How To Set up Google Ads Performance Max

Performance Max campaigns are Google Ads shiny new toy which promise to give you the benefits of unlocking new audiences across all of Google's channels and networks. They promise to drive better performance, give you more transparent insights, they allow you to steer automation with campaign inputs. And finally, they promise to simplify the process of campaign management and optimizing your ads. And to those benefits, my answers are yes, maybe, no, yes and finally yes and no. If we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads Master. In this video we're going to discuss Performance Max campaigns and go through what they are plus the good, the bad and the ugly of Performance Max campaigns. And then if you stay around to the end of this video, I'm going to show you the step by step process and how to set up your very own Performance Max campaign. Plus, I'll also let you know how you can download my free Performance Max guide which includes a list of my best practices which I've put together after split testing multiple Performance Max campaigns. And then it also takes you through this step by step process and how to set up your own campaign. So right now let's get into Performance Max campaigns. But before we do, could you also do me the favor of not only liking this video but also subscribing to my channel and that allows me to continue to be able to release these weekly Google Ads training videos. Thank you so much. Let's get into the teaching. So firstly, let's go through the listed benefits that Google Ads is giving for Performance Max campaigns. And the first benefit that Google gave is that it's going to unlock new audiences for your Google Ads campaigns. And I do agree with this one, this one is correct in that Performance Max campaigns will open up your campaign to every individual channel and and network that is available in Google Ads. So that means in one Google Ads Performance Max campaign, your ads and your messaging will go across all of Google's channels and networks including shopping, search, display and also your demographics are performing by age, gender and household income. So if you are looking to create a Performance Max campaign in the hope that you'll get more data and more insights, that is not the type of campaign for you. You need to continue to do a standard shopping, search or display campaign. Now, the fourth benefit in regards to being able to steer automation with campaign data inputs, I do have to say that the functionality of being able to add in audience signals to your asset groups is actually a good feature which does have some good potential. However, in the campaign that was successful. That campaign had a longer history in that we had about three to four years of positive data that we actually knew prehand which were the best performing demographics and which were the best performing audiences. And then on top of that, we also had some custom and similar audiences that Google could actually draw on to target people who had similar demographics and similar search history to people who converted in the last 30, 60 and 90 days. Whereas the second campaign that wasn't successful we only had a limit of 60 days of data. So apart from the conversion actions which I mentioned earlier, I would say the reason for why our first campaign was successful and the second campaign didn't see those same levels of success did come down to the quality of data that we were able to add to Google to steer the automation in the correct way. So while I've given this benefit a yes, it is a cautious yes, and that is based on the quality of data that you are able to provide Google. So if you've got a long history in Google Ads and some really high quality audience segments and you know, your demographic targeting, you've got a much higher chance of seeing success with Performance Max campaigns very, very quickly. Whereas if you're new to Google Ads and you don't have as much data in your Google Ads dashboard, you may find some problems with Performance Max campaign because you're not able to steer Google's automation in the correct manner, meaning that you don't have enough upfront data to feed Google so that it stops going down certain avenues which you know are not going to be successful. And then the final benefit of simple campaign management and being able to easily optimize your ads I've given this a yes and a no. Yes, it is correct that Performance Max campaigns are easy to manage, but that is due to the fact that once you have set up your campaign, you actually don't really have any optimized options that you can complete. And anyway, apart from being able to add or remove asset groups or add or remove different ad copies, there's really nothing extra you can do in terms of optimizing your Performance Max campaign, because as I've shown before, you don't see what search terms trigger your ads and you don't get the audience and demographic data to be able to go in and add in extra bid optimizations or exclude certain search terms. So yes, it is easy to manage, but that is because the campaign is based on automation or rather than you manually optimizing your campaign to get those more defined and higher results. Now that we've gone through what a performance Max campaign is. I want to take you through the good, the bad and the ugly. And firstly they are easy to set up. If you already have some headlines and descriptions and also some different images that you want to use, you can easily set up a Google Ads Performance Max campaign in under 15 minutes. There is also one advanced option where you can actually add in some HTML5 ads if you want greater control over the images which display in your ads. As we said, they do allow some level of targeting and optimization by adding in those audience signals. And this is something which is not available in other smart campaigns such as your smart display or smart shopping campaigns. So that is a step in the right direction. And then as I showed in those two examples, they can actually produce some good results with one of our campaigns seeing a ROAS of 8 in the first 10 days where from an ad spend of $119 they saw just under $950 in sales. So that is some strong results. But remember, the reason that we're able to see that success is that we were able to feed some very strong audience signals in terms of our best performing audience groups and also our best performing detailed demographics into our campaign before it even started. Whereas for the second campaign where we didn't have as much strong data over the previous months and years, the campaign was a failure over the first 10 days. So before you get too excited about performance Max campaigns as being an easy way to generate money for your business, I want you to listen very, very carefully to the bad and and the ugly. The bad. And from what I've seen is that they will go for conversions over conversion value. And even if you have set conversions in your account where you've marked them as no in that you don't want them to be counted as conversions, performance max campaigns seem to still target these conversion actions if you're not getting any confirmed sales or transactions straight away. So what I found is that performance Max campaigns will continue to target search terms, audiences and demographics and the asset groups that are returning any form of conversion action, even if they're not the conversion actions which you have asked the campaign to focus on. And as we all know in business not all conversion actions are the same. I would much prefer 10 confirmed transactions because I'm getting actual revenue into my account as opposed to thousands upon thousands of product page views that don't end up converting. And then the second bad thing about performance max campaigns is, is that even though you add in some different audience signals, Google will still override your selections and Go beyond your selections to find new audience groups and demographics groups. And that sounds great, but if you've got a very specific product, let's say for example a baby product, you already know that the only performing audience groups that you want to target are parents. And then within that, depending on your type of baby product, you only may want to target infants and toddlers as opposed to parents with older children. And my fear with these performance Max campaigns is that they will still complete some testing of different demographics which may be outside the demographics which you know are going to be more interested in in your core products. And then finally the ugly and my biggest problem with Performance Max campaigns is that you just don't get any real data. As you know on this channel time and time again I repeat that one of the most powerful features about Google Ads is that you're able to take data and learning and then add in extra optimizations to increase your performance. And performance max campaigns sadly just don't give you enough data to be able to add in those extra optimizations so that you can continue to see month on month growth. And the other thing that I don't like is that even in one of the sections where you do get data, which is location data, you actually aren't even allowed to add in any extra bid optimizations. Your only options for targeting locations is that you can exclude different cities and exclude different states if they are underperforming, but you're not actually allowed to add in any extra bid optimizations to those locations which are performing well where you want to go through and actually target more budget because they are performing better than the other locations. And my biggest issue with the lack of data is that you just don't get any clarity into what search terms are actually triggering your ads. Now in the audience signal section you are actually allowed to add in some different search terms that you want to target. But we do know with performance Max campaigns is that Google will actually also grab data from your individual product pages, looking at the headlines, descriptions and the content that we have on that page in order to trigger your ads for different search terms. But without the ability to add in negative keywords, I do have a fear that there will be a lot of wasted budget in performance Max campaigns. And even if you are getting positive ROI results, I still have a feeling that you could actually get better results in a standard search campaign or a standard shopping campaign where you can actually filter in your search terms to a higher level to focus your spending on those search terms which are generating the highest level of return. So before we get into that step by step process and how to best set up a performance max campaign, let's go through a quick wrap up and actually see whether it's worthwhile for you. So my conclusion about performance max campaigns is that due to the limited options for targeting, especially around seeing what search terms are actually triggering your ads, you need to firstly make sure that your landing pages that you're using for a performance max campaign have a very clear title. And what I mean by that is the product title and product description needs to have a good search intent. So if you are selling for example, baby earmuffs, you want to make sure that that is very clear in the product description and there are no other terms in that. And another word of warning is that Google's automation actually needs a lot of data. And while they haven't released the exact number of impressions, in order for Google's automation to be able see which performance groups are performing best, we can actually assume there would be something similar in regards to Google's responsive search ads where you need 5,000 impressions in a period of 30 days for Google to be able to actually get enough data to be able to target the right headlines and descriptions for different customers. So carrying that across to a performance max campaign is that your campaign would need around about 5,000 impressions in a 30 day period for each of your individual asset groups before Google has any idea on which are the best search terms, audiences and demographics to target. So with that in mind, I'd be estimating that you may even need around 2 to $5,000 in ad spend before you might start to see your money back from a performance max campaign. So for my conclusion, I come back to this core point. If you have a good one to two years of data in your Google Ads account, and by good data I mean that you have a very clear and defined detailed demographic of who you need to target in terms of age range, in terms of income and in terms of detailed demographic groups, say for example, parents with infants or parents with toddlers, you've got a good chance by adding your audience signals that your performance max campaign will perform very quickly and you'll see positive results right from the start. However, if you're new to Google Ads and you don't have much account data, I'll be cautious about starting with a performance max campaign. And the reason for that is that you're just not going to be getting any detailed data that you need to be able to make the correct optimization decisions so that you can see high levels of profit at the very start of your Google Ads campaign. And in case you're wondering for me how I will be using performance Max campaigns moving forward is that I'll only be be using these in Google Ads accounts where I've got some strong search and shopping campaigns which are already providing a high level of roas. And then I'm confident that I'm able to give Google some very strong audience signals in regards to our detailed demographics in regards to our audience signals. And then on top of those detailed demographics, I'll only use it on accounts where I actually have some very strong custom audiences in Google Ads. And the audiences that I would be looking at adding into my performance max campaigns are audience such as similar to all converters, remarketing lists and product viewers and cart abandoners. So in that way I'm going to be using performance Max campaigns as a bit of a bottom of the funnel strategy so that I'm still putting my main focus and my main budget spending into my standard search and standard shopping campaigns. And then I will use my performance Max campaigns to retarget recent website visitors and also target recent product viewers who have viewed my product but are yet to purchase my product. And then also adding in those similar audiences which are audiences which Google has grouped with people who have purchased similar products and also completed similar search terms and had the same demographics as people who have recently converted and purchased my product. So that's me. I would love to hear your thoughts about Performance Max campaigns and how you're going to use them in the future. But right now let's get into that quick step by step tutorial and how to set up your very own performance Max campaign. Now I'm going to go through this step by step process pretty quickly. But remember, stay around to the end of this video and because I'm actually give you free access to my download guide where I'll explain this in greater detail including screenshots to how you can set up your very own performance Max campaign so that you too can see the best results in the quickest amount of time. Let's go. Once we're in Google Ads we want to go into new campaign and then when it comes to choosing our objective, I would be highly recommending that you use the sales objective so that we can at least tell Google that we're setting up this campaign to target people who are more likely to buy our product. So we select sales and then after that we want to make sure that we're putting a focus on purchases and then we press continue and this is where we see our campaign types. And obviously we're going to be selecting Performance Max, which would then automatically go through and add in our merchant center. And then from there we can actually write in a campaign name. So we may want to write sales and that just lets us know that that is a sales campaign and it's in the Performance Max format. But you can add any campaign name that you want to there. Then go through and press continue. Then we just quickly go through and add in the budget we want to spend every day and then make the selection of what you want to. And once again, I would recommend focusing on that conversion value as opposed to conversions. So we're giving as many signals as possible to let Google know that we want to focus on the highest level of sales. Then click Next and then you just need to go through and select your locations. In this instance I'm just going to select Australia. We can keep the language in English and then from there you'll have an option of whether you want your final URL expansion. Now, I would recommend that we only send traffic to the URLs that we've provided. And then the reason for that is that we're stopping Google from doing unnecessary tests. Then we can confirm that we're only focusing on the products that we'll give Google in the later steps with the more settings you can go through and do this. But this is just going into our ad schedule. And also you can say whether you want to start the campaign today or set it for a future date. And then we click next now for the asset group name. When it comes to asset groups, you need to think of these like ad groups. So what I would do here is I'd actually go through and write an asset group which is going to make sense to the product that we're targeting. And in this instance we're going to be targeting baby earmuffs. So we're going to call this Baby Earmuffs. Now, this next step is very important and this comes into the listing groups. Now, I would not recommend that you put all of your products into one asset group. And the reason for that is about by not separating out some different asset groups, it's going to take longer for Google to be able to break down and find which traffic is going to be the best performing for this particular set of products. So in this instance we're going to click Edit and we're going to use a selection of products. And for us we're just going to go to the item id, do a simple search for baby and select all of those products, then press save. In regards to the final URL, my recommendation would be sending this through to a product category page rather than your home page or your main Shop page. And then from there it's just a matter of adding in our images. Now, in this case, we've already got an asset library built out, but you do have some other options where you can use the scan website function or you can actually upload some manual images, but you just want to make sure that you're only selecting product images that are related to this actual product. So we have baby earmuffs in this one. So we'll go through and select some different baby earmuff images and once we're happy with our selection, we can press save. The next option is to select our logos. Now for our videos, if you do have some different YouTube videos that you want to add, you can add these in here. If you don't, you don't need to worry about it because Google will actually create some different video feeds. Ideally, it would be best to add in a YouTube video if you do have that. And then the last section is where we need to add in our headlines, our long headlines and our descriptions. And you can just see the character markers which are set through here. And with the call to action, you can use an automated. But in this case, because we're looking at driving sales, I found better results if we actually use the Shop now feature. And then finally you want to write in your business name. And then down the bottom here is where you can actually go through and add in your audience signals. And then this is a very important step that in no way would I skip over. So what we want to do, we want to go here to new add new audience. We want to write this and we're going to be writing baby earmuffs. And we want to also go through and create a new custom segment. Once again, we can just use the same naming format. And this is where you can actually add in some different search terms. And if you start to type, Google will give you some selections. And in this section, I very much see this as less is more. Now, we don't want to go through and add all of these, and you want to make sure you can get them as specific as possible. Now, for example, these are actually baby earmuffs, which are over the ear earmuffs and they're not ear plugs as in the ones you put in your ears. So I wouldn't be selecting any of these. And these are hearing protection earmuffs so these are the ones that I'd be wanting to use. And after you've selected these search term ideas, you can actually just press enter if you actually want the actual search terms that you're writing in. So baby ear and baby ear muffs. And once again, just go through and check those search term ideas to see if there's any extras that you want to add. And if you don't see any extra that you want to add, just click save. And then we need to go into your data. Now this is where we can actually go through and add in all of our different visitors or shopping cart abandoners or our product viewers. And we add them in here. And then this is where we can then go through and add in another layer of detail for this individual product. Remember that we're dealing with a baby product, so we don't want to be selecting parents or preschoolers because it's not targeted for this individual product. But we do want baby and children's products also parents of infants and parents of toddlers. And once you're happy with that, press save. And then finally, we want to go down into our demographics. And for us, we're wanting to actually go through and only select people in that 25 to 54 age bracket because that's the ages which have historically performed the best for our campaign. So when you're setting this up, you need to look through either your Google Ads or your analytics data to also find those best ages which are converting. And then for us, because this is a baby product, we're wanting to only look at people who are a parent. And then we press save. And then from there we press next. And we've actually selected that we want to use our account level site links extensions. If you don't have them already all set up, you can add these extensions in here. But for this example, we'll just click next. And then from there we just need to check that we're happy with all of our details. And if we are, it's just a matter of pressing publish campaign. So that's my view on Performance Max campaigns. Why don't you leave me a comment and let me know what your thoughts are. Performance Max campaigns and whether you have been seeing success with Performance Max campaigns for your business. Now, as promised, if you want to get my free PDF download to actually see my recommendations for how you should use Performance Max campaigns, including the screenshots of how to actually go through the step by step process of setting up your very own Performance Max campaign, you can get that in the link in the description below. Now one of the things that I did want to highlight with Performance Max campaigns is even though they are using a responsive search ad theme, is that you still need to use the best practices when it comes to writing ad copy in Google Ads. And in this video right here, I share my secrets and how you can write the best ad copy, which ensures that people don't only see your ad, but they also click on your ad. Thank you for watching this video and I look forward to seeing you on our next training video. Bye.