In short, Google Ads are a great place to invest your marketing budget – 63% of searchers have clicked on a Google Ad over the past year, and in 2021, Google Ads delivered an 8:1 return on investment (ROI).
However, Google Ads can also be intimidating and confusing for those just getting started. It’s a powerful resource, and if you don’t understand how the paid search system works, you could miss out on tons of potential customers or spend your budget with few results.
Below is an in-depth look at ways to use the specific campaign type called Google Ads Performance Max to improve your ad campaigns.
What is Google Ads Performance Max?
When you’re setting up your Google Ad campaign, you’ll have the option to choose between campaign types based on your marketing goals, budget, strategy, and availability to invest time. Google Ads Performance Max is one of these campaign types you can choose (and it’s a new option as of November 2021!).
Performance Max is a goal-based campaign. When setting up your campaign, you’ll specify your conversion and business goals, unique expertise, and budget. The campaign then meets your goals by optimizing your Google Ads performance in real-time. The experience is driven by automated technology, for example:
- Automated bidding
- Audiences
- Creatives
- Attribution
- Budget optimization
Google writes, “Google Ads automation will find potential customers for your goals and serve the most appropriate ad, with the optimal bid, to maximize campaign performance.”
This campaign type is a new campaign type, but data shows that this campaign type drives 13% more conversions at the same or lower cost per conversion when run alongside Google’s current campaign types.
Key Features of Google Ads Performance Max
Google uses automation to optimize your ads with Performance Max. Here are some of the key features of this campaign type:
- Audience Signals: You can use audience signals to alert Google that a segment of users has a higher conversion rate. Google will show these users your ads more often.
- Asset Groups: Multiple asset groups can be created per campaign. These are a collection of creative assets related to a target audience or centered on a certain theme.
- URL Expansion: Machine learning chooses the best landing page based on customer intent to meet your goals.
- Reporting and Insights: The insights you receive from Performance Max help you understand which creatives are impacting your ad performance. Moving forward with these insights, you can optimize campaigns to drive your conversions and ROI.
Google Ads Performance Max is a strong tool with super powerful automation, but marketers’ biggest question is how can you use it correctly to see results?
3 Ways to Use Google Ads Performance Max to Improve Your Ad Campaigns
1. Know your goals.
To set up your Google Ads Performance Max campaigns, you have to be clear on your marketing goals. If you aren’t clear on the goals you want to achieve, this tool can’t help you effectively because your goals are the only way to tell the automation what you want to see (and there are many different directions a business could take their campaigns).
Having clear goals from the start will also help you determine your budget and know what calls to action to use in your advertisements.
Here are some of the most common goals for advertising:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating leads
- Selling products or services (getting sales)
- Setting up a subscription service
- Getting a customer to start a free trial
Once you know your goals, you can direct customers toward specific actions that will help you achieve those goals. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you may want to create ads that are more focused on educating potential customers about your product or service or encouraging them to download your ebook.
Your landing page that Google Ads drives consumers to should have the same call to action as your ad had.
Finally, remember that your goals can change over time. Don’t shy away from going back and revisiting your goals as your brand evolves.
2. Test multiple assets and landing pages.
At the end of the day, marketing and advertising are all about experimentation. We don’t know how our audiences will respond to our creative assets until we run them. Testing multiple assets will only give you more data to work with moving forward in your Google Ad strategy. The more data you give Google, the more easily their learning algorithms will automatically create ads using your assets.
Plus, you’ll be able to see how certain segmented audiences respond to each creative asset. You can then use asset groups to keep sending successful ads to a certain group of people.
Performance Max campaigns let you use both images and videos in your ad mix, so why not include both in your campaigns? You’ll see which one is more effective with your audience, which will help you move forward. This automation allows you to create dynamic and efficient ads, saving you time and effort while delivering engaging content to your target audience.
However, keep in mind that it’s important to let your multiple ad assets run. It takes some time for this campaign type to work. Don’t change them too quickly if you don’t see the results you want. Google recommends keeping your ads for 6 weeks before making changes.
Finally, don’t forget to try different landing pages with each variation of your ad! When people click on your ads, that just means they’re taken to your landing page. Your landing pages are what ultimately drive the conversions to completion.
3. Choose the right bidding strategy.
When you’re deciding between bidding strategies, you have two options:
- Maximize conversions: Using this option, you’ll enter your ideal cost per action (CPA). Google will help you make sure you reach your budgeting goals.
- Maximize conversion value: You’ll provide your target return on ad spend (ROAS). This means there may be fewer conversions, but it’ll target an more likely audience to buy from you.
Selecting the correct bidding strategy allows you to optimize your campaign for what’s most important to you. If you want to get more clicks to your website, choose Maximize Conversions. If you want more people who buy, choose Maximize Conversion Value.
Automation is Key to Innovation
In an ideal world, you’d be able to optimize your ad campaigns yourself, but we know it’s not that easy. It’s a lot of work, and it takes time away from other projects you might have on your plate. With Performance Max, you can take advantage of automated rules that help keep your campaign on track and within budget.
Automation is the key to innovation. It drives efficiency, reduces costs, and frees up valuable time so you can focus on achieving your business goals. Google Ads Performance Max is a great way to streamline your ad campaigns, reduce your costs, and free up your time to grow your business. And if you need help, our team is here to get you rolling!
