What Is Value Based Bidding

You’re staring at your Google Ads interface, wondering why you’re paying for a flood of phone calls that your team doesn't have time to answer or even want to answer, while the contact forms you actually want are barely trickling in then you might be confused.

When you start searching for answers, and you keep hitting the same buzzword: Value-Based Bidding (VBB).

The tutorials make it sound like magic. They tell you to just flip a switch in the platform set a value, and Google will suddenly understand exactly what your business needs.

But if you’re feeling skeptical about whether value-based bidding actually works for a business like yours, you aren't alone.

Even the "experts" can't agree on it.

Here is how I explain what Value-Based Bidding actually is, how it works when you're looking at Google Ads in the real world, and why a one-size-fits-all approach is probably costing you money.

What is Value-Based Bidding (And How Does It Actually Work?)

At its core, Value-Based Bidding is just a way of telling the Google algorithm exactly what a specific customer action is worth to your bottom line. Instead of treating every click, call, or form fill like they are worth the exact same amount, you assign a dollar value to each one based on how much you actually want them.

Think about it like this:

• The Holy Grail ($50): If a prospect fills out your main contact form, they almost always convert into a paying client. You’d happily pay $50 all day long to get that form fill.

• The "Okay" Lead ($10): You get phone calls, but maybe your sales team isn't great on the phone, or you hate being tied to the receiver. You still want the calls, but you only value them at $10.

• The "Take It or Leave It" Lead ($5): Someone starts a live chat on your site. They require a lot of back-and-forth and rarely buy. You only value that at $5.

Once you assign these numbers inside the platform, you tell Google: "Maximize the total value of these conversions."

You're giving the algorithm permission to go find the best mix of leads, but you're forcing it to prioritize the $50 form fills over the $5 chats. It stops chasing empty volume and starts chasing actual revenue.

The Big Expert Disagreement: Why the Industry is Divided

I was recently at SMX (a major search marketing conference), and I ran into another agency owner who flat-out told me, "I hate Value-Based Bidding. I think Google does way better when you just give it one single conversion action to focus on and leave it alone."

It made me laugh, because it’s the perfect example of how even top-tier Google Ads experts disagree.

Personally? I love Value-Based Bidding. When I worked heavily in the automotive industry, we applied it universally in the agency accounts. Car dealership websites have a million different things a user can do — view a map, unlock a price, text a rep and we used VBB to cut through that noise and tell Google exactly which actions actually sold cars.

So, who is right? The agency owner who hates it, or me?

The Truth Textbooks Won't Tell You: Your Business is Unique

The reason my Google Ads Consulting and Coaching business thrives today while so many standard tutorials or agencies applying the same thing to all their clients fail is because there is no single "right" way to set things up when you are looking at Google Ads.

Your business is unique. The way your operations are set up dictates your ad strategy, not some blanket best practice you read online.

For example, take two different therapy practices running Google Ads. One might be a massive therapy clinic that just invested heavily in a dedicated call center; they want phone calls and will value them highly. The other might be a solo practitioner who can't answer the phone while with patients; they value online scheduling over everything else.

Value-Based Bidding is a powerful tool in the toolkit, but it is not a requirement. It is another take it or leave it solultion.

We can use value based bidding and leverage it to force Google to find your highest-paying clients, or we can feed everything in raw and just tell Google to get you the maximum sheer volume of leads possible.

Want to Find Out What Works for Your Business?

If you’ve been researching Value-Based Bidding, feeling stuck, and trying to figure out if it’s a strategy that will actually save you money or just waste your budget, let’s get you unstuck.

You don't need a generic tutorial; you need a strategy customized to how you actually make money.

I’d love to look under the hood of your account. We can jump on a strategy coaching call, or I can run a comprehensive audit of your Google Ads to show you exactly how to align your budget with your perfect clients.