Fixing Google Ads Bid Strategy Misconfiguration Errors

Author
Tanel Vetik
CEO | Onte Digital Ltd
6th August 2024

A lot of businesses just like yours are using Google Ads to get more clients, but with the constant updates and changes Google make to their targeting algorithms, bid strategy misconfiguration errors can keep popping up from time to time. Especially if you don’t have the time to keep up with everything.

The underlying causes of your bid strategy misconfiguration errors can easily waste 30-50% of your marketing budget, destroy your campaign ROI metrics, and/or push you way back on the impression share leaderboard.

And that’s not good. Especially if you want to get more clients for your business and not blow your yearly budget in Q1.

Why do you see the bid strategy misconfigured error?

This depends on the sort of setup you have in place. Most commonly, the error appears when selecting the wrong bidding strategy type for your campaign goals, failing to adjust your bids based on campaign performance data, using separate bid strategies for a portfolio campaign budget and vice versa, or not leveraging automated bidding strategies effectively.

You’ll most likely see a description next to the error, roughly telling you why your campaign bid strategy is misconfigured and how you can fix it yourself. However, this may end up being somewhat of a rabbit hole which leads you to 10 different pages all saying different things.

At this point it’s understandable why some pause their campaigns entirely or even stop using Google Ads to drive leads for their business. Those misconfiguration errors are a pain if not resolved. But they’re also one of those things that you fix once and remember how to fix the second time. The initial learning how to fix those errors is what’s most difficult.

What if you ignore the bidding strategy misconfiguration error in Google Ads?

Essentially, Google can’t optimise your campaign performance to reach your chosen goals as effectively as it potentially could. You’re just missing out on potential for more accurate results. Especially when running Performance Max campaigns with bid strategy misconfigured status.

As long as your bidding strategy remains with the “misconfigured” error, then your competitors are getting similar or better results at significantly lower prices. You’re losing out on potential business. Now, if cost per lead (CPL) is not that important for you, then all you need to do to alleviate this impact is to continue adding more budget to make up for inaccurate ad targeting.

But if you want to pay as little as possible for high quality leads, then it should be your primary focus to fix those bid strategy misconfigured errors in your Google Ads campaigns. This will not only lead to lower cost per click (CPC) and higher impression share, but also higher conversion rates and lower average cost per lead.

What can you do to solve bid strategy misconfigured errors in Google Ads

The easy way would be to hire someone to do it for you. Saves time and saves you a lot of money down the line. But if there’s no budget to bring in outside help, then you can try the following things:

  • Audit your bidding strategies. See which bidding strategies your campaigns are using right now, use Google Experiments to trial different ones, and change it to the one recommended by Google.
  • Align bidding strategies with campaign goals. For instance, if your goal is to get as many leads as possible, consider using “Target CPA” or “Maximise Conversions” bidding strategies. If getting to the top of the results page is your objective, “Target Impression Share” might be more appropriate.
  • Use automated bidding. They use machine learning and AI to optimise your bids in real-time. Bid strategies such as “Target ROAS” (Return on Ad Spend) can help you achieve a more consistent ROI by adjusting bids based on historical performance and real-time auction data. Really handy if you don’t have time to work on your campaigns every day.

These three tips will solve 90% of bid strategy misconfiguration errors. But if you’re experiencing an issue that’s not fixed by any of these three, then pop a message in our direction. We’ll help you sort it out free of charge.

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