Advertising is essential for every business. You can’t tell people about your company without advertising, so you’ll struggle to bring in new customers. However, figuring out the best way to advertise can be difficult.
If you choose to advertise your business online, there’s a good chance that you’ll wind up working with Google Ads at some point. Google offers a unique tool called Google Ads Performance Max that can help your company craft and implement successful ad campaigns.
What is Google Ads Performance Max?
According to Google, Performance Max is a “new goal-based campaign type that allows performance advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign.” You can use it to complement your search advertisements and attract more customers across Google’s channels.
Google Ads Performance Max uses real-time machine learning to automate how it serves ads to your potential customers. You can assign goals, such as increasing online sales, offline sales, or generating leads, then let the tool figure out how to best bid for ad space and serve your ads.
Unlike basic search ads, Google Performance Max uses a variety of ad formats. These include search, video, images, and more.
Who Should Use Google Ads Performance Max?
Google recommends that Ads Performance Max is the best option when:
You have specific marketing and advertising goals that you want to meet, such as boosting your online sales.
You want to maximize the performance of your advertising campaign and aren’t concerned about the channels your advertisements appear on.
You need access to all of Google’s advertising channels through a single campaign.
You want to boost reach and conversion beyond typical search campaigns.
Advertisers can market across multiple channels, including search, video, social media, and more. Even small businesses can benefit from Google Performance Max.
However, you need to have a measurable goal in mind so that the automation can track its results and adjust its strategy to achieve those goals better.
How to Run Performance Max Campaigns
Creating and running a Performance Max ad campaign is relatively simple.
Start by signing into your Google Ads account and creating a new campaign. You’ll see a list of advertising objectives to choose from. You can select one of these goals or create a campaign without a goal. Then, you can customize conversion goals on the next page.
When given the choice of campaign types, select Performance Max, and you’re ready to customize the campaign.
The next step is to select a budget and bidding strategy. Your budget is the maximum amount you’re willing to spend each day or month. While day-to-day ad spending may vary, it won’t exceed the maximum you set.
Google recommends budgeting at least three times your CPA or cost per conversion for the actions you select.
Next, you can set your bid strategy. Performance Max will provide some guidance here, but you can select options like “maximize clicks” or “maximize conversions.”
Then, Google will ask where you want to advertise and the languages you advertise in.
After that, you’ll add your advertisement assets. Remember that Ads Pro Max uses all of Google’s channels, so you’ll need all of the following asset groups:
Images
Logos
Videos
Headlines
Long headlines
Descriptions
Calls-to-action
URLs
The last step before you publish your campaign is to add audience signals. These let you guide the machine learning algorithm toward the audience you want to attract.
Once you’ve published the campaign, you must wait and let the automation do the work for you. Google Performance Max will use machine learning to adapt how it serves your ad campaign over time, hopefully improving its performance.
Tips for Using Google Ads Performance Max
Google Ads Performance Max is a powerful tool for retailers, digital marketing companies, and ecommerce businesses. To get the most out of this tool, use these tips.
Use Full Funnel Conversion Tracking
Google’s Ads Performance Max campaigns excel at automating bids and targeting for your ads. Conversion tracking through your full funnel is essential to a successful campaign because it lets you identify what is working and what isn’t.
This information can improve targeting going forward and help you maximize the impact of your advertisements.
Don’t Skip Certain Assets
One of the main benefits of Google Performance Max is that it lets you automate and manage ads across different channels. Make sure to add creative assets for every type of ad that the Google ads campaign might serve, including videos, images, and logos.
The more assets you can provide, the better since it gives the algorithm more tools to work with when trying to optimize your ad strategy and conversions.
Refresh Your Assets Regularly
Your creative assets are your most powerful tools for creating successful ad campaigns. A great video ad or image can go a long way to generating customer interest. However, over time these assets can grow stale.
Regularly refreshing your assets with new videos or images can breathe new life into an advertising campaign and improve your results.
Be Careful When Location Targeting
You can use Google Ads Performance Max to target specific geographical locations. This means that you can use it to make local campaigns as well as national or international ads.
If you’re trying to serve ads in a specific area, be careful when selecting the geographic location to ensure you’re advertising in the right spot. Consider setting the tool to advertise to people “present” in the location rather than those “interested” in the location.
If you select “presence or interest,” it might serve ads to someone who lives outside the area but is interested in it or may have lived there previously. Unfortunately, this can weaken your local campaign.
Use Other Types of Campaigns for Generating Brand Awareness
Google Ads Performance Max is built with goals in mind. Whether you’re looking for lead generation or increased sales, having a measurable goal is essential to Google Performance Max campaigns.
Without a measurable goal, it’s difficult for the algorithm to learn what is working and what isn’t. If your marketing goal is to increase brand awareness rather than generate additional sales or something else that you can measure, you shouldn’t use Ads Performance Max.
Monitor Your Campaign’s Performance
While the benefit of Google Ads Performance Max is that it automates and adjusts your campaign over time to improve results, that doesn’t mean you should use it as a set-and-forget solution.
You should check on the campaign every few days to see how things are running. You can view metrics and results to determine what search categories or audience segments produce the campaign's best results.
Then, you can use this data to improve your Performance Max campaign and other advertising campaigns. For example, if your best results are coming from a specific audience, you can target future campaigns toward them.
Plan for the Long Term
Google recommends that businesses run their campaigns for at least six weeks before deciding whether to end the campaign or allow it to continue.
Ads Performance Max relies on machine learning to optimize your ad campaign, and machine learning requires sufficient amounts of data to be the most effective.
If you run a campaign for a couple of days and cancel it, you haven’t given the algorithm enough time to collect data and adjust ad placements to improve results.
The Final Word
Google Ads Performance Plus is a great tool for people who want to advertise across all of Google’s channels. You’ll have to create a large variety of advertisement assets, but once you’ve done that, you can rely on machine learning to maximize your campaign’s performance.
While the program isn’t perfect for everything, it can be a great tool for businesses looking to advertise with a specific, measurable goal in mind.
