happens when you select automatic bidding early in your account setup and that’s why you are seeing turbulent movements on your campaigns. Google is trying to learn without absolutely no guidance from you.
Would you expect a consultant to do miracles if nobody took the time to answer his questions?
You now have 2 options:
1 - Choose automatic bidding from the start and expect high volatility during the data learning phase. It can be scary and costly, but Google is really good at guessing so you will get there in the end.
2 - Make the most of your new business consultant. Provide Google with a detailed map of your business (SKAG account structure) and give it data by driving quality traffic. Only then change your settings to automatic bidding so Google can use the analytical power of its 900 000 servers to grow your sales.
