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This is a question many advertisers who make a great effort to properly manage their AdWords accounts, ask themselves quite often.
Before we move any further ahead, let’s first start by giving a brief and simple definition of what a conversion is.
A conversion, put in the simplest of terms, is:
When a person who clicked on your ad, completes a valuable action on your website, such as purchasing something or requesting more information.
Therefore as advertisers and business owners, the first task is to make sure the AdWords Conversion Tracking code is properly installed on your website (this is the very page on your site where you want the conversion to take place and actually be registered).
Therefore as advertisers and business owners, the first task is to make sure the AdWords Conversion Tracking code is properly installed on your website (this is the very page on your site where you want the conversion to take place and actually be registered).
Always Test If your Conversion Tracking is Working Correctly
Once you have confirmed the code is properly installed, you need to test that your conversions are being tracked successfully. The best way to do this is by performing a “test purchase”.
What is the Google Conversion Optimizer?
The Conversion Optimizer is an AdWords feature that predicts which clicks are likely to be profitable in accordance to your goals. It then adjusts your bids to help you get as many profitable clicks as possible.
The way the Conversion Optimizer works is by using your conversion data to manage your bidding to best suit the conversion rate of the individual keyword in question.
Based on your campaign’s history of conversions, the Conversion Optimizer automatically finds the optimal cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it’s eligible to appear. It sets higher CPC bids for higher-converting keywords and lower CPC bids for lower-converting keywords.
Requirements for Using Google Conversion Optimizer & Settings
One important requirement is that you need to have at least 15 conversions registered in the last 30 calendar days in order for the feature to be available to you. Otherwise, you won’t have the option of selecting it within your AdWords settings.
Max CPA vs. Target CPA Bidding
When using the conversion optimizer, you have the option whether you would like to choose the “bid type” of Max CPA or Target CPA:
Max CPA is the most you’re willing to pay for a conversion. Max CPA is recommended if you’re trying to maintain a high ROI.
Target CPA is the average amount you’d like to pay for a conversion. Target CPA is useful if you have the same return per conversion for all keywords, and are looking to get the highest amount of conversions.
Take the Manual Labor out of Bid Management
Ideally, the main purpose of the Conversion Optimizer is to reduce the risk of over-bidding for search queries that aren’t likely to convert and avoid under-bidding for potentially valuable search queries.
I’ve used the Conversion Optimizer in several of the campaigns I manage and I have been able to obtain better results while using it. My advice to you is that you remember to keep an eye on how your campaign’s performance fluctuates after the change has been made.
This way, you can quickly identify whether you need to make additional tweaks to the settings in case the number of conversions dropped or the cost-per-conversion increased to an unacceptable amount.
Only if you keep monitoring your campaign will you be able to make changes to your chosen CPA in order to maximize the results.
As Henry Ford used to say, “Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”
All in all and in my opinion, the Conversion Optimizer could be a good alternative to try out if your problem was a too high cost-per-conversion, or simply observing too few conversions being registered.
