Table of Contents
- What You Will Learn In This Blog Post
- An Overview of Bing Ads Bidding Strategies
- How to Set Your Bing Ads Bid Strategy
- Bing Ads Bidding Strategies
- 8 Tips For Bing Ads Bidding Strategies
- 1. Don’t Manually Set Bids
- 2. Set Up Conversion Tracking
- 3. More Conversions = Better Performance
- 4. Consider Using Bid Adjustments
- 5. Set Maximum CPC Limits to Control Costs
- 6. Optimize By Testing Different Bidding Strategies
- 7. Optimize By Improving Your Campaign Consistently
- 8. Monitor Results Regularly
What You Will Learn In This Blog Post
- The importance of choosing the right bidding strategy aligned to your campaign goals like leads or sales.
- An overview of each major Bing Ads bidding strategy, which campaign types they can be used for, and a tip to optimize performance.
- 8 best practices when setting up and managing bid strategies including testing, automation, conversion tracking, and cost controls.
- The importance of continually optimizing campaigns by improving elements like keywords, ads, and landing pages to boost results for any bidding strategy.
An Overview of Bing Ads Bidding Strategies
When you create a new Bing Ads campaign, you always have to choose a bidding strategy. If your main goal is to drive leads or sales, then you want to use a bidding strategy that will optimize for your goals. For example, a local cleaning service company that wants to drive leads should use the Maximize Conversions bid strategy or the Target CPA bid strategy. An ecommerce website should use the Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy or the Target ROAS bid strategy in order to drive more sales. Your bidding should always be aligned with your objectives. By choosing the right strategy, your campaign performance will improve over time.
As an advertiser, your goal is to create campaigns that will test the best targeting for your business. When a campaign gets more conversion data, you can maximize the targeting that works and remove the targeting that doesn’t drive conversions. Your budget will be based on the top-performing ads, landing pages, keywords, location, and product targeting.
How to Set Your Bing Ads Bid Strategy
Click on your campaign, go to campaign settings, and go to the ‘Bid strategy’ section to change your strategy. You can also choose a bid strategy through the campaign setup process. You will only have certain options depending on the campaign type.
Bing Ads Bidding Strategies
Each bidding strategy should be used for different objectives and campaign types. I go over each strategy below, how they are used, campaigns they can be used for, and 1 tip to get the most out of each strategy.
Microsoft Advertising offers different bidding strategies to optimize your campaigns based on your goals:
Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
Set your budget and target a 30-day average CPA, and let Microsoft Advertising do the rest, ensuring your average cost per conversion aligns with your target.
- Campaign types: Search campaigns
- Tip: You should always monitor your target CPA vs. your actual CPA and work to lower your CPA over time.
Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
Define your budget and target 30-day average ROAS, and Microsoft Advertising will set your bids in real-time to meet this average, ensuring a strong return on ad spend.
- Campaign types: Search campaigns and Shopping campaigns
- Tip: You must be tracking revenue along with your conversions.
Maximize Conversions
Available across search, shopping, and audience campaigns, it auto-sets your bids in real time to drive as many conversions as possible within your budget.
- Campaign types: Search campaigns, Shopping campaigns, and Performance Max campaigns
- Tip: You must be using conversion tracking and you can test Maximize Conversions vs. Target CPA.
Enhanced CPC
This default setting for new campaigns auto-adjusts your ad group and keyword bids in real-time to improve your conversion rate. You can combine manual bids with automation using Enhanced CPC.
- Campaign types: Search campaigns and Shopping campaigns
- Tip: Add bid adjustments for even more control over specific devices or locations.
Maximize Clicks
This strategy allows you to gain as many clicks as possible within your budget. It can be a strategy you start with to find inexpensive keywords.
- Campaign types: Search campaigns and Shopping campaigns
- Tip: You can use maximize clicks if you are focused on traffic. It can help drive awareness at the top of the funnel.
Maximize Conversion Value
Automatically optimizes bids to maximize total conversion value within your budget.
- Campaign types: Smart Shopping campaigns
- Tip: Ideal for ecommerce campaigns to maximize revenue.
Target Impression Share
Set your budget, ad position preference, and target impression share, and Microsoft Advertising optimizes your bids based on your settings.
- Campaign types: Search campaigns.
- Tip: I generally only use impression share bidding for brand campaigns. Otherwise, they can be used for popular and valuable keywords for your business.
Manual CPC
Exclusive to audience campaigns, your set bids are used when you are entering ad auctions.
- Campaign types: Audience campaigns
- Tip: It provides the most control but requires more work.
Manual CPM
Also for audience campaigns, you determine the cost you wish to pay per 1,000 viewed impressions.
- Campaign types: Audience campaigns
- Tip: This option is best for branding and awareness.
Manual CPV
Set the highest amount you’re willing to pay per view or per click on a video ad in audience campaigns.
- Campaign types: Audience campaigns
- Tip: Use to limit video ad costs.
Cost Per Completed View (CPCV)
This strategy optimizes bids based on your desired cost per completed view, automatically scouting for traffic that is likely to view your CTV ad to completion.
- Campaign types: Connected TV (CTV) ads
- Tip: This option is ideal for maximizing engagement.
Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
Tailored for online video ads, the CPM strategy adjusts your bids in real-time to maximize video reach, based on your set cost for a thousand viewed video impressions.
- Campaign types: Online Video ads
- Tip: Great for increasing brand awareness and product awareness.
Cost Per Sale (CPS)
You only pay when a click on your ad leads to a sale, with bids optimized to maximize conversions based on your target cost per sale.
- Campaign types: Shopping campaigns
- Tip: This option requires a product feed.
8 Tips For Bing Ads Bidding Strategies
Below are my tips when it comes to setting up the right Microsoft Advertising bid strategy. When you create a new bid strategy, it may go into a learning phase. Allow your campaigns to test and learn, which may mean spending more initially than you would like. Over time, you can refine your campaign and your targeting to maximize your results.
Here are my tips and best practices based on my experience:
1. Don’t Manually Set Bids
Bidding strategies automate and optimize bids based on your campaign goals like conversions or return on ad spend (ROAS).
2. Set Up Conversion Tracking
Smart, automated bidding requires conversion tracking to be implemented first to work effectively. Set up UET tags and conversion goals for your business. Certain strategies like Target ROAS require revenue tracking specifically to optimize bids.
3. More Conversions = Better Performance
Your campaigns will perform better if you are driving multiple conversions per day. Limited conversion data can make it more difficult to optimize your campaign. Therefore, you need to focus on driving as many conversions as possible initially.
4. Consider Using Bid Adjustments
Use bid adjustments to maintain more control over individual ad groups/keywords while leveraging automation.
5. Set Maximum CPC Limits to Control Costs
Set a maximum CPC limit as an optional guardrail for highly optimized strategies like Target CPA. Rather than using a manual bid strategy, use a smart bidding strategy with cost controls.
6. Optimize By Testing Different Bidding Strategies
Test different bidding strategies for each campaign to find the right optimization approach based on goals. If you plan to run campaigns for a long period of time, which you should, you can test multiple strategies.
7. Optimize By Improving Your Campaign Consistently
Improving campaign elements like keywords, negative keywords, ads, and landing pages boosts performance for any bidding strategy selected. Use different ad extensions and add promotions to drive more results.
8. Monitor Results Regularly
Evaluate campaign performance reports regularly to ensure your bidding strategy is working and delivering results. You should always maximize what’s working and remove anything that is dragging down your budget.
