Unlocking Success with Performance Max Campaign (PMAX) : Your Ultimate Guide for 2024

Performance Max in a nutshell:

·  Performance Max: Google Ads campaign type

·  Maximizes reach and performance

·  Combines smart bidding and targeting features

·  Single goal-based campaign across Google Network

·  Uses machine learning for ad distribution

·  Ad formats vary based on effectiveness

·  Goal: Increase presence and conversions

·  Optimizes ad performance in real-time

·  Utilizes Google's algorithms and Smart Bidding

Available Inventory

 

Setting up Assets Group and Best practices

ü  Gather and upload a diverse range of assets including images, videos, logos, and ad copy tailored to your brand or products.

ü  Performance Max leverages Google's machine learning capabilities to dynamically and automatically generate ads based on the provided assets.

ü  Through continuous testing, Performance Max identifies the most effective combinations of assets for a given campaign, optimizing performance to achieve your set goals.

ü  The campaign's success is enhanced by the variety and quality of assets provided; the more assets you provide, the greater the potential for the campaign to generate a wide range of ad formats.

ü  With an extensive array of assets, Performance Max can target and appear in various locations within Google's network, maximizing your brand's visibility and reach across different channels and platforms.

Lets set up Performance Max Campaign from Scratch

Pros and Cons of Performance Max campaign:

Source

Step By Step- How to set up Performance Max Campaign (2024 version)

Step 1: Under 'Choose your objectives' select the last option

Then Select Performance Max as seen below:

Step 2: Select Conversions

This is a very crucial step and this defines your PMAX campaign success.The very first step is to ensure that you are counting the correct conversion. For example: If your goal is sales, make sure you are selecting the right conversion 'Purchase' and delete all the other conversions by selecting 'Delete'

Make sure all your conversions events are set up correctly, the tag is firing and the data is collected properly. 

Here, lets say our goal is Sales, we will select the Purchase as our conversion goal as seen below and will DELETE all other goals (see underneath the image)

Lets Delete other goals , Delete the goals that are not needed and click continue. You might see many other goals as well in your dashboard, just Delete all the goals which are not relevant to your objective 

Step 3: Here in this step, you have to select your Bidding Strategy and optionally you can also acquire new customers , more on this later.

But first lets see how this screen looks like

Now lets dive deep into the Available Bidding Strategies, there are 4 Bid strategies as seen underneath:

1. Maximize Conversions

2. Maximize conversions with Target CPA

3.Maximize Conversion Value

4. Maximize Conversion Value with Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS)

Now it completely depends on your requirements , whether you need conversions or you are focusing more on lower funnel KPIs like tROAS , select the bidding strategy accordingly.

Step 3.1 : New Customer Acquisition

Now this is very interesting feature of PMAX. Why am I saying this? Well, lets take an example, lets say you are focusing on Sales and your conversion goal is 'Purchase' , this is a lower funnel goal. 

Now PMAX is giving you an option to acquire new customers. As we know that acquiring new customers is completely different from the lower funnel KPIs that we are focusing on. So in short, PMAX helps you not only to focus on your desired goals but at the same time , it can help you to acquire New customers and that too in 1 SINGLE CAMPAIGN. That means you do not have to set up a new campaign ( Although its always better to have separate campaigns for Prospecting, Retargeting and other Lower funnel  specific)

We have 2 options here:

Option 1: Bid higher for new customers than existing customers (this is useful in case if you want to acquire new customers while helping you to achieve your goal , Purchase in this case , by targeting all customers

By default , you will be shown a value which is fetched at Account level. You can select that or based on you own research, you can have a different value as seen below

Option 2: only bid for new customers  In this case, the algorithm will focus only on acquiring new customers, it does not matter which bid strategy you have chosen. 

What do you need to set this up? You need to upload a customer list audience segment  which contains atleast 1000 active members (contacts)

Step 4: In this step, you have to select Location, language and you have option to tweak 'Automatically created assets' and also select 'Additional settings'. lets slice and dice this

Locations and Language settings- they are just normal, no need any explanations here.

Now, lets see what Automatically created assets are:

After clicking on the dropdown button, this is how it looks like

If you keep the 2 checkbox ticked, then this is what the Algorithm will do:

Text assets when the checkbox is Ticked: It allows google to generate assets automatically using content from your LP, Domain and ads. Its recommended that you keep this ticked ON

Final URL: In this case, Google will find the best URL that matches the user search query or intent and will show the landing page which is the best suited for the user.

You can also exclude some URLs that you don't want Google to show to the user. Example: Careers page, privacy policy, FAQs, T&Cs etc. In this case just select Exclude some URLs as seen below. Once you select this, you will be redirected to another screen

Just enter the URLs that you don't want Google Ads to show to the end user

Once you are done with this, you have an option to change the 'Additional Settings' as seen below:

Once you are done ,click Next

Step 5: You are done with Campaign Level settings, now you are in the 'Assets Group'. Assets groups are similar to Adgroups, lets say you are selling Tshirts , pants and shoes. its better to create 3 assets group and share the assets which are relevant to each of them. More on this later

Even before you start setting up the PMAX campaign, its better to structure the Aseets group, have a look at your wevsite site map or navigation and you will get a top level idea on ow to structure your assets groups

Once you are done , you need to upload and add assets, details below:

Available Call to actions:

Once you are done with this, you can add more Assets type as shown below:

At the end, you will find Signal , this is very interesting. Before we understand what it is and how it works, lets see how it looks like

Search themes: You can add upto 25 keywords , take help from your Google Search campaigns keywords report. These are the keywords, phrases or search terms people are using when they are searching for products or services like yours. 

This will help Google to target users and will also guide the algorithm who is the Target audience. 

Next come the Audience signal

Audience Signal? These are the starting points and will guide the algorithm to reach the right audience. Please note, there is no guarantee that only your selected audience segments under the audience signal which you select, will be targeted. As this is a performance focused campaign, Google might extend the reach to ensure that your marketing and campaign objectives are achieved.

So what Audience Signals are available, lets have a look:

To start with,  first party data which is now reframed as 'Your data'. You can bring in your own CRM data, Offline data like POS , from your ESPs etc. First party data is the most powerful data when it comes to targeting and reaching the right audience. The scale might be lower but the output is the best

Other Additional signal, can be seen below

Breaking this further:

Once you are done, click Next for the next Step

Step 6: In this step, you will be asked to put a daily budget for this campaign: Enter your daily budget and click next

Step 7: This is a summary page , just check all the details and once you are assured that everything looks OK,  just publish the campaign. 

This screen will also show you any Issues you might have before you publish and also show you some recommendations to improve your 'Campaign optimization score' 

Performance Max Campaign with Google Merchant center data feed?

Performance Max operates similarly to Google Shopping concerning product feeds. To initiate, you must submit your feed to the Google Merchant Center and associate it with your Performance Max campaign. Subsequently, the system will utilize all the product information within your feed to construct Performance Max ads.

The efficacy of your Performance Max campaign heavily relies on the quality of your data feed. Hence, optimizing your shopping listings should be prioritized. It is advisable to incorporate a wide array of attributes in your feed, such as Titles, Brand, Price, Images, MPN/SKU, Product_Category, Product_type, Custom Labels, and additional pertinent details.

 

Performance Max vs Standard Shopping Campaign

Source

Thanks for reading !