I already devoted a few articles to the importance of successful remarketing strategy and the new possibilities becoming available for businesses online. Google AdWords has always been a few steps ahead of other advertising platforms and they keep developing towards more automated an easier management.

Using automatic bidding strategies like Target CPA is one of the directions in which Google AdWords is going. As the algorithms get smarter, manual CPC bidding is starting to underperform in comparison to automation. New keyword matching rules eliminate the need of endless keyword variations to be entered manually. The next step is powerful remarketing for search which enables the system to bid higher when people who have visited your website are searching for your products again. All these changes are shaping something called Google AdWords 2.0 and in a series of articles I will gradually introduce to it.

The recommendation of Google to take maximum advantage of their algorithms with Google AdWords is to structure your campaigns by keyword match. For example, have one campaign with broad match modified keywords only.

Target CPA

Once you have created a campaign with broad match modified keywords, you must choose Target CPA as a bidding setting. To do this go in the campaign settings and choose from the bidding strategies portfolio. Target CPA works with campaigns which have at least one conversion per day the last 30 days*. If the campaign meets this requirement, the algorithm will automatically adjust the bids throughout the day based on when you are likely to get a conversion.

You must enter a value which would correspond to your desired cost per conversion. Target CPA will always try to get you an acquisition (sale, generated lead, subscription) on the price you reqested. Make sure your CPA is lower than the daily budget of the campaign.

Remarketing Lists for Search.

Once you have the correct settings, Google AdWords’ official advice is to add a remarketing list to your campaign. You can create a remarketing list using Google Analytics or in Google AdWords, itself. One way to structure the list is by URL(for example visitors of a particular page of your website). You can upload a list of emails and create a remarketing list out if them.

Then make sure your targeting setting is set to Target, not Target and Bid. This will allow the campaign to work for both people who have not been on your website and the remarketing list of previous visitors.

Your remarketing list is more likely to convert once shown your ad again. This is why you should make a bid adjustment for this list. In this way, whenever a previous web visitor is searching for a keyword from your list you will bid more.

*Google’s official statement is that now the algorithm is powerful enough to bring results without a minimum amount of conversions. Still the more conversions you have, the more precisely the startegy will work.