Event Marketing During Covid-19: Automated Bid Strategies
Author: Ashley Hamilton, 10th June 2020
What Are Automated Bid Strategies?
Google’s latest bidding strategies use machine learning technologies to help drive the best performance for your ads through automation.
Imagine that you could bid higher for a user who has attended an event similar to yours, is interested in your industry and is searching for a solution? – and then bid lower for someone who has only just started their research into the industry sector?
That’s exactly what Google’s automated bidding allows you to do. You can set real-time bidding for each and every auction.
Even with setting day and hourly schedules – or setting increased bids based on a user’s device, location, audience, age and gender – unique bidding to the level that automated bid strategies offer would be impossible to do manually.
So, How Do Automated Bid Strategies Apply to Event Marketing During Covid-19?
While event pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are pivoting to digital, hybrid or being postponed to later in the year, automated bidding can help you to make the most of your event marketing campaigns.
Smart Bidding strategies are a subset of automated bidding strategies focused on driving conversions. Here are 4 benefits of using smart bidding to promote your event:
1) Smart Bidding Strategies are Focused on Driving Conversions, Whatever Your Objectives
Smart Bidding strategies work towards getting as many conversions as possible, whether that is within a set budget (maximize conversions bid strategy) or for a specific target cost-per-acquisition (target CPA bid strategy).
So, whether your objective is to drive delegate registration or a form completion when a user completes a download, Smart Bidding strategies work towards the objective set.
2) The Machine Learning Algorithms Understand the Value of a Conversion
When setting up conversions you can input the value for each conversion achieved. For example:
Delegate registration – value of this might be $1,000
Event brochure download – value of this might be $20
The machine learning algorithms will then understand that generating 10 delegate registrations will be higher value than generating 30 event brochure downloads.
This can be really useful for event organisers whose event is postponed to later in the year and are using this time to engage users with useful pieces of content.
3) Smart Bidding Algorithms Utilise Larger Audience Pools
Considering the example above, where we outline the different conversion values – and using our funnel strategy as a visual – you will see that the number of users ready to download a free piece of content (higher in the funnel users) is much larger than those ready to purchase a ticket at $3,000.
The Smart Bidding algorithms will consider a much larger number of users as likely to convert when pivoting from a delegate conversion to a free download conversion, and your campaigns will have greater reach.
4) Google’s Smart Bidding Algorithm is Continuously Learning
Google’s Smart Bidding algorithm is constantly learning based on real-time feedback and adjusting to improve performance.
As we all navigate through this time into the new normal, our standard Monday to Friday working days are no longer and the algorithms are recognising these changes and adjusting to fit.
The graph below shows the conversions by weekday pre-Coronavirus and during the Coronavirus crisis, based on Tag Digital’s data.
The graph below shows the clicks by weekday pre-Coronavirus and during the Coronavirus crisis, based on Tag Digital’s data.
The higher percentage of clicks and conversions at the weekend shown in our data is something new for B2B advertisers. With most people working from home, there seems to be blurred lines of the working week.
Smart Bidding and Marketers; a Match Made in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Heaven
While we look to make changes to ad copy to suit the needs of users – who now more than ever are looking to engage and learn – let automated bidding take the guesswork out of the level of intent a user has about converting.
For more information, get in touch with our team. We’d love to hear from you.