Performance Max: Five Secrets to Success

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Google’s Performance Max (Pmax) campaigns changed the advertising game for the search industry, expanding touchpoints to display, discovery, video, and beyond. 

According to Morgan Stanley, 61% of consumers who begin their product research begin their search on Google. 

Google Ads are a substantial opportunity for advertisers, and as the newest addition to Google’s advertising ecosystem, it’s important to know how to leverage Pmax for your brand. Not sure where to start? Keep reading for our top five Pmax secrets to success.

Why Performance Max?

Google’s Pmax campaigns prioritize your business goals and enable automation of targeting and serving ads to achieve those goals. Enabling automation is crucial to maximizing performance from Google Ads. 

Google wants to get in front of shoppers even before they’re searching. The additional placements Pmax incorporates present more opportunities to connect with consumers before they “raise their hand on search.”

With the addition of discovery, YouTube, display, and Gmail into advertising campaigns, advertisers can reach further up the funnel and access more consumers, creating more ROI-driven (return on investment) experiences. Through its path to purchase awareness, Pmax better understands each customer journey stage.

1. Optimize the Data Feed

Pmax campaigns thrive on clean data and optimized product feeds. Google offers five custom label fields that group account structure. When defining labels, consider what it means from a business and consumer needs standpoint. 

From a business perspective, align labels according to priority products that will drive new customers. From a consumer perspective, align titles and content with how your customers seek your products. Consider tweaking titles and content descriptions to match the seasonal language. For instance, “evening gowns” might resonate better as “NYE dresses” come December. 

2. Be Strategic with Structure

Google recommends one campaign that lumps everything together to utilize the widest data pool possible. However, we’ve found that large groupings of multiple campaigns work just as well, if not better, than one large campaign. 

That being said, Pmax runs on data, so ensure that your campaign groupings have enough working conversions for the algorithm to automate toward. In the early days of Pmax testing, several advertisers wanted to test small campaigns, which proved ineffective. The algorithm was starved of data, and as a result, those Pmax campaigns underperformed. 

Start with large groupings, and if data and scale permit, slowly create new campaign partitions.

3. Budget and ROAS Targets

ROAS (return on ad spend) targets are your key control levers for meeting your desired results. However, this shouldn’t be a set-it-and-forget-it kind of approach. Pmax can spend over 2x your budget on any given day in pursuit of additional revenue, so keeping tabs and a tighter ceiling on the budget is important. 

Make sure target changes are gradual to reduce the chance of the system re-entering the learning mode. Changes greater than 20% can trigger Pmax campaigns back into learning mode, so small, highly refined changes are your best friend. 

Business goals don’t typically boil down to these strict budgets and ROAS targets. So the intersection of consumer targeting and aligning goals within that structure is key to consistent success with Pmax.

4. Optimize Asset Groups

Assets are automatically mixed and matched based on which Google Ad channel (YouTube, Gmail, Search, etc.) your ad is being served on. 

Make sure you create assets specifically for asset groups in each campaign. If you do not create all ad format variations, Pmax will automatically make them. Focus on consumer goals for your campaign and messaging at the bottom of the funnel (vs. standalone YouTube, display, etc.).

5. Provide the Right Signals

So, how can we maximize control on Pmax? By providing the right signals. With the right signals, you can curate feedback that guides Google’s algorithm toward your ideal customers. Define conversions and conversion values that align with your strategy so Google can help find the right consumer. 

Remember, not all consumer engagement is equal. Once you have data from consumers who convert, analyze the group’s interests, then direct Pmax toward customers with similar interests to those who drive the most value for your business.

How can you incorporate the right audience into Pmax? 

1. First-Party Data: Leverage specific 1P (first-party) customer segments to highlight your ideal customers for each campaign’s products and goals.
2. Affinity Audiences: Use historical category, product, and competitor data to create custom intent audiences to further direct and amplify user targeting expansion.
3. Matchback: Signal the value of the customer, not just the value of the order. Integrate buyer information and data attributes to find more customers you want.

Conclusion

Google advertising is one automation wave after another, and as an advertiser, you can either surf those waves or sink. With these top five secrets to success, you can balance human ingenuity and machine learning to steer your Pmax campaigns in the right direction. 

Test it, tweak it, rinse, and repeat. Using Pmax, we helped our client, Soma, Chico’s FAS’ intimate apparel boutique, achieve a 38% increase in revenue and an 80% improvement in ROAS. Chico’s FAS is now running Pmax with Adlucent across additional brands and product areas.

Whether you want to leverage Pmax for global expansion or just take the leap, we are here to help. Let’s talk.

Eden Pierson

Eden is a content manager with a wide range of experience in the marketing space. From B2B advertising, branding, and retail marketing, she is passionate about curating content that resonates with target audiences.