Bid management is a key part of any pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. As a PPC agency, we know that managing multiple PPC campaigns does require a lot of time and work. However, with the help of the right bid and campaign management tools – bid management can become a much more straightforward task.
There are plenty of online tools out there now which can save you having to manually each aspect of multiple PPC campaigns. In today’s blog, we’re going to talk you through our three top tools here at Summon Digital.
Search Ads 360
Search Ads 360 (previously known as DoubleClick Search) is a search management platform that helps digital marketing agencies like us to manage campaigns across multiple search engines and media channels.
It’s a popular bid management tool because it takes away the complexities of keyword bidding and allows you to set automatic bids. Search ads works around a set of ‘rules’ that you can make. These rules will depend on your unique PPC campaign objectives.
The platform uses a unique algorithm and can make automatic changes to any ad campaign based on how well it is likely to perform (in terms of traffic and conversions). Depending on your goals, the platform can be used to meet a number of objectives, including:
- Higher number of conversions
- Greater revenue
- Top position on search engine result pages (SERP)
- The highest number of clicks within your campaign budget
Search Ads 360 offers a high level of control when it comes to your keyword bids. You won’t have to spend time setting up bids, continuously checking ad positions and making adjustments in multiple accounts. Instead, Search Ads can optimise a set of keywords to a specific goal, and you can rely on automatic changes to handle the rest.
Let’s say a set of keywords are performing particularly well. You will be able to set them up into a separate bid strategy and create rules which will allow automatic changes. To set up a bid strategy to meet your business needs – you will need to specify your goal, which could be any of the following:
- Ad position – This goal would adjust bids so that your ads appear in your targeted position on SERP. An example might be if your main objective is brand awareness – branding campaigns will benefit from aiming for a higher position.
- Impression share – In this case, Search Ads will adjust bids to target a specified ad position and impression share.
- Number of clicks – Finds the optimal bids for driving maximum traffic to your site. This bid strategy focused on generating traffic rather than the actions that users take on your site.
You can find out more about Search Ads 360 bidding strategies here.
MarinOne Bidding
Marin is another leading PPC bid management tool used to manage paid search, display advertising, social media and mobile campaigns. It’s a cross-engine management platform, meaning you can monitor multiple campaigns from Google or Facebook to Yahoo and Bing – all in one clear interface.
You’re able to set up bids based on your specific aims; which could be anything from increased video views to newsletter sign-ups. Here, we have explained how else you could use Marin software to benefit your PPC bid management:
- Keyword resuscitation – Keyword resuscitation means that Marin can increase and decrease your bids temporarily. This means that if a keyword is underperforming and is likely to continue doing so – Marin will recognise this and reduce the bid. If the performance improves, Marin will also pick up on this. This is essentially a test to ensure you don’t miss out on any potential clicks by decreasing a bid on the wrong keyword. This is different from Automated bidding solutions, which will just decrease bids on any underperforming keywords, which in some cases, might cause you to miss out on conversions.
- Auto-populating dimensions – If you’re trying to manage multiple active campaigns at the same time – keeping track of their performance can be challenging and time-consuming. Auto-populating dimensions can help to keep us organised. It’s a way of easily aggregating data across either an ad group, all campaigns, keywords or an entire account. It’s a faster alternative to exporting data into Excel. For example, you might have different bidding rules you want to manage across your keywords – and dimensions can help to simplify this.
Google, Amazon and Facebook can all be integrated into just one ad campaign, meaning you can amplify your results and clearly manage them. The ability to bring search, social and eCommerce into one single platform helps to simplify your digital marketing campaigns and maximise your results. Some other benefits include:
- Utilising feedback from social media when posting campaigns.
- Making use of mobile advertising and targetting smartphone and tablet users.
- Clear reports and analytics which proving thorough analysis of your campaign.
- Built-in custom recommendations to help increase volume while saving money and time.
Find out more about Marin software here.
Kenshoo
Kenshoo provides a PPC bid management tool which is best suited to small-scale advertisers. If you’re looking for a new bidding solution, Kenshoo is great because they offer a variety of bidding types to enhance your campaign performance. These include portfolio, rules-based and model-based bidding. They also offer advanced reporting and A/B testing.
They cater to a variety of businesses, industries and marketing channels – and most of these offer a free demo trial if you’re not sure you want to commit to a plan. For example:
- Kenshoo Social – For social media marketing campaigns
- Kenshoo Local – For local businesses such as individual shops.
- Kenshoo Search – Search engine marketing campaigns.
One of the best things about Kenshoo is the detailed, real-time reports they provide for users. You can be kept in the loop with all insights and information around your campaign – helping you to make the right changes. For more information on Kenshoo and their bid management tool, you can visit their site here.
Get in touch
If you are interested in learning more how bid management tools work within a digital marketing agency, or if you have any questions about our PPC services – feel free to contact us.