As an advertiser you must have heard about Google Performance Max, however, there are a lot of negative thoughts surrounding it.
It is obvious as adopting something new has always some resistance associated with it. Moreover, in this particular case, Google does most of the heavy lifting for you, so advertisers feel they are losing control over the very aspects people pay them for!
In this article, we are going to learn some of the easier ways to optimize this campaign for awesome ROAS.
These optimization techniques can make or break your campaign, so you should follow them carefully. We will not go into the details of Google Performance Max explanations or setup. If you would like to learn about the set up check out this article.
If you wish to learn specifically about lead generation then you should refer to this elaborate article which talks about the topic in detail.
According to Google, their latest Ad campaign- Google Performance Max, (which sounds like the naming convention for a gadget, not an ad campaign!) is one-size-fits-all.
They claim that it is one of the best automation technology across several advertising models such as bidding, targeting, attribution, etc to help advertisers grow conversions.
They also state in their support document that it is designed to perform well across various marketing objectives and media channels.
But is it the holy grail for advertisers? Let’s find out what advertisers think about it
The first optimization you need- Audience Signals Insights
Firstly you need to go to your insights. You will find the insights tab below the recommendation in your dashboard for Google Performance Max.
You can check out which audience signals that you gave to Google are consuming most of the money you allocated for the campaign.
So with insights, you get a realistic idea of who is giving you higher conversions and which audience is wasting your money, although it gives you some clicks.
One of the easiest ways to fix it is to go to the asset groups below insights and click on the edit assets button.
Click on the 3 dots and click on audience signals
You have to optimize this to save money. The reason why Google asks for audience signals is to learn about your target audience. Without supplying this information, the machine learning algorithm may take more time and money to find the right audience by experimenting.
For example, if you’re a restaurant owner, and you want to advertise your pizzas, try and find people who love pizzas, and who search for pizzas in your area. It is that logical and straightforward. So if Google has this signal from you, it can optimize your campaign better.
Also in your insights section, if you see a group of people who are clicking on your ad a lot but not converting, it would be a good idea to remove that group instead of bleeding money.
In this section if you see a lot of signals (many audiences) you may take out a few that are not working for you, however, if you do not have enough signals, then it’s a good idea to add more and while taking out the ones not working for you.
Don’t forget to save it!
This is the first optimization you should do to bring in immediate results!
Extensions are not well set up How should you optimize this?
Even if advertisers have the asset groups put together well, the main problem that we have found a lot of time is the poor definition of site link, callout, structured snippet, and price. Why should you care about it?
Well, imagine that your agency has two clients who are in the same business. Chances are they go after the same keywords, the same kind of content, and everything that needs to be a carbon copy of one another. So what’s the difference you may ask?
Even according to Google documentation, the extensions are the key differentiating factors for these kinds of businesses.
When you clearly define your extension your optimization score increases quite a lot. It is purely based on how much value you provide to the user by making sure this aspect is also well optimized.
Also, it’s a good idea to A/B test your extensions, especially with the pricing. We found out that for our SAAS product the more pricing options you give your prospects, the better it performs.
Optimizing your Asset Library with the power of AI. Fast
One of the most tricky parts of advertising with this sort of campaign is the number of creatives and ad copies required to get the desired results. Google Performance Max may ask you for 20 different variations and it can be a daunting task for any design team within an agency, especially with the number of clients you have to manage.
To overcome this challenge, tools like AdCreative.ai, are indispensable to every advertiser, since you can generate hundreds of high-performing ad creatives along with different variations of ad copies in a matter of seconds.
If you click on your asset library and check the assets you see which ones are performing well and which ones aren't. The simple way to change this is to remove the assets with ‘low’ scores and replace them with the ones similar to your high-scoring assets. It can all be done from AdCeative itself!
All you have to do is connect your Google Ad account and get all the insights about your high-performing creatives on the creative insights tab.
Alternatively, you may manually update your Google Performance Max asset dashboard, as we mentioned earlier.
Create Videos, or be prepared for super ugly auto-generated videos by Google!
Yes, you heard that right. If you do not give any videos to the campaign, it is going to auto-generate videos using your creatives and text. And let us remind you that Google Performance Max is most likely to generate some ugly videos, in a slide format that may not be engaging, On the contrary, they may hurt your brand.
So our recommendation is to give your campaign a couple of videos(that you can create with free tools like Lumen 5).
You should upload the videos on your YouTube channel, come back and upload the link on your asset library for optimal results.
Remember that Google Performance Max is also working on channels like Youtube and other platforms that utilize video content, so it’s a good idea to have videos in your asset library.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you about this!
Conclusion
Google Performance Max can give you super impressive results based on how well your campaign is optimized. Following these optimization techniques will empower your campaign with optimal performance. Now you can surely Max out, and oh, don’t forget Adcreative.ai is a must!
