The Google Ads Performance Max campaign, launched in November 2021, has proved to be a game-changer in the online advertising industry. With its presence across all Google Display Networks, like YouTube, Google Discovery Ads, etc., the Performance Max campaign is an incredibly powerful ad campaign for achieving desired goals like lead generation, increasing impressions, building brand awareness, etc. To make the most of this new way to reach potential customers, monitoring essential PPC metrics and optimizing them to improve the PPC campaign performance is crucial. You can read our blog, "A complete guide to Performance Max campaign" to know more about this campaign type. In this blog, we will discuss some essential tactics for optimizing Performance Max campaigns to achieve maximum advertising ROI.
Tips to optimize performance max campaign
1. Create effective pmax asset groups - Creating effective asset groups is essential to optimize the performance max campaign. An asset group in pmax campaigns is a collection of different assets that highlight the different specifications of the product offerings. When working on the pmax groups, it is necessary to mention the vital product description so that the target audience's interest is engaged in clicking on the PPC ad.
The asset groups in a campaign can target any listing group from your product feeds. So, it is vital that you specifically highlight the metrics that present the features of your products. As the performance max campaign mainly has the strategy of shopping ads, it is essential to enlist the specific features of the products. Having a clearly mentioned asset group makes it easier for potential customers to have clarity on whether they need to make a purchase or not. If you have any new products, then there are chances that the user clicks on the ad. If not, then it helps save your ad budget from getting wasted on irrelevant clicks. The asset group can include images, headlines, long headlines, videos, logos, descriptions, call to action, etc. final URLs, etc. Some of the reasons to differentiate your pmax asset groups within a campaign are listed below.
a. Specific ROAs by product category.
b. It helps to define your audiences.
c. Decide advertising budget to manage large product groups.
As in SEO campaigns, you focus on optimizing the performance of essential SEO metrics and avoid SEO mistakes so that the relevant users click on the organic search results to reach the website. Similarly, it is quite essential to define your audiences and then work on creating asset groups accordingly.
2. Adding audience signal - Another essential point to focus on when optimizing the max performance campaign is to add an audience signal. These are necessary to be added as it helps to connect with the target audience that is interested in the products and services you offer. With such a vast range of audiences present on search engines, it becomes essential to work on audience segmentation so that you have relevant users reaching your landing page.
You can add audience signals such as custom segments, customer match, affinity audiences, and in-market segments that enhance the performance of the PPC ad campaign. As in SEO campaigns, you analyze user behavior so that you can know the user intent and then work on a plan & strategy accordingly. You can use Google Analytics to determine audience behavior and conversion goals. You can prepare a list to determine which audience signals you want to add to your campaign.
a. Custom segments - These can be added based on the keywords people search for, the websites they visit, etc.
b. Remarketing lists - In this, you can prepare a remarketing list that includes people who have visited your website, engage with the social media platforms, provide contact details, etc.
c. Interests - This includes in-market segments, life events, affinity segments, etc.
d. Demographics - It presents the user interests like age, gender, etc.
3. Check reporting insights - The next essential point to enhance the performance max campaign is to gain insights from the reports. You need to prepare a PPC report to analyze the performance of the pmax campaign. It helps you to have a clear idea of how the ad is performing so that you can take the necessary steps to improve its performance. Whether running a Google Ads campaign, Bing Ads, or ads on social media platforms like Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, Facebook remarketing Ads, etc., monitoring how the paid ads perform constantly is essential.
A data-driven PPC report clearly presents an overview of how the pmax ads are performing. It presents a detailed overview of the performance of the essential PPC metrics like cost per click, average position, click-through rate, etc. Every business has different goals like form-fill-up, lead generation, building brand awareness, etc. So, the PPC reports can help you have a clear idea of the relevant PPC metric that needs to be concentrated upon. You can then work on making informed decisions that improve ad rank & position and makes the visitor convert into a customer.
4. Split products into campaigns - The next essential point to concentrate upon to enhance the Google performance max campaign is to split products into campaigns. This is a practice that would yield the best advertising ROI for campaigns like pmax. As there are different products in pmax campaigns, so there are chances that they do not all have the same ROAS.
To optimize the performance max campaign, you should split the products into different campaigns. This can be done based on the product type and features they offer. It helps the search engine bot to have a clear idea of the product type and the descriptions help them to show the relevant ads to the target audience for the high-quality, relevant keywords entered in the search engines.
For e-commerce PPC ads, it is even crucial to split the products into campaigns as these businesses offer a wide variety of products. Separating these products into different campaigns would make it easier for you to make changes and even for the search engines to identify the relevant products. You can work on the Google Ads Editor tool so that you can make bulk changes to the ad campaign without any issues or errors. As it is an offline tool so you can perform edits multiple times and it won't get live until you post it finally. You can also conduct PPC keyword research and prepare a negative keyword list to trigger your ad for irrelevant search queries. You can segment these keywords into the exact match, broad match, and phrase match keywords. This would help your ads target the relevant users, which are the best prospects for taking the desired action.
5. Using ad extensions - The next essential tip for optimizing the performance max campaigns is to use ad extensions. Ad extensions are used to provide extra information to the users. They provide extra information about the product or service offerings that lures the target audience to click on the performance max ads.
As in paid ad campaigns, you focus on writing ad copies, ad descriptions, etc., to increase the ad visibility so that more users engage with the ad. The more engaging the ad copies, the better the chances of a higher engagement rate, ultimately increasing the landing page traffic. Ad extensions act as a surge to grab the users' attention into clicking on the ad. You can add multiple points in the ad extension, like offers, features, etc. There are multiple ad extensions available in Google that you can use to entice users to click on the ad. These can be app extensions, call extensions, sitelink extensions, callout extensions, structured snippet extensions, image extensions, location extensions, etc.
The more content the ads have, the better the chances of the ad's visibility on the search engine result pages. When ad extensions are added to your paid ads, it helps increase the number of clicks on the ad, ultimately leading to the conversion rate. As in search engine optimization, you focus on writing great content that grabs the users' attention into clicking on the search results for the keywords or search terms entered. Similarly, when you write engaging ad copies, headlines, etc., the prospects get to know about the business offerings and then decide whether they wish to continue ahead with the ad or not. It is thus important that you clearly mention your product descriptions, offerings & discounts, etc., to lure the target audience into clicking on the ad.
6. Include exclusions - The performance max campaigns provide very few insights and less control over the campaigns. So, it becomes quite crucial to determine from where you are getting website traffic. Another essential point to concentrate upon to optimize the performance max campaign is to include exclusions.
This can be seen in Google Ads. It increases the impression share of the performance max campaigns ensuring that the engagement rate also increases. You need to click on Reports > Other > PMax campaign placement, to find what percentage of impressions go to ‘Google Owned and Operated’ placements and what other websites & apps your ads are served on. The Google Display Network shows ads on more than 2 million websites, apps and video platforms. So, it is quite essential that you work on audience segmentation so that the relevant target audience with a high chance of taking the desired action clicks on the ads. You also need to plan out a strategy for ad exclusions if you find a lower click-through rate. These may be in the form of:
a. Placement exclusions
b. Content exclusions
c. Website categories
As there is a vast website on the Google Display Network so it cannot be done one by one. You need to exclude the industry type so that your ads do not appear on these websites.
7. Work on bid adjustment - Another essential tip for optimizing the Google Ads performance max campaigns is to work on bid adjustment. As performance max ads include a variety of ad assets so it is vital to work on bid adjustment to ensure which of these assets need to be focused on. Working on bid adjustment is essential to ensure your ad budget is not drained on irrelevant clicks.
The Google performance max campaign mainly has features of shopping ads and product descriptions can be added to it. As you focus on keyword bidding and concentrate on having a high ad rank & position so that the impression share of your PPC ads increases. Similarly, you need to work on bid adjustment in the performance max ads so that you have the relevant target audience clicking on the PPC ad. When you focus on bid adjustment, you can generate leads to your landing page at a much lower cost. The cost per click is lowered, the click-through rate increases, etc. It also helps to pay less for high-quality leads and helps to have higher advertising ROI at a much lower cost.
As in search engine optimization, you focus on plan & strategy to optimize the performance of SEO campaigns; similarly, in Google performance max campaign, it is vital to have a bidding strategy. Whether you are running any paid ad campaigns like Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads retargeting, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram Ads, YouTube Ads, etc., it is essential to work on a bidding strategy. As you outsource SEO services so that the SEO professional work on improving the page loading speed, optimizing images, working on link building, etc. In the same way, you can hire PPC experts from a white label PPC company so that they can easily handle your performance max ads.
The bid adjustment is a very crucial factor in running paid ad campaigns to reach the target audience. As in the Google performance max campaign, you have to pay an amount to the largest search engine - Google, so planning strategies and adjusting bids becomes essential. You can either work on bid adjustment independently or use the automated bidding option. As you hire content specialists in content marketing, SEO professionals for white label SEO services, etc., similarly, you can outsource PPC services so that the PPC experts can assist you in choosing the best mode for your Google Ads performance max campaign.
8. URL expansion - The performance max campaigns have a feature of URL expansion. When there are final URLs added to the Google performance max campaigns, it helps the visitors reach the desired landing page. The users then look for the products they wish to buy and then make the final purchase. Website owners need to plan out strategies when working on URL expansion to determine what URL structure they want to be displayed to the users. To increase the conversion rate on your landing page, the page URL should display where the users are being taken after clicking on the ad.
Turning on the final URL expansion enables the dynamic search ads in the Google performance max campaign to show for URLs other than those provided in the shopping feed. So this helps the ad to show more pages to the users, which helps increase clicks on the ad. There is no limitation to turning off & turning on the URLs and it is up to the advertiser to decide what is to be done.
a. If URL set to be on - If the URL is set to be on when the user clicks on the performance max campaign, then it will use category, brand name, homepage and other URLs as landing pages and advertise for these.
b. If URL set to be off - If the final URL is set to be off it will only use product pages as landing pages and will not advertise for category, brand name or homepage.
However, when you prepare a PPC report to analyze the result of the URL expansion, you need help finding this in Google Ads. For this, you need to switch to Google Analytics to analyze the traffic from how many website traffic product pages generate and how much traffic other landing pages generate. You can link Google Ads with Google Analytics to determine the performance of the essential PPC metrics. If you find analyzing the performance a tough task, you can use white label PPC services and hire PPC experts that take the necessary steps to run the performance max campaign. They perform campaign analysis and suggest various ideas to improve the performance max campaign.
Benefits of using performance max campaigns
1. Increases conversions - When you use Google Ads performance max campaigns to reach prospects with high chances of taking the desired action, you must keep an eye on the conversion rate. The ultimate goal of running any PPC ad is to have a higher conversion rate.
As the performance max campaign includes multiple assets and ad groups in the campaign so it becomes essential to monitor the performance of these on a regular basis. You can perform a PPC audit to determine the performance of the essential PPC metrics. As of Feb 2023, the performance max campaigns have an 18% higher conversion rate.
2. Find new customers - The next benefit of using the Google Ads performance max campaign is that it helps to find new customers for your business. As the performance max works on artificial intelligence, the largest search engine - Google’s real-time understanding of user intent, behavior and context helps target new users. You can target new audience segments with more relevant ads and work on ad personalization to attract new users to click on the ad.
3. Gain user insights - The next essential benefit of using the performance max campaign is that it helps to gain user insights. With the changes in the ever-evolving digital marketing world, it is essential to gain user insights so that the PPC experts can work on ad campaigns that attract the relevant prospects into clicking on the ad. Google Ads automatically provides the most important insights that help to improve campaigns using the insights page.
Conclusion
As an advertiser using the pmax Google Ads campaigns, you must constantly analyze how these ads perform. With multiple Google Ad campaigns present to advertisers, one of them is the performance max campaign. As these ads provide the option to add multiple ad assets and segregate them into different ad groups, it becomes crucial to have the correct details mentioned for the ad groups.
Google keeps releasing new updates for advertisers and it is crucial for them to be updated with these changes so that they do not miss out on potential leads. These changes may include responsive search ads becoming the default type for expanded text ads, updates on Universal Analytics, etc. As PPC ads require money to be paid to search engines for every click on the ad, it is essential to have a crystal clear strategy to maximize the advertising ROI. Offshore PPC services can be availed to run paid ads, as the virtual assistants have experience running local service ads, search ads, mobile ads, display ads, etc. and help clients achieve desired goals. To run a Google Ads performance max campaign, you can contact a digital marketing company and hire PPC experts with years of experience in running paid ads and helping your business increase conversion rate. By getting in touch with our top PPC agency you can avail various other PPC services like plumbing PPC, flooring PPC, painting PPC, construction PPC, HVAC PPC and various other services for your home businesses. These services can add value to your business by increasing its online visibility and thus leads and conversion.
References:
• 10 Ways to optimize your performance max campaigns for real results
• 11 Tips to get the best out of performance max campaigns