There’s no denying that online advertising has never been the same since Google Ads. It is a powerful marketing tool that can help a business reach a wide target audience online. Performance Max is Google Ads’ newest offering, which promises to optimise performance by leveraging new automation and machine learning tools.
In addition, Performance Max also lets users interact with your ads across all of Google’s offerings, including Search, Maps, Discover, Display, and YouTube. Any online venture stands to benefit from Performance Max, particularly e-commerce. In this article, we’ll take you through five ways to make the most of Performance Max for your business.
1. Use Google Analytics
Although PMax is Google’s latest offering, it lacks tracking features that you may be used to. Integrating Google Analytics into the PMax ecosystem helps you keep track of useful statistics like landing page insights and geographical reports. To set this up, create a PMax segment on Google Analytics so that you can track both user infographics and conversion data.
With conversion data, you can track the most successful parts of your campaign and implement them in other campaigns. Additionally, you can understand which parts of your campaign need more work, thereby letting you maximise conversion.
2. Manage your inventory
An extension of conversion management is keeping track of your inventory, especially if you manage an e-commerce business. A few of your products may not have enough impressions to begin with, or they might not have enough volume to reflect in conversion metrics. Since Pmax favours automated bidding, it might not recognise this product type. In the long run, you may lose out on reviving these products.
To prevent this, re-evaluate your inventory and create descriptive identifiers for each sub-type. Descriptive keywords will help your stock get picked up by search engines. Build separate campaigns for each sub-type with a ‘Maximise conversions’ strategy to get old inventory flowing.
3. Optimise your assets
Since PMax works across platforms, make sure to include at least one video asset in your campaign (the more, the better). If you don’t create your own videos, PMax will create them for you with templates – however, the templates might not suit your brand identity.
Keep feeding the campaign new text and images so that your audience has something novel to watch out for. While adding image assets, be sure to optimise the size and resolution as necessary. With videos, create your own thumbnail instead of letting Google pick a random screengrab – a catchy thumbnail can be used across media platforms to catch your audience’s attention. Texts should be topical and include enticing CTAs.
4. Audit your website for unnecessary URLs
Final URL expansion with PMax is a special feature that dynamically changes your final URL according to what the user searches for. With this feature, PMax creates custom landing pages for each user based on what they want to see. Moreover, it also creates a dynamic ad headline that complements the content of your landing page.
For PMax to do this well, you must make sure that your website does not contain unnecessary URLs. Purge redundant pages from your website architecture so that PMax is not misled by dead links and outdated information while attempting a URL expansion.
Further, you can exclude certain URLs from showing up on the expansion campaign by manually entering them in the PMax console. For instance, you might not want to direct customers to non-commercial pages in an advertisement. In such cases, URL exclusion can contribute to more accurate usage metrics and conversion rates.
5. Set up an audience signal
PMax uses machine learning algorithms to predict your audience – help the program pick the right viewers by identifying important audience parameters. When you create an audience signal, you suggest audience groups to Google’s algorithms so that it can pick the right people to propel conversions.
A strong, conversion-driven audience list is key to helping the algorithm pick a wider audience who is equally (if not more) as likely to convert into paying customers. If your audience signal is too weak, Google may end up showing your ends to an irrelevant audience who may not need your business in the first place.
Closing thoughts
Google ads management may seem intimidating, but a little research can go a long way. PMax holds the key to the future of AI-driven advertising. Understanding the ropes of this smart technology is the key to growing your online presence.
