Have you ever wondered what Smart Bidding is optimising for?
If you have a Google Ads account with multiple conversion goals, it’s often difficult to know which goal Smart Bidding is optimising towards. Even when you know which conversions are useful for each campaign, Google will try to optimise to any conversion goals you have set up in your account.
You’ll find, when segmenting conversions for a campaign, that Google has tracked a fair few micro-conversions, or ones that aren’t necessarily useful to you.
Understanding Conversion Action Sets
That is, until now. Google recently introduced Conversion Action Sets; a convenient way to rid you of your conversion woes. Conversion Action Sets essentially allow you to group conversions into a set.
Once in a set, you can apply that set to specific campaigns. This means that any Smart Bidding strategy you’re using will start optimising towards conversions you specify.
When looking within Google Ads, any conversions in the ‘conversions’ column will be the ones you’ve specified. This is true for any type of campaign, be it Traditional or Smart Bidding.
One thing to remember when applying Conversion Action Sets is that any Smart Bidding campaigns you apply it to will have to undergo their learning period again. The Smart Bidding algorithm will have to optimise differently moving forward.
How Useful are Conversion Action Sets?
Conversion Action Sets can come in very useful if you are both an e-commerce and a lead generation business. For example, if you primarily sell products on your website, you will have transactions measured as a conversion within Google Ads.
If you then wanted to launch a campaign to get users to sign up to your mailing list, fill in a form or navigate to specific pages, you could also add these as conversions within Google Ads and instead add then to a Conversion Action Set. This way, you can target the same, or similar pages on your website.
How to Use Conversion Action Sets
To start using Conversion Action Sets you’ll need to make sure your account has at least two conversion goals added. Then navigate to your conversions and click the tab to the right titled Conversion Action Sets. Click the plus button and then name your set something useful, such as ‘leads for website A’. To apply it to a campaign, navigate to ‘Conversions’ in Campaign Settings, and apply your Conversion Action Set there.
Should I Change Anything?
Keep a close eye on any campaigns during their learning periods after you apply a Conversion Action Set. You may have to increase or reduce your Target CPA or Target ROAS campaigns to keep in line with your KPIs.
Conversion Action Sets are a great way to make sure your conversion data is valid and accurate, and therefore you may see a smaller discrepancy between conversions on Google Ads versus specific goals in Google Analytics or a CRM system.
If you have any questions about Conversion Action Sets, want specific advice or need help setting your up, please don’t hesitate to get in touch today >>>
