Digital marketing practices are constantly evolving and growing as our world becomes more reliant on technology and the internet. Local Digital Advertising Company Lead Dog Digital, based in Tyler, Texas, likes to stay up to date with all the new marketing tools.
One of the latest, popular digital advertising tools to hit the market is Google Ads – Performance Max Campaigns.
Google Performance Max Campaigns are a new automated, goal-based Google Ad campaign that launched in 2021. This ad campaign uses algorithms to reach a wider audience while allowing advertisers to access their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign.
What is Google Performance Max
Google Performance Max uses computer-programmed AI (artificial intelligence) and automated algorithms to maximize the reach of your business’s ad campaigns. This algorithm finds relevant potential customers to show your ads to during their internet browsing.
Google Performance Max shows ads in every channel Google is able to target – Search, Shopping, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps, and YouTube ads.
While you might be familiar with most of these Google channels, Google Display is especially helpful for ad placement. This Google channel uses different targeting parameters to place and display your ads. We’ve seen Google’s Display channel place ads in a multitude of different websites, from Yahoo!, eBay, Zillow, and a myriad of different local and national news websites.
This type of ad campaign makes it easy for advertisers to provide and keep track of their creative assets, such as headlines, images, and videos. Google will assemble these assets and place ads throughout different Google channels to target relevant potential customers.
While its full name is currently Google Ads – Performance Max Campaigns, you might hear many different names for this type of campaign! A few different names for this campaign we’ve heard at Lead Dog Digital are:
Google Max
Google Pro
Google Performance
Pro Max
Pmax
Performance Pro
Performance Pro Max
Google Performance Max Pro
And of course, don’t forget the acronyms:
GPM
GAPM
PMC
GPMC
PM
Don’t be overwhelmed by the many different names you might come across – they all mean the same thing!
How Performance Max Helps
Increase Conversion and Value
Google Performance Max is implemented to increase your conversion rate, which is the number of users who completed an action on your site in comparison to overall ad traffic. This can help grow your business in a significant way.
Performance Max also allows advertisers to set specific conversion goals to track, like phone calls, form fill-outs, chat functions, and more based on your prioritization. Having these conversion goals helps keep track of activity on your website, and the algorithm helps to push for these goals to be met.
Wider Audience Reach and New Customers
There is a much wider audience reach using Performance Max because the algorithm is always working to find relevant customers for your business.
Our computers are sometimes better at keeping track of information from our daily lives than we are. Google Performance Max uses info such as customers’ internet browsing history to present ads of your business to relevant, new customers.
Automated Marketing
Because this campaign type utilizes computer-programmed algorithms to place your ads, it means less work for you trying to figure out the best way to reach new customers online. Instead, the algorithm will find these new customers for you!
Google Performance Max Best Practices
Using Performance Max with Other Ad Campaigns
Don’t ditch the other ad campaigns just because you’re including Performance Max in the mix. Use Pmax alongside other PPC campaigns! If you’re using consistent keywords across your different ad work, Performance max will help boost other ad campaigns as well, meaning more eyes on your business.
Because Google Max is always working to push your ad content to relevant potential customers, it helps support the traffic brought in from other ad campaign sources. If you’re interested in analyzing your website’s traffic data, Performance Max requires correct data attribution.
However, it’s important not to use Performance max simultaneously with an SSC (Smart Shopping Campaign). Luckily, Google anticipated a clash between these two campaign types and is automatically upgrading all SSC and LC (local campaigns) to Performance Max Campaigns in summer 2022.
Monitor Your Asset Performances
Using Performance Max, advertisers can access all of their creative assets for their ad work from one campaign. Any text, images, videos, or content used in advertising work should be monitored to see which is performing the best – what content receives the most’ clicks?’
You’ll want to include content and creative assets that perform the best!
Cons of Performance Max
Cons of Automation: Less Control & Limited Visibility
Because the computer is doing most of the heavy lifting in regard to placing your ads rather than doing so manually or through SEO strategies, advertisers will have limited control over where their ad work goes as well as limited visibility on how customers find their ads.
With Google Performance Max, most of the marketing work is done behind the scenes (or, in this case, behind the screen). However, if you want to keep close tabs on where and how customers are finding your products or services, Google Performance max can present some limitations.
There are many digital marketing avenues to explore! SEO, Performance Max, social media – contact us at Lead Dog Digital today and find out which digital advertising options are best for you and your business!
