Manual CPC

means using cookies to see when a user clicks on an ad and makes it all the way to your checkout page – this is considered a 'conversion'.

By choosing to 'Enable Enhanced CPC', you can thereby use this tracking system to control CPC based on conversions. That means that the amount you bid will increase and decrease to become optimized for getting you the most actual sales or the most subscribers to your mailing list. You can take this even further by ticking the 'focus on conversions' box. This way, you'll now actually be engaging in 'CPA' or 'Cost Per Acquisition'.

Another option when choosing automated CPC is 'search page location' which optimizes your bidding strategy to help you reach the top of the SERPs and to stay above the competition. This is more useful for those simply looking to increase their exposure and doesn't matter when you're thinking purely about conversions – if you're focusing on conversions then you'll actually find that the optimal position on the SERPs is automatically taken into account.

Remember, as a business you should be focused on results much more than on your actual clicks. Don't be confused by other metrics – all that really matters is the bottom line in the short and long term.

Of course 'the long term' is where CPA and automated bidding loses some of its power. If your strategy is to get people interested in your brand so that they come back later, or so that they're more likely to click on a subsequent ad, then you might be less focused on short term conversions.

You can apply multiple different bidding strategies and rules for your ads by selecting a 'flexible bid strategy'. Note that when your campaign gathers success, you can look at Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) which is essentially your ROI predicted for the future based on your current campaign settings. For this to work though, you need to make 30 conversions in 30 days at least to provide the right amount of data.

Manual CPC

Automated CPC definitely has its benefits and especially when using enhanced CPC to drive more conversions and build profit.

But there are also benefits to entering your own CPC. As mentioned, manual CPC may make more sense if you are less focused on immediate conversions and ROI. Likewise, manually controlling your CPC will allow you to run experiments and to see how different bidding strategies affect your clicks and your sales.

So when you're managing your CPC manually, how do you decide how much to start bidding with? One guide could be to look at the suggested bids from the Keyword Planner. You can also get clues by looking at how much other advertisers are spending on their PPC. You can do this using Keyword Spy. This is a good strategy because you can likely assume they're managing to make ROI with that strategy.

Another strategy is to simply do some math…

Calculating Your CPC

If you have landing page or a sales page already where you are trying to make sales, then take a look at your statistics currently and try to work out a rough percentage of conversions. How many first time visitors convert to customers/subscribers/repeat visitors?

Let's say that 10% of your visits are 'successful'. That means that you will get one 'hit' for every ten visits or even ten clicks on your ads. So if you were interested in profit alone, you would need to make sure that you got ten clicks and that each of those ten clicks cost you less than the profit you would get from a sale. So if your product was $10, you would need to bid less than $1. This would statistically (hopefully) mean you were likely to make a profit and to make more profit the more you would spend.

If that were your strategy though, then you may be more interested in using an automated CPC strategy which would effectively do the same thing.

Obviously your general budget is going to come into play somewhat here and so is your objective. If you want to get seen more, then you might pay more for more impressions but this will probably come down more to the daily budget you set.