How To Set A Winning Data Strategy For Value-Based Bidding

Value-based bidding is only as successful as the inputs you provide. It’s not just about having data; it’s about having the right data.

In last week’s article of this value-based bidding series, we looked at how to determine whether this strategy will be a good fit for your business.

Now, we’re going to dig into the steps needed to ensure you’ve got the right data foundation for value-based bidding to be effective in this second video of our series.

Once you’ve got your data foundation established, the other key piece is telling Google what your goals are. You need to set clear goals so that Google’s AI knows what to aim for.

It may sound a bit daunting at first, but with a few steps, you can ensure your value-based bidding campaigns are firing on all cylinders.

Step 1: Tighten Up Your Tracking

The first order of business is to make sure your Google Tag or Google Tag Manager is properly installed and configured across your website.

This little snippet of code is responsible for measuring crucial information about user interactions, particularly those important lead form submissions to be used as your initial conversion action.

Step 2: Share Offline Conversion Data

Not all valuable customer interactions happen online.

Phone calls and other offline conversion events are often just as important in your lead generation efforts.

Each stage of the offline sales cycle – lead, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, closed deal, etc. – has a certain value for your business.

Sharing this offline conversion event data back into your campaigns helps drive your value-based bidding strategy to find more of the conversions you value most.

Enhanced Conversions for Leads: Now, let’s dive a bit deeper. The most durable method for sharing offline sales conversion data is enhanced conversions for leads.

Enhanced conversions for leads allows you to attribute offline conversions back to your Google Ads campaigns. When a user submits a form on your site, it sends back hashed lead information that you specify, such as an email address.

You then store that lead in your CRM or database, and when that lead converts or completes a further action, you upload that hashed lead information for Google to match it back to the ad that drove the lead (auto-tagging is required).

If you’re currently using offline conversion import (OCI) to bring in your offline data, we recommend transitioning to enhanced conversions for leads for several reasons: It’s privacy-safe and can provide more accurate measurement, supports cross-device conversions and engaged-view conversions, and is easier to implement because you don’t need to make any modifications to your lead forms or CRM systems to receive a GCLID.

You can implement enhanced conversions for lead using the Google tag or with Google Tag Manager – more on making this switch here.

Google Ads Data Manager: Google Ads Data Manager is designed to make it easier to import and activate your offline conversion and first party-data in one central location.

You’ll find “Data manager” under the Tools icon in your Google Ads account. This is where you can connect your first-party data sources, such as BigQuery, Google Cloud, HTTPS, HubSpot, Snowflake, Google Sheets and more via a direct partner connection or Zapier.

Note, if you don’t see your preferred data source listed among the featured products, be sure to click “Search all” to find more options.

Configure your data sources to ensure that all your conversion data, regardless of where it originates, is feeding into Google’s AI.

You can also access and configure your Google tag from Data Manager.

Step 3: Use Data-Driven Attribution

As you know, the customer journey is rarely linear. People might visit your website several times from various sources and interact with your brand on multiple channels before finally submitting a lead, signing up for your newsletter, or becoming a customer.

A data-driven attribution model takes all of these touchpoints into account, assigning credit to each interaction based on its actual contribution to the conversion.

It looks at conversions from your website and Google Analytics from Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display and Demand Gen ads, and determines which keywords, ads and campaigns have the most impact on your goals.

The benefit of this approach to attribution, especially when using value-based bidding strategies, is that it gives Google’s AI a more nuanced understanding of what’s driving results than a last-click or other static attribution model.

This means the system can make better-informed decisions about where and how to allocate your ad spend to find more conversion value based on your goals.

Setting The Right Goals

Now that you’ve got the right data flowing in, it’s time to tell Google’s AI what to focus on.

While you can – and should – track a variety of actions within Google Ads, when it comes to bid optimization, it’s important to choose a single, primary goal and focus on one single stage of the customer journey.

Ideally, your primary goal should be the action that’s closest to the end of the customer journey where you have sufficient conversion volume.

You’ll want to make sure this action occurs at least 15 times per month at the account level so that Google’s AI has enough data to work with.

Additionally, the shorter the conversion delay (the time between an ad click and the conversion), the better.

That doesn’t mean that if you have a long sales cycle and relatively low closed-deal conversion volume you can’t use value-based bidding.

You’ll just need to look at other actions your potential customers take that have more volume and a shorter conversion delay. This could be a lead form submission, a product demo request, a free trial sign-up, etc.

Keep The Data Fresh

Lastly, you want to be sure to upload your conversion data to Google Ads frequently, preferably on a daily basis.

This ensures that Google AI always has the most up-to-date information, allowing it to make the most accurate predictions and optimizations.

Again, you can upload this data by connecting your sources in Data Manager or the Google Ads API.

What’s Next

We’ve covered a lot of ground, from ensuring you’re capturing the right data to setting clear goals for Google’s AI.

Next week, we’ll get into actually assigning values to your conversions, a crucial step in maximizing the return on your ad spend and bidding to value.

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