How Important is Bid Management in PPC?
"Surely once my PPC campaign goes live I can just leave the bids and it will work itself? Why do I need to change bids when I have top position already and that's where I want to be? If I decrease my bids I will lose my top spot".
Always think about Google as a money machine. Whilst it delivers relevant results, if you are in top position and spending £5 a click, how do you know that if you reduce to £4 you will still be in the same position? You don’t, you need to try it. Invariably you will find by managing the maximum CPCs you can maximise traffic for a lower cost whilst still maintaining conversions. It is an art and it can take experience to master – if you love analysing data then you will be able to pick it up.
In short, the answer to my question is ‘Very’. In PPC, you need to update your bids, particularly for a new campaign. New campaigns come onto the market with now historical data associated to it, therefore Google can’t give it any quality score (or token of appreciation for relevant historical advertising). Therefore, your position is based completely on your CPC, or how much you are willing to pay for the traffic.
Over time, quality score will grow and therefore you don’t need as high CPCs as before. Now, there are different levels of quality score – it will always accrue on the account regardless of how professionally it has been built, however by knowing how quality score works you can really maximise the savings you make on clicks.
Thus, it is important for accounts to be optimised at CPC level from the word go – establish that good position and work the data hard.
