I picked manual bidding over automated and it paid off

I know everyone in this group swears by automated bidding these days. But I had a campaign for a local plumber in Austin last spring where I just couldn't get the CPA down with their smart bidding. It kept spending on broad keywords that brought in tire kickers. So I switched to manual CPC bidding, set my max bid at $1.50, and spent like 3 hours tweaking negative keywords. After two weeks, my cost per lead dropped from $18 to $9 and we booked 4 actual jobs from it. Maybe it's just me but I think automated tools miss a lot of the local nuance. Has anyone else had better luck going manual for specific service businesses?

2 comments

2 Comments

kimr101d ago

Tbh it's like how everyone trusts GPS now but sometimes you just know the local shortcuts better.

andrew_rodriguez1d ago

Three blocks of GPS data in my city is just wrong, @kimr10.