Kyle Sulerud - October 25, 2019For starters, is Maximize clicks a good strategy? In my very experienced opinion, I’d have to say: NO. It’s absolutely not a good strategy.
If you are a plumbing company and you’re trying to get plumbing customers, clicks do not matter at all. You can’t take clicks and put them into the bank. You need customers, you need leads. So it does not matter how many clicks you’re getting if those clicks are not becoming customers.
What actually tends to happen with Maximize Clicks strategy is you will get clicks that aren’t really valuable. Google doesn’t care if those clicks are valuable or not. You’ve told Google that you want as many clicks as possible. It doesn’t matter if those clicks are going to turn into conversions.
Again, this is not a good strategy. The only time I’ve ever used it is right at the beginning of a campaign if I’m trying to establish a reasonable “cost per click amount”. It’s only going to be a few days while I let the system figure that out, and then I’m going to switch over to a different strategy.
So, what is the strategy to switch to?
Maximize Conversions is a strategy where Google’s system is going to try to send you as many conversions as possible for your given budget. This can work out okay, but there are situations where the numbers get kind of funky.
If you’re using Maximize Conversions, there is no limit that you set on the cost per click.
Example: You’re halfway through the day, and you still have a big bulk of your budget remaining. Now someone comes along whom Google feels is a conversion for you. Based on their system, Google thinks this person who just searched this keyword is likely to become a conversion. The system is trying to do what you’ve told it to: it will try to get you as many conversions as possible. Perhaps this is a competitive keyword or search, and other advertisers are bidding pretty high on this keyword. But because Google thinks that this person is very likely to convert, it can lead to an extremely high cost-per-click coming through.
Even worse, it’s also possible that this click wouldn’t become a conversion. Even if the system thought that it was going to be a conversion, if you’re not at a 50% conversion rate, more than likely most clicks are not going to become conversions for you.
Now Google has spent an exorbitant amount of money on this one click, however much that is, for your business. When it doesn’t turn into a conversion, your numbers for the day look even worse because there is a smaller budget remaining to try to work with.
This kind of scenario doesn’t happen all the time, but it can happen with Maximize Conversions. You will see cost per clicks that are way more than they should be. Businesses with lower conversion rates like a plumbing company may encounter this.
When does “Maximize Conversions” work?
The times when I’ve seen Maximize Conversions work the best are in a campaign is where there are plenty of conversions coming in (at least 20 or more conversions per day). As long as your budget is set on a reasonable amount, and it’s easily getting spent all day, every day with 20 or more conversions every 24 hours. In that case, Google’s system can better predict how many more conversions will come through, and the system won’t just choose to spend a ton of money just for one person’s click.
But if you’re only getting a handful of conversions a day, or maybe only one every couple of days, then I don’t recommend Maximize Conversions. You will likely need to pay more than you need to per click and per conversion.
So, what strategy should you use?
If you’re in a position wherein you’re ready to start targeting conversions, there are some conversions in your campaign, and Google is starting to learn what a conversion looks like for you, then what you can use is TARGET CPA. Here, you’re actually setting the amount that you would like to pay per conversion, and Google is going to try to get conversions for you at that price.
You can take this a step further, too. Try setting a maximum cost per click that you’d be willing to pay along with that TARGET CPA. Take note, you can’t do this inside of a campaign while it’s being set up. What you need to do in order to set a maximum cost per click is this: go to TOOLS, and under your SHARED LIBRARY, you’ll see bid strategies. In here you can set up a bid strategy for TARGET CPC. Put in the target amount that you’d like to pay per conversion. This should be pretty similar to what you’re paying per conversion. If you’ve been getting conversions for $100.00 each, you can’t expect to bid $20.00 and get conversions for that amount. It has to be reasonable, because if you start too low, you’re not going to get any traffic.
Within the bid strategy that you’re setting up in the shared library, you can set a Maximum Cost per Click. If you’re bidding $100.00 per conversion, it is possible that Google is going to overbid for certain clicks especially if you’re not hitting your budget. They might bid $50.00 (or above) per click, and it’s going to be very hard to hit your target cost per conversion of $100.00 if you’re bidding that high.
Depending on your conversion rate, you’d want to set up a maximum cost per click. This can be a little higher than what your average cost per click has been, but it shouldn’t be much higher. If your average cost per click has been $10.00, maybe you can set a maximum cost per click of $15.00. If Google does a really good job of getting you conversions for your TARGET CPC, then maybe you can increase that maximum cost per click.
What’s the bottom line?
Stop using Maximize Clicks. While Maximize Conversions work for those with high conversion rates, business with only a handful of conversions a day are better off with using the option Target CPA (cost per acquisition).