In Google Ads, it is always so easy to switch your bidding strategy and revert from automated bidding to manual bidding after a week or so of seeing so-so results.

But doing just this is not smart bidding in the long run as it can cost you more money instead of receiving more conversions on ads.

If you are going to test a bidding strategy, the first step is research. Make sure that your chosen strategy is the right one to test your results and expectations accordingly.

This article on How Maximize Conversions Can Work For You, we will discuss a specific Google Ads strategy called Maximize Conversions. I will show you what this bid strategy is, when to use it, and how you can put this strategy to the test based on our hands-on experience of testing this bidding strategy to our clients’ ad campaigns.

 

Watch the video version of this article below:

What Is the Maximize Conversions Bidding Strategy?

Referencing Google Ads Help section:

The maximize conversion bidding strategy in Google Ads helps you maximize the total conversion value of your campaign within your specified budget.

 

This bidding strategy:

• Uses advanced machine learning to automatically optimize and set bids offers auction-time bidding capabilities that tailor bids for each auction
• Allows you to define the value that you want to maximize, such as sales revenue or profit margins, when you set up conversion tracking for your account.

The Maximum Conversions bid strategy is designed to get as many conversions as possible while spending your daily budget.

There are no additional settings for the advertiser to control.

So, each campaign using Maximize Conversions should have its own daily budget assigned and not be part of a shared budget.

If it is included in a shared budget, Maximize Conversions will spend the daily budget of the entire shared group, not just its own allotment.

 

When is it best to apply Maximize Conversions bidding strategy?

Based on this, Maximize conversions is ideal if the conversion count is the end goal. But what if, there are instances where this is not the right bidding strategy?

Yes, that is possible if any of these KPIs are your metric basis:

• CPA – Consider a Target CPA strategy, as Maximize Conversions could drive that number in the opposite direction.
• ROAS – If revenue is variable and you’re able to pass accurate revenue data to Google Ads, consider Target ROAS over Maximize Conversions.
• Volume – Maximize Conversions can limit your reach to only those likely to convert.
• Max CPC – Maximize Conversions offers no control over how much you bid for a click.

 

Budget on bidding

Straight from Google’s own support page: “Maximize conversions will try to fully spend your average daily budget, so if you’re currently spending much less than your budget, Maximize conversions could increase spend significantly.”

If the total number of conversions is the primary metric you are after, and you do not mind the KPIs listed above, then Maximize Conversions may be just the right bidding strategy for you.

 

What we learned and recommend when applying Maximize Conversions to Google Ads campaign

1. It takes an average of 2 weeks before you can see optimized results

Yes, this is true for most of the campaigns where we applied Maximize Conversions.

It takes around 2 weeks for Google to optimize the campaign.

It’s not uncommon to see a decline during the first 2 weeks and then a rise in the results after that.

Pro tip:

We highly recommend that you So, do not pause your campaign in the first two weeks. Let is run long enough to gather data and learn so you can see the real results from a Maximize Conversions bid strategy.

 

2. This strategy is NOT for all campaigns or not for all industries

Yes, the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy will not work for everyone. We have seen this happen with some of the campaigns we ran, where the max bidding conversions performed worse than the original bidding strategy.

Pro tip:

Always consider this bidding strategy as a test run or an experiment first before you decide to roll it as a real campaign. We cannot specifically tell which ad campaign works well and which ad campaign doesn’t with this bidding strategy. The only way to tell is to run a test campaign first.

 

Conclusion

Never run this bidding strategy without setting a conversion tracking.

The goal of maximize conversions bidding is to maximize the number of conversions. If no tracking is enabled, the algorithm is likely to make bad decisions.