If you're a marketer, you probably know a thing or two about Performance Max, but let's dive into it anyway.Â
Performance Max is basically a campaign that makes advertising on Google a breeze. It helps you promote your business on various Google platforms like YouTube, Display, Search, Gmail, and Maps—all in a single campaign.
What sets Performance Max apart is its use of Smart Bidding, a fancy term for using artificial intelligence to constantly improve ad performance across Google. What this means is that your ads get smarter over time, reaching more potential customers and driving better results.
If you're after a simple and effective solution to connect with new audiences and meet your advertising goals, Performance Max is the way to go. It's easy to set up and manage, offering an answer to your advertising needs.
However, if you’re not playing your cards right, your efforts could go to waste. So, how do you make sure you’re making the most of advertising efforts using Performance Max? Well, that’s why we’ve put together this article! These are steps you should take to ensure that your campaigns run well.Â
How Can Performance Max Help Your Business?
Performance Max helps you reach more customers online and advertise your business across various Google Ads platforms.
Increase Conversions and Value
Google AI manages your budget and bids across Google channels in real-time, aiming to drive more conversions. Businesses using Performance Max have seen, on average, an 18% increase in total conversions at a similar cost.
Find New Customers
Performance Max uses Google AI to understand customer intent, behavior, and context. This ensures your ads appear at the right times, making them more relevant and connecting with potential customers who are likely to convert. It's a great way to expand your reach on existing Google channels and explore new ones.
Gain Insights
You can track your Performance Max campaigns on the Insights page of your Google Ads account. This provides valuable information about your top audiences, their search behavior, and which ad content resonates with them. Understanding these insights helps you optimize your campaign for better performance.
Optimize Creatives
Performance Max utilizes all your creative assets, such as headlines, descriptions, images, or videos, to create customized ads across Google channels. Google AI experiments with different combinations to find what works best together, ensuring your ads are both relevant and high-performing. It can also suggest and create new assets to keep your ads fresh over time.
How Do You Get the Most Out of Performance Max?
To make the most of Performance Max, advertisers must contribute high-quality input that guides or collaborates with AI. Here are nine tips to enhance your results and get the most value from your campaigns:
Performance Max Asset Groups
In Performance Max campaigns, think of asset groups like folders for your ads. Each folder has different text and image options to show off your products. As your ads run and collect data, it's a good idea to split your folders into smaller ones, each focusing on a specific part of your products, like one for blouses and another for jeans.
To make your ads work better, make sure each folder has at least five different versions of both text and images. This gives Google more choices to find the best combination for your ads. Basically, the more varied content you provide, the better your ads might perform.
Audience Signals
Providing your campaign with audience signals can speed up machine learning and assist in directing the campaign towards your desired audience.
While Google's Smart Bidding algorithm takes care of optimizing bids, incorporating pertinent data into audience signals contributes to enhancing overall performance.
Know When to Run Your Ads
Examining your calendar view allows you to pinpoint specific times or days when your Performance Max campaign isn't yielding a favorable return on ad spend.Â
Once you've identified a pattern, you can modify the ad schedule to display ads exclusively during profitable times, providing a practical way to manage your ad budget.
Monitor Your Budgets Daily
On your Performance Max campaign page, keep tabs on how much your campaign is using up every day, and think about tweaking your budget if needed.
For example, if your campaign consistently uses up your entire budget daily, you could try bumping up the budget a bit. Testing out a higher budget might just amp up your campaign's performance.
Ad Extensions
With Performance Max, you have the opportunity to boost your ads using ad extensions. These allow you to provide extra information, like additional links and your company's address, to make your ads more attractive.
This expands the dimensions of your ad without being bothersome to users. Through your extensions, make sure to answer common user questions. Feel free to include specific details about your products or highlight any ongoing special offers.
Supply as Many Creative Assets as Possible
Consider it like a domino effect: the greater the number of assets you provide to Performance Max, the smoother Google's algorithm can showcase your ad in the ideal format, on the appropriate channel, and to the right target audience across the Google network. This not only boosts the chances of conversions but also streamlines the process of pinpointing what connects best with your customers.
Technically, you're doing your future self a favour with this!
Include Your Own Videos
Speaking of assets, if you don't incorporate your videos into your Performance Max asset group, the Performance Max automation will create a video using the assets in your group to ensure all channels are represented. Essentially, it turns into a slideshow with system-selected music.
If you prefer to have control over the branding, structure, and appearance of your video (which I assume you do), it's highly recommended to craft your own video content.
Boost Your Results By Teaming Up
Make your Performance Max campaigns work even better by teaming them up with keyword-based Search campaigns. Performance Max uses smart AI tech without needing keywords to find what people are searching for. It then creates ads that match what users are looking for. The result? Your ads reach more people, and you get even better results on Search.
Avoid Claiming Credit for Brand Searches
Performance Max likes to count conversions from people who were already searching for your brand (basically, people who were likely to buy anyway). When it takes credit for these conversions, it messes up your data because these customers probably made up their minds before.
A smart move to deal with this is to not count these conversions. Instead, set up separate campaigns for searches that include your brand name and those that don't. Treating them differently helps each type of search perform better because they have different goals.Â
This helps each type of traffic perform better because they have different goals. It's a common practice for regular campaigns, and doing it for Performance Max ensures accurate tracking and better visibility on Google Shopping. Your Performance Max ROAS/CPA might dip a bit, but it improves the accuracy and dominance of brand searches.
When Should You Start Checking Your Performance Max Data?
It is advisable to review your Performance Max data within the first one to three months. The algorithm's learning stage is influenced by your spending, with higher spending leading to a faster transition. This helps you quickly get more accurate results.
How Quickly Will Performance Max Reflect Changes?
The time frame varies based on your spending. Generally, campaign adjustments take effect immediately, providing quick results. For significant changes, the algorithm requires additional learning time, typically a few days. Consider delayed attribution for ROAS and conversions when evaluating your campaigns.
Final Words
Now, more than ever, squeezing the most out of your marketing budget is a necessity. Performance Max, combined with Google's AI, and fueled by your own inputs create a dynamic duo that sweeps in to connect with potential customers online in the slickest, most efficient way possible! Try these tips today!
SO, WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS PARTNER?
Well, aren’t we glad you asked! We at DigiCom are obsessive data-driven marketers pulling from multi-disciplinary strategies to unlock scale. We buy media across all platforms and placements and provide creative solutions alongside content creation, and conversion rate optimizations. We pride ourselves on your successes and will stop at nothing to help you grow.