From learning to optimize your SEO marketing strategy to discovering new Google My Business features, there’s always a new way to expand your business knowledge. In most cases, it’s boosting your ability on Google altogether. Whether you’ve been actively running Google’s latest and greatest all-in-one campaign type, Performance Max, or just heard rumblings among the PPC industry (shout out to Twitter #PPCchat every Tuesday! ), you likely have some questions. Don’t worry; you’re not alone. PMax is Google’s simplistic and automated way to serve ads across platforms like Search, Display, Gmail, YouTube, and now Shopping, making it a good option for both Lead Gen and eComm clients. Many of you have been running PMax since it first came out in May 2021 or to the broader public in November 2021. Yet, Google has recently started allowing us to migrate our Smart Shopping campaigns over to PMax with the click of a button, making this campaign more robust than ever.
We’re here to help you unpack what Performance Max is and understand how best to set your campaign up for success based on what our team has found. Let’s dig in!
What Is Google’s, Performance Max
“Performance Max is a new goal-based campaign type that allows advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. It’s designed to complement your keyword-based Search campaigns to help you find more converting customers across all of Google’s channels like YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.”
This campaign type that we at Power Digital Marketing have lovingly dubbed “PMax,” combines Google’s automation abilities to bid, optimize, and target as broad and efficiently as possible.
TLDR: The beauty of PMax is that you can promote products across the expansive Google Network with just one easy-to-manage campaign.
Key Takeaways on How to Structure PMax
More to come on how to approach PMAX once it’s been built, but some key takeaways for you blog skimmers:
Go all in
We’ve tested running legacy campaigns in tandem with PMax vs. ripping the bandaid and allocating all efforts toward PMax. As you can guess, results have been significantly better with the bandaid approach, so we recommend pausing your Smart Shopping & Local once you’ve upgraded to avoid internal competition.
Negate Brand terms to use as a more ToF play
This depends on your client’s goals, but we’ve seen positive results from negating Brand and dedicating PMax to a brand awareness play vs. lower in the funnel.
Segment similar to Smart Shopping vs. one catch-all
Google recommends breaking asset groups out by theme, so dresses vs. shoes vs. tops, especially if those products are higher priority and more significant revenue drivers.
Set aggressive tROAS goals
Don’t be afraid to set more aggressive tROAS goals than what was set for Smart Shopping.
Given the increased traffic volume and lower intent placements that will stem from PMax, we should be careful with setting the bar too low.
How To Build a Performance Max Campaign
With all of the new features of PMax, you must start with a solid foundation that you can improve upon as results trickle in. You will want to be mindful of a couple of crucial elements and take a closer look at them when structuring your Google Performance Max campaigns.
Fundamental Campaign Objective & Settings
Like any other Google Ads campaign, you’ll be prompted to choose the campaign’s objective. Google recommends leveraging Conversion Values whenever possible, as it helps improve lead quality. This is, of course, super important with Lead Generation clients since PMax tends to drive an influx of leads, but quality doesn’t always follow.
Once you’ve chosen the goal your campaign will optimize toward (Sales, Website Traffic, Local Visits, etc. ), it’s time to determine your preferred ad scheduling, final URL expansion preference, and campaign URL options.
We recommend launching a PMax campaign with the URL Expansion setting disabled, or at the very least excluding irrelevant pages, like the Blog and FAQs. This will ensure you’re not wasting spending on pages that don’t necessarily move the needle and get you closer to the end goal. If enabled, Google will replace your specified URL with one it deems more relevant. This could be helpful but does open the door for potentially inefficient spending.
This is a layer of control advertisers DO have with this campaign type, so consider this in your strategy before launching.
Asset Groups
Now that your initial settings are ready, you’ll build an “asset group.” Similar to a Search campaign’s ad group level but made up of also of the components traditionally at the ad level, an asset group is where the images, logos, headlines, descriptions, videos, and audience signals live.
Much like Responsive Search Ads, all of these assets you give the engine are automatically mixed and matched based on which channel the ad runs on. This takes some of the historically tedious and time-consuming creative testing off advertisers’ plates, as Google does the heavy lifting to find the right innovative combination for the right user.
Google does note that if you plan to run Shopping only through a Merchant Center feed, you don’t necessarily need to provide these additional assets to launch. But they recommend you give the support to serve across all available channels!
Keep in mind that you’re able to create multiple asset groups. Google recommends advertisers group asset groups by similar themes and audiences to align with the website.
Spoiler Alert: At PDM, we’re testing a variety of campaign structures and methodologies, including consolidating all products and creatives into one asset group, as well as segmenting effects and themes into multiple groups. With various groups, you can use different audience signals and drive users to specific landing pages. You could tailor ad copy and imagery to a particular theme, like “denim” vs. “shoes” for a fashion client. More to come here on the results we see from these tests!
Google notes that it won’t always be necessary to have multiple PMax campaigns running for different products or themes, especially if you’re dealing with low product diversity or a limited variety.