Bid and budget management tools

Bid and budget management tools will allow you to optimize the bidding in your campaigns so you don’t have to do everything manually. Using clever algorithms, the tool will continually assess the effectiveness of your campaigns and fluctuate bids in order to reduce the cost per click of your ads.

Benefits of using bid management software instead of doing it manually:

• Saving Time Previously Spent On Estimates
• Greater Control Over Documents
• Enhances Remote Working
• Version Control
• Professional Look
• Security

What does a Bid Management Platform do?

Campaign Automation and bulk management

If you are running performance marketing for a large FMCG or e-commerce company, you may well be faced with the challenge of daily changes in product range, availability and pricing. It can be very difficult for individuals to keep on top of this and next to impossible when you then layer in multiple countries, ad platforms and channels. Typically you will be able to create a feed (or use an existing one) that a bid management platform will then use to create or pause campaigns based on a set of rules that you have decided during the set up phase. This includes tracking settings and copying them across channels where necessary, including Google to Bing

Bid Automation and Budget Management

The proprietary technology at the heart of bid management is how it manages bid levels for you. For performance marketing, you will typically be optimising for impressions (share of voice), clicks or conversions (be that leads, downloads or monetary transactions). The basic level of bid automation is very similar to what AdWords does – you pick a metric, set a target and then the bids will automatically adjust to try to make each adgroup / product / campaign hit that target.

bidding software offers an option known as portfolio bidding or portfolio optimisation. In this case, you group together large numbers of objects that function in a similar way. For instance, you may want to put all of your Google Shopping spend into one portfolio. You then set an objective for the portfolio – maximise conversions for a given spend or ROI, increase efficiency while retaining revenue, attract new customers – and the software will share data between all the objects in the portfolio in order to optimise output.

Reporting

Because all of your data is in one platform, and bid management platforms allow you to tag campaigns in numerous ways (eg, ‘Lawnmowers’, ‘Garden Equipment’, etc) you can quickly create both top line reports and more detailed views that allow you to get on with the more important part – analysing and explaining performance and making changes on the back of that.

Check if you need to use a Bid Management Platform

Not every company needs to use a Bid Management Platform. Given that they tend to be relatively expensive and require work up front in setting it up, it’s something that it’s better to err on the side of caution when making a decision. Typically, though, if you meet most of these criteria it is worth at least considering your options:

• operate in multiple territories and / or platforms
• The scale of each account is too great for one person to review and take action on in a day (eg, if the person responsible for US search is not able to manage all the changes needed on their Account in one day)
• Your business changes product price / range / availability on a regular basis
• The profitability of your performance marketing is sufficient to cover an additional cost

Some of the most popular bid and budget management tools

• WordStream PPC Advisor
• Optmyzr
• Google Ads Editor
• Bing Ad Editor
• Marin
• SEMRush
• Acquisio
• AdNabu
• Kenshoo
• Captivise