This is how you build result-oriented Performance Max campaigns

Performance Max campaigns, better known as PMax, are a (relatively new) advertising option within Google Ads. Setting up these campaigns requires a slightly different approach than the well-known RSAs or Google Shopping campaigns. 

To help you set up result-oriented PMax campaigns, we walk through the process step by step in this blog. From selecting goals to optimizing campaigns.

Select your campaign goal

When choosing your campaign objective for a PMax campaign, you need to decide what exactly you want to achieve with your ads. This can vary, from increasing direct sales to increasing your brand's awareness and reach. It is essential to have a clear and specific goal so that you can effectively measure and improve the performance of your campaign.

You can choose from these campaign goals: 

• Associate
• Leads
• Website traffic
• Product and brand consideration
• Brand awareness and reach
• App promotion
• Local store visits and promotions

Before you start, consider whether you plan to sell all your products or just the ones with the best profit margins. Promoting cheap, competitive products through CPC can generate a lot of sales but little profit.

Choose a campaign type

Once you've chosen your campaign objective, you'll need to select the appropriate campaign type within Google Ads. Performance Max is one of the available campaign types specifically designed to maximize the performance of your ads across Google platforms.

Performance Max operates on several Google platforms, including Google Search, Google Display Network, YouTube and Discovery.

Select your conversion goals

Within the PMax campaign settings you can choose specific goals for your ads. You can choose from options such as:

1. Generate online sales.
2. Collect leads.
3. Encourage offline sales.
4. App promotion.
5. Local store visits and promotions.

Choose the most important goals to make your campaign stand out and focus your budget on results-oriented activities. If you have unnecessary goals, you can easily delete them by clicking the three dots and selecting 'delete'. After you choose your goals, set your campaign budget.

Set budgets and bids

It's crucial to set the budget and bids for your Performance Max campaign so that your ads are delivered effectively to your target audience. You can choose to manually set bids or use Google's automated bidding strategies to optimize your budget and get the best results.

Experienced marketers often use trial-and-error to find the best bidding strategies for PMax campaigns. For less experienced marketers, Google offers advice and you can use Google's smart bidding strategies to maximize your budget, get more conversions and achieve a high Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

An important aspect of Performance Max is that you can invest more in new customers than in returning customers,” says Walls. “While repeat customers are valuable, especially from a remarketing perspective, this capability helps better tailor bids.

Adjust the campaign settings

Campaign settings allow you to fine-tune and improve the targeting and delivery options of your ads. This includes selecting specific locations, languages ​​and devices where your ads appear, as well as optimizing the final destination links to increase the relevance of your ads.

Manage asset groups

Asset groups are the core of your Performance Max campaign and contain various creative components such as headlines, descriptions, images and logos. It's important to provide enough variety within your asset groups to improve the potential relevance of your ads and increase the engagement of your target group. 

Are you going to set up a Pmax campaign? Then you need the following. 

• 3-5 headlines of up to 30 characters. 
• 1-5 long headings of up to 90 characters. 
• 2-5 texts for descriptions of up to 90 characters.
• At least 1 square and 1 landscape image
• At least 1 square logo, other sizes are optional
• Maximum 5 videos of at least 10 seconds. No video available? Then Google will make a video itself without your input. Convenient, but you have no control over the outcome. 

After this step, configure the target group signal. Here you add data about Google audience segments, your own target group and specific interests and demographic characteristics that you want to integrate into the system.

Add ad extensions

Adding ad extensions is optional, but it will increase the visibility and relevance of your ads. Sitelinks, call extensions, and location extensions are some examples that can help improve the performance of your Performance Max campaign.

Reporting and management

Constantly keep a finger on the pulse and regularly take the time to analyze the performance of your Performance Max campaign. This allows you to measure how well it meets your stated goals. Within Google Ads, various reporting features provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your ads, allowing you to make targeted optimizations to take performance to new heights.

There are four ratings for each campaign:

1. Low: Performs below the average of comparable assets of the same type.
2. Good: The assets are performing properly.
3. Best: One of the best performing assets of its kind.
4. Pending: Not enough data available yet (minimum 5000 impressions per asset required).

It is important to keep a close eye on Google's scores on your ads. These scores are automatically awarded based on how good Google thinks your ad can be. But when you work in a specific niche, your view on the matter can sometimes be more reliable than what that algorithm says.

Google not only checks how your images and text are doing, but also how strong your entire advertisement is. That's not just about the quality of the content, but also about how complete your images, text and other things are. 

PMax vs. Search

Although Performance Max campaigns have a lot of potential and are seen (by Google) as the future of performance marketing, this does not mean that you should immediately stop your current Search campaigns. Rather choose balance. They are not the same type of advertisements. Rather, try to envision a strategy that leverages both Search and Pmax. 

Benefits of Keeping Search Campaigns:

• Specific search intent: Search campaigns focus on users' specific search intent, often generating highly relevant traffic.
• Control over keywords: Search campaigns give you direct control over the keywords your ads appear on, which can be useful for targeting specific audiences.
• Remarketing: Search campaigns allow you to implement remarketing strategies, showing ads to users who have previously interacted with your website.

Considerations when integrating PMax campaigns:

• Additional strategy: PMax campaigns can be a valuable addition to your current Search campaigns. They are designed to reach a wide audience and provide opportunities to attract new customers.
• Priority within Google Ads: It is important to know that PMax campaigns take priority over other campaigns within Google Ads, including Search campaigns. This implies that PMax campaigns may receive more exposure. Nevertheless, it remains valuable to maintain Search campaigns for specific queries.
• Gradual transition: It is advisable to gradually integrate and test PMax campaigns alongside your existing Search campaigns. This way you can compare performance and determine which strategy best suits your company's needs.

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