POCM – what is it anyway?

First, however, a short piece of information for those who have not come across this system so far. POCM is our tool that helps in improving the results of campaigns conducted in Google Ads. It is based on statistical models and self-learning algorithms that collect data about campaigns 24 hours a day and automatically optimize them so as to maximize the probability of achieving previously set goals.

When designing POCM, we especially had in mind that the platform should be simple and intuitive to use and that it would enable effective campaigns using the latest and most effective technologies, also for people who do not have specialized knowledge in the field of online advertising.

What’s with bidding strategies?

It sounds specialized and may sound complicated, but choosing a bid optimization strategy is not a plan for the Battle of Waterloo. Strategies are simply used to achieve a selected business goal that we want to achieve through a campaign. These goals may be different. At various stages of marketing activities, we may, for example, want as many people as possible to see our advertisement, to convert as many users as possible, or simply to reduce the costs associated with advertising as much as possible. A different strategy is used to achieve each of these goals. Its choice determines which parameters of the campaign the system will focus on the most in the optimization process.

As already mentioned, we currently have over 50 such strategies. We will not describe all the available options here, but we will focus on explaining what can be achieved with the most popular ones.

Maximize conversions based on your budget

In this strategy, the system uses the available budget in such a way that it appears evenly and as efficiently as possible. This means that if there is little money left, it goes first to the key phrases that generate the most conversions. Therefore, this strategy is a good solution for people who cannot afford large advertising expenses – thanks to it we minimize the likelihood of a budget constraint.

Maximize your income

If we choose a strategy to maximize revenue, the algorithms will focus not on individual key phrases or advertised products, but on entire campaigns. When we run many of them, they analyze the effectiveness of each of them (of course, provided that we have this strategy set for all of them), and then distributes the budget so that the total income from all of them is as high as possible. This strategy works best when the system has a lot of data, so it is intended for people with a large advertising budget and who can afford to run a large number of campaigns.

Target ROAS

Target ROAS is that the system aims to achieve a return on investment as determined by us. Let’s show it with an example – for example, we can assume that we want every dollar spent on advertising to bring us $ 3 profit. In this model, algorithms use data to identify key phrases or products that have yielded a large number of valuable conversions in the past. They set higher click rates for them, while other phrases / products have a lower rate. The danger with this strategy is setting an unrealistic, high ROAS, because it can lead to a budgetary constraint. Therefore, it is worth entrusting the determination of the return on investment to a specialist – he will set the achievable return and will gradually increase it, if the campaign produces satisfactory results.

Target CPA

In the target CPA, we define the rate that we are willing to spend on acquiring one user. However, this does not mean that each conversion will cost exactly the same. The system will analyze the behavior of users and on this basis it will reduce or increase rates on specific devices, at given hours, etc. However, it will always strive to ensure that the average cost of acquisition is at least as agreed. In this way, it will provide us with the greatest number of conversions at a given cost-per-acquisition. This strategy works especially when the specific cost of customer acquisition is important to us and when the algorithm has a lot of data on the basis of which it can predict user behavior.

Maximize clicks based on your budget

As you can guess, the goal of this strategy is to get as many clicks as possible within your budget. It’s similar to budget-based conversion maximization, and is an alternative when we don’t have conversion tracking implemented. It also works well when we have a very small budget, and thus few conversions – then there may be too little data for the system to correctly predict which phrases / products will bring the most of them. In addition, it is not always possible to determine a conversion action, and we often want to get as much traffic as possible on the page – then maximizing clicks will be a great solution.

Target Impression Share

This strategy allows you to achieve the assumed percentage of views – algorithms automatically set bids at such a level to win a certain number of auctions. When choosing this option, we have to decide which ad display place we want to fight for. There are three options here: first result on the page, displayed at the top of the results page, or displayed anywhere on the page. Here you can limit the maximum bid that the system can set, but for the campaign to work properly, it cannot be too low. Then it would be impossible to win the appropriate number of auctions.

Improved CPC

As part of the Enhanced CPC, we set a click bid for your ads ourselves, but the system may automatically increase it if it determines that there are conditions under which the likelihood of conversion has increased, or decreased when the chance of conversion is low. With Enhanced CPC – aka eCPC – you can optimize your bids to increase either the number of conversions or the value of your conversions.

A solution tailored to your needs

POCM users can use many other strategies available within the platform. After signing the contract, the customer is contacted by a specialist from the Support Department, created specifically to support the users of this particular platform. It proposes the best strategy and ad formats in a given industry and budget, choosing from the options available in the package selected by the client.

After accepting the plan, he sets up a campaign and optimizes it manually for a month, while the algorithms collect data in order to adjust the rates independently in the future, implementing the assumed strategy. After the first month, the company no longer interferes with the campaign, but the customer has the option of updating or adding new keywords, ads, etc. He can also view ad statistics and compare the results from different periods. Therefore, it is a platform that gives the client a lot of freedom, while providing advanced algorithms, and this in total gives a tool that allows you to create modern, constantly optimized campaigns with any budget.

What is a phrase?

Keywords are queries that a user enters into a search engine – for example on Google – when he searches for something on the Internet. Of course, there are billions of passwords entered into the search engine and new ones appear every day, but there is a large pool of those that are repeated many times – from this group we choose valuable phrases for website positioning.

But one by one: what is it about positioning for specific phrases? When a user enters a specific term into a search engine, the algorithms rank the results for them. It contains the pages that most likely answer the internet user’s question best. The assessment of whether a website should appear high in the search results for a specific keyword is influenced by many factors – including the quality and credibility of the website, the correctness and formatting of texts or links from other websites. However, one of the most important is whether the headings and the texts themselves on the page contain the specific phrase that the user has entered on Google. When it appears, it is a signal to the algorithms that the recipient is likely to find the answer to their question on this site, which makes them rank it high in the results.

Key phrases in texts

The discovery that algorithms take into account key phrases has brought a real plague of texts written exclusively for bots. They were packed with the most searchable keywords, but they were of no value to the user. However, Google quickly put an end to these practices by introducing an algorithm aptly named Panda to the search engine. It was created to promote high-quality websites that provide reliable knowledge and contain original content. From that moment, inserting phrases in each sentence ceased to make sense and today it is necessary to ensure that the optimal number of phrases is included in the text and that they are naturally woven into the sequence of the narrative.

Key phrases – types

Key phrases can be short – one word – or even a few words. Most often, we divide them into general phrases and long tail phrases, i.e. the so-called long tails.

General phrases are short and – as the name suggests – rather imprecise. They are entered by users who are usually at the beginning of the shopping path, i.e. do not yet have specific expectations as to the service or product. General phrases can be, for example, slogans like “summer dress”, “sneakers” or “car mechanic”. They have a lot of searches on the web, which is why they are often considered the best for website positioning. In fact, this is not always the case, because often the user entering such a phrase is only doing initial research and is not determined to make a transaction.

Long tail phrases are much more complex and quite precise, because they are entered by users who already know what they are looking for. Long tails have fewer searches than general phrases, but are often more effective – because if the Internet user has already formulated his expectations for a product or service, it means that he is most likely ready to decide on them. Long tail phrases are becoming more and more important in website positioning, as the popularity of Voice Search, i.e. voice search, increases every year. This type of search favors the use of longer and natural-sounding search terms, i.e. long tails.

Selection of key phrases

How to choose key phrases? There is no universal way here. It all depends on the type and scale of business, offer, competitors’ activities and many other factors. For example, if we run a hairdressing salon, local phrases will work first, i.e. those that give the name of the city or district in which the establishment is located. Positioning for very general phrases is unnecessary, because the logic requires looking for customers only in the area. Online stores will not use local positioning, but should focus on longer passwords that match their product range. The selection of phrases should therefore always be preceded by a thorough analysis of the industry and competition and the formulation of the goals we want to achieve.