Optimizing Performance Max Campaigns [UPDATED for the New Google Ads Dashboard]

While it's true that out of all of the Google Ads campaign types that you can use currently in 2023, Performance Max is the one that utilizes the highest level of Google Ads automated bidding, its automated targeting, and its AI capabilities. But don't for one second think that because you're using all of those features from Google Ads that you don't need to also go through and do regular and scheduled optimizations for your Performance Max campaigns. Because for success with Performance Max campaigns, you need to have a structured and targeted approach to optimizing your Performance Max campaigns. Now, I know that already in 2023 you may have seen some other videos about how to optimize your Performance Max campaigns. And hey, I've even released some of this channel right here. But the reason for why I'm releasing a secondary video on how to optimize your Performance max campaigns in 2023 is because it's been requested by you, my Amazing yout audience. And the reason for why we've been getting so many requests is because Google has gone and done what Google does quite regularly and they've gone through and changed some things around. And one of the biggest changes is that they've changed the Google Ads Dashboard and especially the navigation of the Google Ads Dashboard. So to keep you up to date, what I wanted to do is to release that updated version of how you need to optimize your Performance Max campaigns the right way in 2023. But just in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron young. I'm from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. Now, as I said, when it comes to Performance Max, it's just not a set and forget. You need to make sure that you've got a really targeted approach and a targeted optimization strategy. And what I mean by that is that you know exactly what you're going to be optimizing in your Google Ads account. And the reason for why that is so important, especially for Performance Max campaigns, is because some of the optimization changes that you will make in your Performance Max campaigns, it may take one, two, sometimes even three weeks before you see the full benefit. Let me give you an example. Two months ago, in my own Google Ads campaign, I changed around the target CPA for a Performance Max campaign. And what actually happened is that for the first week, we saw a doubling of our acquisition cost. Then after the second and third week after making that change, our acquisition costs were actually half of what they were previously. So they did spike up for a week and then they dropped down. So you don't want to get caught where you make that change, see a bad week of data and then revert that change because then you miss out on the highly increased results in the future. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to take you through some of the core optimization actions that you need to be completing for your Performance Max campaign. And the best way to do that is if we jump into a screen share. So let's jump into that Screen share right now so I can show you how to navigate this new Google Ads dashboard to complete those core and very important optimization actions for your Performance Max campaign. Now, right here is the E Commerce optimization checklist that you can get access to. And the first thing that I want to take you through is how to go through and review your search term audits. And the way that we do this for a Performance Max campaign is we need to go to the Insights tab. So when you're in your Performance Max campaign, which we've got in here, you then go into Insights. And then when you're in Insights, I want you to scroll down and I want you to go through and look at this Consumer Spotlight, especially with the search categories. Now the other way that you can also do this is to go through to your audience Insights. The reason for why this is so important is because remember how I said that with Performance Max campaigns, it uses a lot of the automated learning and the AI technology from Google Ads. And the way that you need to think about this is that if anyone, and I'm sure many of you would have played around with Chat GTP before and you know that the more data or the more initial information you give it, the better result that it's going to give you. And this is exactly what you need to be doing in here. So what we want to be doing is that we want to be going through and seeing any keywords that have been used that are generating some different conversions. Now, this one is actually for this brand and you can see that there is some branded search terms in there. The other way that you can go through and do this is go through and look at the search terms which are giving you the highest amount of clicks. So for in here, when we look at there's some other ones for Google Skill Shop and you can go through and if I wanted to add in some extra targeting, I would copy that. And then you go into your asset group, I've just opened that up in a new window for us to make it a little bit easier and Then you go into your audience signal and then when you're in here, you would then go through and add that into your new keywords. So we would go through and paste that in there. So the other thing that you can do in here as well is that when you're in this Insights tab is to go into your audience insight and you will see these little green and these little blue markers. Now what that means is that the blue ones are ones that we've already added. So we've already given this information to Google, the green ones, ones that Google is optimizing for. So what that means is that you haven't yet added this to your audience signal, but Google is getting some great results in this one. So for example, especially for this one, like online Black Friday shopping, that's one that would be really highly targeted for us. So what we would do in here, same process, I just go through copy that, go into my interest and demographics and we just press paste and you can see here online Black Friday shopping, that's the one that we want to add. Now if you wanted to, you could also add some other ones which are relevant. And once you done that, you then go through and click Save. Now the one thing that I would do is that you want to click save because you want to select this option. We saved it to the current audience rather than setting it up as another copied audience. So the big thing there is you want to be going through this Insights tab, adding in any relevant search terms and also adding in any relevant audiences. Remember, as I said, what we're doing here is we're just giving Google another verification that these are the audiences or the keywords that you want to focus on for your Google Ads performance max campaign. So the next thing that you want to be doing is you want to be going over into your asset groups and we want to be reviewing our ad assets. Now this is similar to a ad copy split test. So what you want to be doing is that you want to be going into your view details and Google is going to give you a score of 3. It'll either be best, good or low. So what we want to do is we, let's just focus on these headlines and you can go through and do it for your images, your YouTube videos, everything. We want to go through and remove any with the low and only have performance scores of best and good. So let's just go to this one in here we can see start learning Google Ads. Now what we would do, obviously I've got others that I need to update but we're just going to focus on this first one. You go into your edit ad and this was the one that we need to optimize and update. So you would just go through and change that one and we might do this one where it says get instant access and then we go through and click save. For ease. I just took a Google selection. What I would recommend is I'd recommend you actually go through, spend some time and craft some new different headlines and then when you click View details, you can see from here that these are all now under review. So this one is in here. So these will go through and it'll take some time for this data to come through. So I'll come back after this video and update all of these other ones and make sure that we've got only headlines that have good and best. Now there is one more core optimization action that I wanted to show you how to complete in your Performance Max campaigns. But because it is such a big topic I didn't just want to brush over it. And that's because it has to do with optimizing your business bid strategies correctly. So making the decision on when to introduce a maximized conversion or maximize conversion value or if you already got those bidding strategies, working in your performance Max campaigns, making the decision on when to add in a target CPA or either add in or change your target roas. And as I said because that's such a big topic, I wanted to make sure that I gave you the full information and we just didn't touch the surface on that. So to give you some extended teaching right now on how you can review and optimize your bidding strategies for Performance Max campaigns, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Once again, thank you for joining me. Make sure you also download that link so that you can get access to my E Commerce Optimization checklist. I'll see you in this video about bid strategies right now. See ya.