Over the past few years, I’ve gotten really into survival TV shows, but the one that stands out as my favorite is Alone. Now, it’s important to note that I know close to nothing about surviving in the real-world wilderness, but I do make sure to judge others’ survival skills from the warmth of my couch.
The premise of Alone is that contestants compete against others in a designated environment to survive completely alone in the wilderness, with the goal being to outlast everyone else (one season went on for 100 days!). Here’s the catch: they can only bring 10 survival items. Often, one of these survival items is paracord, a type of extremely strong and light cord that features a braided outer sheath with an inner core of strands.
Survivalists often use their length of paracord to craft gill nets (a type of flat fishing net). In many of these shows, you see an epic montage of hours (even days) of work, where the survivalist ties individual knots over and over to craft the sizes of holes in their nets needed to catch their desired fish for some much-needed protein and fat.
This is where fishing nets tie into the magical world of PPC Search advertising! Think of the Google Search engine as a massive body of water and search match types as a way to filter through this water (via a fishing net) to match the query (fish) to the right ad served (hungry survivalist).
For more details on match types and how they work, read our post by Morgan Livingston, Real Google Match Types. But for the purpose of this analogy, think of match types as the size of the net that you’re casting. We can use the keyword ‘women’s running shoes’ as an example in each of the following match types:
1. Exact Match casts the smallest net, encapsulating the exact area of the water that you’re looking to cover, catching the closest “fish” or search term that you’re looking for with minimal miscellaneous traffic or seaweed, which includes close variants to your word:
- [women’s shoes for running]
- [women’s running shoe]
2. Phrase Match casts a medium net, capturing searches that include the meaning or intent of your keyword – this match type has shifted over the years but generally goes for similar intent over exact word matching:
- “best women’s running shoes”
- “women’s athletic shoes trending now”
3. Finally, Broad Match casts the largest and most wide-reaching net, capturing a vast range of searches that could be related to your keywords, which includes high-intent queries and also pulls in traffic that you may otherwise have missed with a smaller net:
- ladies’ jogging shoes
- athletic footwear
- running sneakers for women
Let’s think of your bids and your bidding settings as the size of holes within your net. Your bid strategy allows your net the option to grab the right “fish” within the Google search auction. Manually setting bids allows for specific control over the sizes of your net’s holes. While this is a useful approach and absolutely has its merits, it requires constant evaluation from whoever is looking over a Google Ads account and can be quite time-consuming to optimize. I liken this to untying and retying your fishing net to get to the right size holes that you need to capture the most valuable fish.
But, as is often the case in PPC Search advertising, what happens when the landscape changes? (What if some beavers upstream decide they want to build a dam, and the fish you were catching can no longer get to your area?) Do you continue tying and retying your net or scrap it altogether? What other options are out there for you?
Thankfully over the years, Google has fine-tuned its Smart Bidding strategies, which have become super-powered through AI and machine learning so that it doesn’t all land on you to retool your bids when landscapes change. These Smart Bidding strategies include:
- Maximize Conversions
- Maximize Conversion Value (Value Based)
- Target CPA/Cost Per Action
- Target ROAS/Return on Ad Spend (Value Based)
Smart Bidding automatically adjusts your bids in real-time based on the likelihood of a search query leading to a conversion; high-value searches (ones that are more likely to convert) might garner higher bids to capture a conversion, while queries that are less likely to convert might garner lower bids to help conserve budget dollars.
Using Smart Bidding (especially value-based bidding) with the power of AI and machine learning is like sitting back and letting the net adjust the size of its own holes to capture the most valuable fish. The net becomes “knowing” and adjusts these holes based on signals, historical data, and user context. Value-based Smart Bidding works best with Broad Match keywords because it casts the widest net while allowing the net to adjust the sizes of its holes in real-time, which translates to a wider range of triggerable queries, or valuable fish, being captured in the auction.
This wide and “knowing” net takes into account signals like user location, previous searches, predicted performance, other keywords in the ad group, and info on your landing page. Then this net combines those signals with search query/keyword relevance to set the best bids. For ‘women’s running shoes,’ this means that you’ll bid higher on queries like ‘women’s running shoes for sale’ and lower on queries like ‘return women’s running shoes.’
Now, of course, there are risks to casting such a wide net, which is why negative keywords are paramount to this type of campaign – so make sure to stay on top of your search term reports to feed your “knowing” net the correct information to operate from. With this expanded reach, you might pull in some garbage – your net might mistake a waterlogged boot for a massive fish and bid too high – contributing to wasted spend, so make sure to set realistic targets to manage your budgets efficiently.
Also, keep in mind that your campaign will spend a decent amount of time learning in the beginning – more data means higher effectiveness in the long run – so be patient and watchful. In due time, you’ll end up catching the perfect fish while also being able to sit back and enjoy the nature surrounding you with the extra time that you’ve saved.
