How to Optimize Performance Max Campaigns [Google Ads 2022]

Let's talk about optimizing your Google Ads performance max campaign. Now one thing that I want to make very clear right from the start of this video is that when I say that I'm going to show you how to optimize your performance max campaign, I need to let you know that optimizing a performance max campaign is very different to optimizing a search or a shopping campaign in Google Ads. And the reason for that is because when Google released performance max campaigns, they made it clear that this campaign was specifically built to work with their algorithm. And even when you're creating your performance max campaign and you building out your audience signals, where you put in the keywords and the audiences that you want this campaign to target, Google make it very clear that they will only use these inputs like your keywords and your audiences as a guide and that they will go beyond your selections to find more conversions based on your goals. So while you can add some optimizations and targeting to your performance max campaigns, it is really important to make it clear that this doesn't stop Google exploring some keyword themes or audiences and placements that you know are not going to be profitable for your business. So with that said and made clear, let's get into today's teaching. But before we do, if we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. Well, let's actually be honest, it's probably closer to 20,000 hours because I've now been optimizing and creating profitable Google Ads campaigns since 2010. So if you want to learn how Google Ads really works and how you can use it to build your business, why don't you give me a quick subscribe so you never miss out when new videos like this come out. Thank you very much. So let's firstly look at the type of results that you can expect to see with Google Ads performance max campaigns. I want to show you two examples. The first example is when we've used a performance max campaign along with search campaigns for a service provider. So the goal for this campaign is that this business is just purely wanting to generate more inquiries for their service based business. And you can see through here, over the last 30 days, the cost per conversion has actually been showing improved results versus the rest of the campaigns with a cost per conversion of $24 versus the total campaign average of $35. And then secondly, when we move over to an E Commerce example where we've got performance max working with search campaigns, you can actually see here that the Performance max campaign is showing a rise of 7.29 versus the total account of 5.92. And that's putting it in as the second best performing campaign in this account with their core non branded search campaign performing at 9.08 for that ROAS or that conversion value cost score. So we can those results that performance max campaigns can be a valuable addition to the total Google Ads account and the campaigns that you're running for your business. And that brings us to the next important point is I wanted to let you know is when you should actually be using a Google Ads performance max campaign. And I want to make it very clear that I do not recommend using performance max campaigns as a lead off or a priority campaign. And what I mean by that is that your performance max campaign should not be the first campaign you set up in your Google Ads account. And it should also not be the only campaign campaign that you run in your Google Ads account. And the reason for this is because in my own testing of performance max campaigns across different types of accounts, I found that performance max campaigns have been successful when they've been used in conjunction with another campaign. But further than that, they are only successful when they're used in Google Ads accounts where they have these two things in place. Firstly, that account needs to have some very strong audiences in the audience manager section of Google Ads. And the key audiences that are really helping performance max campaigns are the remarketing or previous visitors, audiences, Google Ads optimize audiences and similar audiences. And the reason for why these are so important is because the performance max campaigns use these audiences to give them some baseline data on what potential customers would be for your services or your products. So by having these strong audiences, when you start a performance max campaign, you're giving Google a lot of data so it doesn't have to run as many initial tests or which waste your budget. And then secondly, I'm finding them successful when they are used on products or services that already have a good conversion history. The reason for why performance max campaigns are really successful when these two elements are in place in your account is because you have to remember how performance max campaigns function in that they're one campaign which then pushes its ads across YouTube, search, display, Gmail and Maps. So they are a great campaign to use for remarketing in that once someone initially interacts with your website or an ad, your performance max campaign will continue to target them when they're going about and watching different videos on YouTube, carrying out different Google searches, checking their Gmail or just generally surfing the web. And that is why I found the best results with Performance Max campaigns when they're partnered with a highly targeted search campaign, because we're using the search campaign to build those lists and audiences in Google Ads. And then after that initial interaction point with the search campaign, the Performance Max campaign then steps up and supports that search campaign by retargeting that person as they go to YouTube or look at different parts across the Internet. And that's where I find Performance Max campaigns the most successful when they're partnered with a highly targeted search campaign. And then the reason for why you should only be using products or services with a high conversion rate is because your Performance Max campaign will be going through engraving data from your product pages or or your service landing pages and using that as also a data source for potential keywords that they can target in the search element of the Performance Max campaign. Okay, so now you know when you should be using a Performance Max campaign. Let's now talk about how you can actually optimize your Performance Max campaign. And at the moment there are two best options for you to optimize your Performance Max campaign. Please note that this may change in the future. And what we're sharing right now is the optimization actions which, which I'm finding to be successful in Performance Max campaigns. But I have been hearing that Google is looking to add in some extra optimization points that we can use with Performance Max campaigns. And the other thing that I do want to let you know is that in this video I'm not going to be talking about split testing your ads where you go through to your Performance Max campaign and update some of the images, YouTube videos or headlines and descriptions to see if that makes a difference in your click through ratios and your conversion rates. So the current two best options you have for adding some optimizations to your Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads are to firstly review your clicks versus the number of conversions or the total conversion value and then remove any keyword themes from your audience signals that are not profitable. And then secondly, you can also review your locations. And then when you're looking at your locations once again, you can look to see if there's any locations which have a high cost but low conversions or, or low conversion value. And let's jump into a screen share right now so I can show you how you can complete these two optimization actions. So the first thing we want to do is that when we're in our main overview section of the Performance Max campaign, go into your insights and then from there you want to scroll down to the section where you can actually explore the search terms that your ads appeared for. And what we want to look for is firstly changes over to clicks. And what we want to look for is which of the search terms or the search categories which are generating the most clicks and and then quickly change this over to either conversions or conversion value. Now in this example, this is a service based provider, so we'll look at the number of conversions. If you are looking at an E Commerce Performance Max campaign, you would use conversion value. And what you want to make sure here is that you want to make sure is are the majority of your conversions actually coming from the search categories which are generating the most searches. So in this case it's actually okay, where you can actually see this Air con cleaning Brisbane and has the most clicks, but it also has the most conversions. And the same is true with Gold coast being the second highest. And once again with conversions it's the second highest. Now what would be a cause for concern is if you actually had the situation where the search terms which were generating the highest number of clicks weren't actually generating any conversions. And if that was the case, what I would go and do is I would go into my asset groups finding the audience signal which is tagging this keyword, which in this sense was the aircon, scroll over the audience signal till you see this pencil icon. You then need to go to the second pencil icon under the audience signal, go into custom segments, click on your custom segment and then go over to edit and then from there find that keyword theme that you've added which is not producing any results, which in this case was the air Conditioning Cleaning Brisbane 1. Obviously in this example this was giving us conversions. But if this search term was giving us a high level of searches, but with no conversions, I would simply remove this keyword theme and that would then send the signal to Google to stop targeting that type of keyword theme at such a high level. And that's how you can complete that first optimization action where you're checking the number of clicks versus the number of conversions that you're getting for individual keyword themes. Now the second main option you have for optimizing your performance Max campaigns is to go into your location segment once again just making sure that you're only in the performance max section, go to locations and then from there what we want to go through and have a look is filter this down by cost is that we want to go in and have a look to see is that are there any areas which have a high cost but A low conversion actions. And we can also as well look at that cost per conversion function. And then from here we can actually look here and see these two areas have a much higher cost per conversion than all of the other areas. Whereas this total campaign cost per conversion is at $24 with this one at 32 and then this one at $45. So from here we have quite a few different options that we can go down now because this is only a newer campaign and we're only looking at a smaller sample size with these tier areas only having 81 and 52 clicks individually. I'm not going to exclude these at the moment. But if this data was to continue and we're seeing that we are wasting money on these locations, we've got two options. Firstly, we can actually go through and exclude these two options. And then by excluding these two options, that actually allows more budget to be spent on these higher performing locations. And then by excluding the locations which are underperforming, it gives us more budget to be able to spend and focus on these higher converting and higher performing locations. Or the other option is, is that if we don't want to exclude these underperforming locations, we can actually put more budget focus on the better performing locations. And the way that we do that is that we go into this bid adjustment column, press edit and then we can add in an extra bid adjustment. And what this does is it not only increases the bid, but it also does give another signal to Google to let them know that you're wanting to focus more on these areas. So that's two very simple and easy ways that you can start to add in some extra optimizations to your performance Max campaigns so that you can increase the performance of your performance Max campaigns for your business. Now, if you'd like to learn the correct way of actually going about and setting up your performance Max campaign, if you follow the link in the description below, you can download my free performance Max campaign guide which includes a step by step process in how to actually set up your performance Max campaign in the right way. And if you want to see the step by step process in how to set up a performance Max campaigns in the right way, why don't you go through and watch this teaching video right here where I show you how you can set up your performance Max campaigns for your business. Once again, thank you for joining me and I look forward to seeing you in my next teaching video. Bye.