3 of My Favorite Bid Rules

Quality score dropIt’s no secret that utilizing some form of automated bids or bid alerts helps you proactively catch underperformers to fix and catch over-performers to capitalize on! I like to call these my ‘performance alerts.’ However, I also like to use what I call ‘maintenance alerts,’ which aren’t always about hitting a CPA or ROAS goal, but ensuring I am focusing on improving the right areas of my campaigns and I am getting rid of inefficient keywords.

While every client should have customized bid rules specific to their campaign goals, there are 3 bid rules I like to use cross every account, no matter what the goals

1. Maintenance Alert #1 – Quality Score Rule

I love using a rule that looks something like:

Quality score

We all know quality score is important and am sure that we all optimize our campaigns always keeping in the back of our minds a higher QS is ideal. However, when you are in the day to day management of campaigns, the actual quality score can go overlooked.

This rule allows me to proactively keep a tab on my low quality score keywords so I can hone in on working on improving those versus weeding through the account to determine where to spend time. Bonus tip is that this is a template rule in Acquisio!

2. Maintenance Alert #2 – Click Threshold Rule

For this rule I keep it simple:

More clicks It’s amazing to be every time I audit an account for a potential client how many keywords are often ‘active’ in an account, even though only 10-20% of the keywords actually drive any clicks. This rule helps me stay on top of which keywords are either a time sink or need some extra love to get volume out of!

3. Performance Alert #1 – More Conversion Rule

This is another one of my favorite rules, and is one of my ‘performance alert’ rules:

More conversionsWhile you need to tweak CPA, average position and the ‘increase bid by’ by client in this rule, it’s another template rule within Acquisio so it is super easy to setup!

I am a big fan of this rule as it’s often easy to get caught up and focus on keywords you need to improve and keywords that are wasting ad spend, but what about the diamond in the rough keywords? You need to be just as proactive with these keywords. If a keyword is in lower positions and under my CPA goal, I absolutely want to try to get even more volume and conversions out of it!

In summary, you should always think about how bid alerts can not only help with ‘bid management’ but also general maintenance of your accounts. Use the rules to proactively weed out inefficient keywords that you can either decide to focus attention on if there is hope for improving them, or get rid of them altogether!

crystal

crystal

Crystal (Anderson) O’Neill (@Crystala) is the PPC division lead for SEER Interactive, a Philadelphia based Digital Marketing Agency.  Prior to joining SEER in 2007, she worked at an International Media Agency as the VP of Business development, where she focused on developing and managing international media and PPC campaigns.

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