As digital marketers, we are always asking ourselves, “How can I make a bigger impact, faster?” One way to do this within the search realm is by implementing automated bid strategies in Google, called Smart Bidding.

Smart Bidding involves automated bid strategies that use machine learning in order to optimize based on a business goal; the four types of Smart Bidding strategies that are currently available are Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions and Enhanced CPC. For these bidding strategies to be successful, you must choose the one that is right for your business.

Target CPA bidding sets bids to help earn as many conversions as possible at the target cost-per-acquisition you set. It automatically finds an optimal CPC bid for your ad each time it is eligible to show. This type of bidding works best when you have at least 30 conversions in the past 30 days.
Target ROAS bidding helps you get more conversion value or revenue at the target return-on-ad-spend that you set. Bids are automatically optimized at each auction. This type of bidding works best when you have at least 50 conversions in the past 30 days.

Maximize Conversions bidding helps you obtain as many conversions as possible while spending your budget.

Enhanced CPC helps you achieve more conversions from manual bidding by automatically adjusting your manual bids for clicks that seem more or less likely to lead to a conversion. This type of strategy is controlled by your max CPC bids when optimizing, unlike Target CPA bidding.

Utilizing these bidding strategies can help you reach your goals faster, as well as free up time to work on your many other tasks. Of course, as with all new implementations, you will want to test these bid strategies before rolling out to your entire account. But with all the efficiencies that can be gained in using these, it is definitely worth the test!