Can you guess what is one of the best things you can do for campaign optimization, yet by far the most overlooked aspect?
Placement Bid Adjustment
While there is no such thing as an optimal bid modifier, you want to analyze your data.
Once you've gathered the data, you need to make minor adjustments to your placements by setting a bid modifier on the placement that is performing better.
Either - top of search or product pages.
I see that a lot of brand owners and PPC managers are actually missing out on this.
Let's include some context behind my theory.
This is exactly how we are going to massively boost the profitability and prevent bloated ad spend for 1 brand.
Today, we've been doing campaign optimization for one of our client's accounts.
We realized that there is no way we can forget to check placements
Upon closely examining metrics, we noticed that ToS placement was bringing in sales at 39% ACOS, while product pages stayed at a terrible 458% ACOS.
Now, from a profitability perspective, that's a 10x difference in ACOS between these 2 placements.
We decided to apply a bid modifier of 50% on top of the search since it was way much more profitable than product pages.
Not to mention the ranking benefits that come with that!
ToS will usually have a higher CVR and a higher CTR than product pages.
Hence, it's a win-win situation from a ranking and profitability perspective.
So if upon doing a campaign audit, you notice that ToS or PDPs are doing better.
Apply a bid modifier on either of those placements to drive more sales in a more cost-effective way.
You will enjoy more sales and higher gross profit in the end.
What's the action that you can take away from this?
Go ahead and download the "Placement" report to analyze your placements for every campaign.
If you see a slight difference and one placement superior to another, make sure to focus all your energy & money on the better-performing placements.
Whether that would be top of search or product pages.
Unfortunately, you can't control or influence the bid for the rest of the page.
But... we can still make huge changes to our campaign profitability by simply tweaking those 2 placements (PDPs, ToS).
As you can see from my example above, you can absolutely make a 10x difference in your profitability and sales by monitoring and optimizing placements for your campaigns.
Of course, not across the entire account, but for certain campaigns.
Do not forget this crucial action of your regular PPC optimization routine because this can literally be a night and day difference in your ACOS efficiency, ranking benefits, etc.
If you are afraid that you might overspend by placing a high bid modifier on 1 placement, start small.
Set a 10/20/30 % bid modifier and update it every 2 weeks on any placement that has lower ACOS till you achieve your desired outcome.
There might be an opposite instance where 2 weeks later after you return, the other placement starts performing better.
If this happens, remove the bid from the current placement and shift your bid modifier to another placement.