Who, what, when and how?
- Back in November 2021, Google revealed the launch of Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, with a primary objective to generate leads, drive sales online and also push for in-store visits. Performance Max helps improve your online strategy through the power of automation and machine learning.
What are Performance Max campaigns?
The Performance Max campaigns utilize a mix of automation and machine learning to help businesses execute their marketing goals. The campaign type has a reach across many different Google networks:
- Display
- Search
- Maps
- Discover Feed
- YouTube
- Shopping Ads
How does Performance Max work?
Google’s PMax is an automated, goal-based campaign type that uses machine learning to serve relevant audiences with relevant ads, supported by optimal bids to help improve on campaign performance.
“Performance Max campaigns puts your business goals front and centre and allow our automation to target your business goals above all else. This is crucial in order to maximise performance from Google Ads!” – Google
When advertising, you can select a marketing objective and then choose the conversion goal to support that objective. It’s important that your campaigns are optimised to get the best ROI through automation and it’s beneficial to assign more than one goal with different values to conversion to a single campaign. With a focus on goals, PMax campaigns use automated bidding and targeting technology to help use you budget more efficiently to spend where the highest ROI opportunities are.
Types of conversion goals to choose from
Online sales –
- Online purchase
- In-app purchase
- Loyalty sign up
- Subscription
- Add to cart
- Initiate checkout
Lead Generation –
- Request quote
- Sign-up
- Lead form
- Phone calls
- Imported leads
- Booked appointment
- Outbound click
- Contact
Offline sales –
- Store visits
- Local actions (direction and calls)
According to Google, you can get the best value for money with automation by using the same goals throughout your Google Ads campaigns.
I am running a PMax campaign, should I stop running my other search campaign?
No. Performance Max runs alongside your core campaigns. Keep investing in your keyword search campaigns and running them with Performance Max to get the best results.
By turning off existing campaigns, you will ruin the reach of your campaigns and how they perform because by relying on Performance Max, this campaign type does not utilise keywords as a Search campaign does.
What are the key features of Performance Max campaigns?
URL Expansion – through machine learning, the default URL expansion feature chooses a landing page, based on customer intent – to drive the best performance.
Asset Groups – PMax moves from Ad formats to Asset Groups, which include sets of assets all related to a single theme or audiences. Multiple asset groups can be created per campaign.
Audience Signals – You are able to use audience signals to alert Google that a segment of users that are more than likely to convert
Reporting and Insights – PMax has introduced new reports to help explain what the machine learning is accomplishing, signals that are in use and also a breakdown of performance so you can adjust your marketing strategies.
How do I know if Performance Max is right for me?
If you have the following objectives, then Performance Max is for you…:
- Conversion goals such as improving your online sales or lead generation
- Maximise the performance of your campaign without being limited by which channel your ads appear on
- Reach people across Google’s different advertising network using a single campaign
- Add on your reach and conversion value
Conclusion
So, hopefully now you understand how Performance Max campaigns work and what you need to get started – you can decide if it is the right campaign type to help you reach your marketing objectives.
PMax gives you the opportunity to focus on strategic performance drivers (i.e creative optimisation, campaign planning and insights). The more creative assets are provided, the more improvement you will see.
If you have any questions about Google Ads and Performance Max, or if automation is suitable for your Digital Marketing efforts – then let’s have a chat and see how you can improve your strategy.
