Maximizing ROI with Google Ads’ Portfolio Bid Strategies

In the competitive world of digital advertising, marketers need to use every tool at their disposal to ensure the best return on investment (ROI). Portfolio Bid Strategies are a powerful (and free) tool directly within Google Ads (and Microsoft Ads too!)

We’ll delve into precisely how marketing agencies can optimize these bid strategies to enhance their clients’ campaigns’ ROI.

Understanding Google Ads’ Portfolio Bid Strategies

Google defines Portfolio Bid Strategies as: “Portfolio bid strategies are AI-powered, goal-driven bid strategies that help you optimize bids across multiple campaigns. They help you reach your performance goals and provide a single place for you to quickly change bidding settings for all campaigns that use a single portfolio bid strategy.”

These strategies can significantly influence your marketing campaigns by automating your bids based on set goals, which, in turn, can dramatically improve efficiency and performance. But what are the strategies and how do you best use them?

Portfolio Bid Strategies

The underlying bid strategies available at the portfolio level are similar to those available for smart bidding, but some have additional levers that are not available to campaign level smart bidding. The underlying portfolio bid strategies are:

• Target ROAS
• Maximize conversion value
• Maximize conversions
• Target CPA
• Maximize clicks
• Target impression share

How is It Different From Smart Bidding?

At first glance, you might wonder how Portfolio Bid Strategies differ from Smart Bidding. The primary difference is you’re not using the Bidding Strategy for just one campaign. You’re creating a strategy that is attached to multiple campaigns with shared goals. They can also share budgets if appropriate. 

This is fantastic because when campaigns are combined in meaningful ways, Google has more data points to feed the bid decisions, increase efficiency, improve budget utilization, and maximize your performance (and your ROI).

The second major difference is the ability to add upper and lower bid limits to some portfolio bid strategies.  For example, you could create a Target CPA strategy with an upper bid limit of $10 – something you cannot do when setting Target CPA as a campaign level bid strategy.

How These Strategies Impact Your Marketing Campaigns

These strategies allow you to take advantage of machine learning to set the best bids for your keywords and audiences. 

Overall, you’ll save time and bid more efficiently. Since you can group campaigns and budgets by goal, you’ll spend less time fine-tuning and more time with top-level strategy while Google does the optimisation.

The Benefits of Portfolio Bid Strategies

• Save time with automated bidding
• Utilize machine learning on a larger scale
• Strategize by goal rather than campaign
• Test new strategies
• Use budget more efficiently

The ROI Factor

ROI is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of different investments. By contrast, return on ad spend (ROAS) is ad campaign revenue divided by ad spend.

How Portfolio Bid Strategies are Connected to ROI

When you use Portfolio Bid Strategies, you stand to improve both metrics because it puts a focus on goals and efficiency. When you couple this with Value-Based Bidding, you’ll teach Google what’s truly important to you. This translates directly to your business objectives and helps you to grow and scale effectively.

Maximising ROI with Enhanced Portfolio Bid Strategies

Optimising Portfolio Bid Strategies for higher ROI is a multi-step process. First, you’ll need to identify your specific campaign goals. This can be increasing website traffic, improving brand awareness, or boosting conversions. Each of these goals corresponds to different bid strategies, and choosing the right one is crucial.

Once you’ve identified your goals, select the corresponding bid strategy. Select existing campaigns or create new campaigns that align with your strategy.

Then, analyze and adjust. Using the reporting within Google Ads or an outside tool will allow you to see where changes need to be made. Analysis is essential for implementing and optimising CPA targets and other settings for higher ROI. Google’s AI will do the heavy lifting, but sometimes, you’ll have to give it a hand.

Once you choose your strategy, it’s important to understand the real optimization happens as the bidding strategy learns what works for you. This won’t happen without testing, edits, and adjustment over time.

How Do Portfolio Bid Strategies Maximize Your ROI?

Portfolio bid strategies maximize your ROI by:

• Allowing you to group campaigns together by goal and implement machine learning on a larger scale, which means larger improvements.
  
• They save you time to focus on other aspects of your campaigns and allow you to optimize and reduce waste.
  
• They offer another layer of strategy and automation to fine-tune your bidding in real time.

Tips for Maximising your ROI

• Give your Portfolio strategy enough budget. If your ads have serious budget limitations, they’re unlikely to perform optimally.
  
• Be aware of the bid modifier constraints on each bidding strategy. For instance, you may not be able to add a bid modifier to devices or locations, so you might choose to create campaigns (and portfolio bid strategies) based on locations or devices to improve your metrics.
  
• Understand that your max CPCs may be higher, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your CPA will be. When you tell Google to maximize your conversions or conversion value, it goes after users that will fulfil those goals. Sometimes, those clicks are more expensive so your CPC could increase. But, if they are more likely to convert, your CPA will likely be lower.
  
• Be willing to change strategy. Keeping a portfolio bid strategy in place that isn’t working simply doesn’t make sense. Like everything else, you’ll have to go through testing and iteration to get all of the settings just right.

Tips for Using Portfolio Bidding Effectively

Looking for some tips? Start by choosing the right strategy for your campaign goals. This one is crucial. For instance, the Target CPA strategy aligns well with conversion-focused campaigns, while the Maximize Clicks strategy suits awareness campaigns.

• Improve efficiency through automation. Use the automation features Google Ads offers to efficiently manage, update, and adjust bids without significant manual intervention. For instance, setting a target CPA so Google knows what to optimize for.
  
• Monitor your bids and strategies. Both are equally important as they allow necessary adjustments based on ongoing campaign performance, ensuring your strategy continually aligns with your goals.
  
• Slow and steady wins the race. Don’t dive head first! Pick a few campaigns to start with. These campaigns should have similar performance goals. Changing your whole bidding and account structure overnight will likely spell disaster for your performance!
  
• Use your goals to choose bid strategies. Don’t guess when it comes to choosing a bid strategy. Ensure your goals and bid strategies align. The chart above will help you make sure you’re on target.
  
• Check your portfolio strategy. As with anything in marketing, it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. However, checking on things may also cause you to make unnecessary changes. While you should keep an eye on things to make sure there’s no drastic performance drop-off. The initial learning period will be about 7 to 14 days, but depending on your conversion volume, your strategy could take up to a month to be fully optimized.
   
• Scaling doesn’t mean adding all campaigns to one strategy. Instead, you should work first on a test group with portfolio strategy and optimize it. You can add more campaigns, but you’ll need to go through the optimisation process again. Also, lumping all of your campaigns into one portfolio bid strategy because “it works” isn’t effective. Strategy is literally right there in the name, so don’t ignore that part.

Portfolio Bidding Challenges and Solutions

Despite the advantages, marketers may face challenges with Google’s Portfolio Bid Strategies.

Challenges:

• Inability to control bid modifiers like device and location
• Can’t reduce (or increase) cost per click on individual keywords
• CPA may soar unexpectedly
  

However, these challenges can also be addressed. Regular monitoring and Google Ads’ detailed reporting can provide insights into bid performance, enabling necessary adjustments. Watch things closely and make changes when needed. Google isn’t magic. You’ll still need to make regular changes to your campaigns.

Takeaways

Using Google Ads’ Portfolio Bid Strategies effectively amplifies your campaigns’ ROI. By understanding each strategy, applying them correctly, and continually monitoring and adjusting, you can effectively optimize your campaign for maximum returns.

So go ahead, dive right into your Google Ads strategy, and experiment with Portfolio Bid Strategies. With analysis and determination, your marketing ROI could reach new heights.