A Five Stage Roadmap For Your Search Performance
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In the ever-shifting world of Google Ads, choosing the right bidding strategy can feel like aiming at a moving target. What worked last year may leave you overspending today. This refreshed guide outlines a five-stage roadmap that turns your advertising spend into a predictable investment. By moving from manual bidding to smart strategies and scaling with broad match and portfolio bids, you’ll build momentum while maintaining control. The goal isn’t to set-and-forget; it’s to understand how each phase interacts with your account’s performance and to adapt accordingly. Curious on more tactics and deep dive to each ppc strategies? Read my <What’s the Best PPC Bidding Strategy>
If you are too busy and need a quick bidding strategy use guide, you’ll find a concise table summarising the stages and the strategy purposes below:
Stage 1: Establish Your Baseline
Begin your PPC journey with manual CPC or Max Clicks to gather a benchmark. Spend at least 30 days collecting data on cost per conversion, impression share and click-through rates. Manual CPC gives you complete control over bids, while Max Clicks uses your daily budget as a throttle to maximise traffic when you're under‑spending.
During this baseline phase, focus on identifying which keywords drive conversions at a reasonable cost. Keep budgets modest to avoid overspending while you learn. This stage sets expectations for your future automated strategies.
Stage 2: Experiment and Test Maximise Conversions
Once you have collected at least 10‑15 conversions in a 30‑day period, it's time to experiment. Use a 50/50 traffic split between your manual CPC campaign and a duplicate campaign running the Maximise Conversions bidding strategy. This test will reveal whether automation can drive more volume without overshooting your cost per lead.
Allow the experiment to run for several weeks to gather statistically significant data. Compare conversion volume and cost per conversion between the two strategies. If your current cost per lead is acceptable, you don't need to set a target CPA. Setting one too low too early can constrain the algorithm.
Stage 3: Commit to Automated Bidding
When your maximise conversions experiment shows a clear improvement in cost per conversion and volume over manual CPC, it's time to fully embrace Smart Bidding. Replace your manual strategy with Maximise Conversions and allow the algorithm to find the right bids across auctions.
After a few weeks on Maximise Conversions, you can transition to a Target CPA or Target ROAS strategy if you have enough conversion volume. For lead generation campaigns, choose Target CPA; for ecommerce campaigns, choose Target ROAS.
Start by setting your target slightly above your historical average. This gives Google Ads room to learn. As performance stabilises, gradually lower your Target CPA or raise your Target ROAS to control costs without sacrificing volume. Keep an eye on impression share and budget utilisation; if you're consistently spending your daily budget, you may be able to reduce your targets.
Stage 4: Scale with Broad Match Expansion
With a solid automated strategy in place, you can expand your reach using Broad Match keywords. This match type leverages signals like user intent, landing page content and past conversions to enter more auctions and drive incremental conversions.
Start small - add a single broad keyword to an ad group that already performs well with exact or phrase matches. Pair broad match with Maximise Conversions or Target CPA/ROAS (never manual CPC). The Smart Bidding algorithm will use your conversion data to bid appropriately.
Monitor your search terms report closely. Look for new, high-performing queries that you can break out into their own ad groups with exact match. Add negative keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic and protect your budget.
If your budget is limited or your exact match keywords already capture enough demand, broad match isn’t mandatory. But for advertisers ready to scale, it can unlock new growth.
Stage 5: Efficiency & Expansion – Portfolio Bidding and Performance Max
In the final phase, you fine-tune efficiency and explore new channels.
Portfolio Bidding allows multiple campaigns with the same goal (e.g., lead completions) to share a single bidding strategy. This gives you more control over your cost per click and cost per conversion by setting a maximum CPC cap - a feature unique to portfolio strategies.
To set up a portfolio CPC cap, look back over at least 90 days of data. Apply filters for Clicks > 0 and Conversions > 0 in your search terms report. Sort by Average CPC and identify the highest CPC where the Cost per Conversion is still profitable. That amount becomes your maximum CPC. Assign your campaigns to a shared bidding strategy and set the cap accordingly. This controls inflation while letting Smart Bidding optimise within your ceiling.
Performance Max (PMax) is an optional expansion channel. For ecommerce accounts it’s standard, but lead gen marketers should treat it as experimental. PMax distributes ads across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover and more, using Google AI to maximise conversions or conversion value. Only enable PMax once your standard Search campaigns are stable and profitable.
When testing PMax, use offline conversion data and lead quality metrics to evaluate results. Compare lead quality and cost across channels. If PMax yields high volumes but poor quality, adjust budgets or pause it entirely.
Smart Bidding Adjustments & Best Practices
With Google Ads' Smart Bidding strategies - Maximise Clicks, Maximise Conversions, Maximise Conversion Value, Target CPA and Target ROAS—you no longer need to make manual bid adjustments. These strategies automatically set bids to meet your conversion or value targets. However, there are nuances:
Bid adjustment eligibility
Device, location, ad scheduling, audience, call and demographic adjustments are supported differently depending on the strategy. For example, Target CPA allows device adjustments only as target modifiers (not true bid changes), whereas Maximise Conversions supports device, location, scheduling, audience and call adjustments but not demographics. The chart below summarises which adjustments work with each strategy:
- Device:* Supported in all Smart Bidding strategies as a -100% exclusion. In Target CPA, it adjusts your CPA target, not the bid.
- Location:* Works with Maximise Clicks and Target Impression Share; it’s ignored in other strategies.
- Ad scheduling & Audiences:* Allowed with Maximise Clicks and Maximise Conversions; not available with value-based strategies.
- Calls & Demographics:* Limited to Maximise Clicks.
Campaign-type Constraints
Different campaign types support different adjustments. Search, Display and Shopping campaigns allow most adjustments. Video and YouTube campaigns have limited audience and demographic controls. Smart, App and Performance Max campaigns rely entirely on Google AI and don’t accept manual adjustments.
Negative Adjustments (-100%)
Negative adjustments are always allowed to exclude devices, locations or demographics entirely. If you set a -100% bid adjustment for a device, the Smart Bidding algorithm will exclude that device from auctions.
Multiplicative Effects
If you set multiple bid adjustments (e.g., +20% for location and -50% for time of day), they will normally multiply (resulting in an overall adjustment of -40%). However, device and location adjustments are not multiplied with each other—only the most extreme adjustment applies.
Portfolio CPC cap tip
Only portfolio strategies let you set a maximum CPC cap. This is critical when CPCs inflate—particularly in competitive verticals. Without a cap, Smart Bidding may pay more than you can profitably sustain. Use the search terms exercise described in Stage 5 to determine an appropriate cap.
Keep these rules in mind when configuring campaigns. Let Google AI handle bidding, but be strategic about exclusions and caps to maintain profitability.
FAQ – People Also Ask
Here are concise answers to common questions about PPC bidding strategies:
Should I use Target impression share?
Use Target Impression Share when you need to dominate the results page and defend your brand. It sets a desired percentage of impressions in a given position (e.g., top of page), but it can increase CPC. Only choose it if you’re willing to pay more for visibility.
What’s the difference between Target Impression Share and Maximise Clicks?
Target Impression Share aims for a specific share of ad impressions, whereas Maximise Clicks simply tries to get you as many clicks as possible within your budget. Choose the former for brand visibility; choose the latter for traffic volume.
What is impression share and why is it important?
Impression share is the percentage of impressions your ads received out of the total eligible impressions. It helps you understand how often your ads show up and whether budget or bid limits are restricting your reach.
What’s the difference between Target CPA and Maximise Conversions?
Maximise Conversions focuses on getting the most conversions for your budget. Target CPA aims for a specific cost per acquisition and may bid higher or lower to achieve that cost. Use Maximise Conversions when volume matters; use Target CPA to control CPA once you have enough conversion data.
Which bidding strategy is best for branded or high-intent keywords?
Manual or Enhanced CPC often works best for branded campaigns and high-intent keywords because you maintain control over bids. However, you can test Maximise Conversions or Target CPA once you have sufficient conversion data.
Which bidding strategy is used to maximise clicks?
The Maximise Clicks strategy (or manual CPC with a high bid) is designed to get as many clicks as possible within your budget.
When should you use a Target CPA bidding strategy?
Choose Target CPA when you have at least 30 conversions in a month and want to control cost per acquisition. It's ideal for lead generation and ensures you stay within your target CPA while allowing Google to bid more in auctions likely to convert.
