Hosted bid management applications are those provided by third-party vendors. The vendor
manages the software, the resources required to maintain the software, and all of the maintenance
for both software and resources. An added benefit of using a hosted application is that
often the application is much richer and more robust than one you could manage and maintain
on your own.
There are dozens of companies offering bid management services. Just a few among them are
WebSideStoryBid, Searchignite, PPCPro, KeywordROI, and BidRank. Each vendor offers some
similar and some different features for the applications that they provide, and the cost of hosted
bid management software can be from $125 per month to more than $1,200 per month. The cost
depends on the number of keywords you’re tracking and the different features that are available to
you. Some management application providers will also allow you to create custom management
applications that also fall into the same cost range.
When you’re considering an automated bid management product, you should look for several
features. The most basic of these include:
- A single interface for multiple PPC campaigns. You will most likely be running PPC
campaigns from several different providers, so you need a solution that allows you to
manage all of those campaigns, regardless of provider, from a single control panel.
- Conversion tracking, including conversion rates and cost per sale for each keyword
that you’re tracking.
- Global change capabilities. When you make a change to your PPC campaign, whether
it’s changing a word, changing your strategy, or changing your bids, you may need to have
those changes reflected in multiple places. Good bid management software offers the ability
to make global changes—you make the change one time, and all of the campaigns you
specify are updated automatically.
- Keyword monitoring capabilities. Bid management software should let you see where
your keywords are performing at any given time.
- Automatic bid-management capabilities. One trick some companies use to keep the
competition at bay is called bid jamming. Because keyword bids, unlike those in a traditional
auction, are dynamic and can go both up and down, the auction isn’t over when
you’ve paid a lot and won your word. You’d like to rebid it at a lower price. And here’s
where the keyword jammer, by offering only a penny less than your inflated bid, tries
to keep you at that level and drain your SEO budget. (Of course, you can play the same
game by letting the jammer have the word and then becoming a bid jammer yourself.)
Automatic bid management can keep you from going crazy by ensuring that you’re bidding
at the most efficient level all the time.
- Fraud monitoring and documentation. Click fraud can be very costly. A good bid management
software will monitor your PPC campaigns for signs of click fraud.
- Reporting capabilities. Nearly every bid management application includes the ability to
generate and share reports. What those reports contain varies from vendor to vendor. Be
sure to check the types of reports that are available with the solution you choose.
In addition to the basic features that you should look for in bid management software, you may want
to consider some additional features. These are not essential features, but they offer additional value
and make monitoring your PPC campaigns and keyword bids a much easier process.
- Rank Management: Most bid-management software is based solely on the bidding guidelines
you define. However, some software includes the ability to have your bids automatically
adjusted according to the rank of a given keyword. This can be helpful if what matters
to you is the rank that your ad reaches, rather than the cost of the click.
- Balancing Strategies: These are capabilities within bid management software that maintain
a steady conversion rate, by adjusting bids according to the number of conversions.
This also helps to ensure that your ROI remains steady, rather than fluctuating according
to the cost of your bids.
- Gap Management: In PPC bidding there’s a phenomenon called a gap that appears
between bids. For example, the cost per click, according to ranking, might look like this:
$.56, $.53, $.49, $.28, $.27, $.26. The large drop from $.49 to $.28 is called a gap. These
gaps are caused when large companies bid the same amount for each of their keywords,
regardless of the average bid or the bid necessary to reach a specific rank.
When you’re looking at a gap in bidding, it’s often possible to “fill the gap” and still reach
a great ranking. Using the preceding example, if you were to bid $.30, you could jump to
the fourth position. But to make it to the third position you would need to increase your
cost-per-click a full 21 cents. For the difference between the number four and the number
three spot, the additional expenditure doesn’t make sense.
Some bid management software offers gap management, and will alert you when there is
a gap of which you can take advantage. And taking advantage of these gaps can result in
lower PPC costs with the same or better results.
- Keyword Suggestion Tools: Keyword suggestion tools aren’t necessarily part of the bidding
process, but they can still be useful and should be considered when you’re considering
bid management software. Keyword suggestion tools can provide additional resources
or options for your PPC keywords, which can result in finding lower-cost keywords that
perform as well as those that cost considerably more.
Bid management is a time-consuming process. But you can take advantage of bid management applications
and software to help you reduce the time spent managing your PPC campaigns and to increase
the effectiveness of those campaigns.
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