You may have heard you should never start a new Google Ad campaign off with an automated 'smart' bidding strategy like Maximize Conversions. In fact, I used to believe this as well.

That was until I actually started experimenting with Max Conversions Bid Strategy myself. First I started doing Google Ad Experiments, allocating anywhere from 30-50% of the campaign's budget to the experiment. I would just test switching the bid strategy to Max Conversions. While the experiments are still running, I'm pretty surprised by how many are performing better than the control campaign.

So much so that I decided to start off a new campaign I was managing with Max Conversions Bid Strategy from day 1. The result? It's averaging a very nice cost per conversion from the get-go.

I had originally strayed away from smart bid strategies like Maximize Conversions because it always seemed as if you were handing over the reins completely to Google's bidding algorithm. This isn't true if you remember to set up your campaign in a granular fashion; keywords, ad groups, ad schedule, audience, demographics, location targeting, etc.

This way you can still spot trends in the data across multiple dimensions and exclude the dimensions that are contributing to a high cost with little to no conversions.

I do think Manual CPC still has a place but mostly for 'trouble' campaigns that are struggling to get conversions with Max Conversions Bid Strategy.

At the end of the day, you don't want to spend your days making a bunch of bid adjustments if the algorithm can do it better, so give it a shot! Start your campaign off with Maximize Conversions Bid Strategy and let me know how it goes.