The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Performance Max Campaigns Assets

Okay, so today I'm going to go through a new type of campaign which is working really well for us and that is the new Google Ads Performance Max campaign. This was recently released by Google a few months ago. I'll be leave around late August 2021. At first I was quite sceptical about it as to how can you have search, display, video, Gmail everything in one go because whenever we have set up a search campaign we always take out the display partners from those campaigns now this one is the complete opposite which what I and all the others have been teaching so I thought this is one of those smart campaigns which will just eat up the budget and will not give us any results but I was wrong and we started running some few tests in some of our client accounts and for ourselves and to my surprise they are performing pretty well and in some of them extremely well where to the point that it has taken over the whole account and none of the other campaigns are producing as many leads or sales as these performance max are generating.

So, I thought I'll talk about this as to what it is initially and then go into the ads account and set one up. Let me share my screen. Okay. I just need to adjust a little bit. I think that looks okay. I'll zoom in a bit more. So you can read and see what I'm looking at. So this is I'm on the Google Support Centre.

This is where I go for all the info which is absolutely 100% accurate and any updates or the latest news and any new stuff which Google throws out. So let's have a quick look. Performance Max and I'm just going to refer it to as Pmax is a new goal based campaign that allows performance advertisers to access all of Google's inventory and that's important.

And this is why these are taking over because you got YouTube, Gmail, Search, Display you know the whole lot in one. So it really does pick up space and goes after your audience and the best thing is the simplicity in setting up these campaigns. Its super simple which I'll show you in a minute. Designed to complement your keyword based search campaigns to help you find more converting customers across all of Google's channels like YouTube, Display, Search, Discover.

So this is quite interesting that it is designed to complement your keyword based search. Right this is extremely important. Don't stop all your search campaigns. Run them side by side even though it the search may not give you the results that those campaigns will send the signals to the Performance Max so run both of them together and you might get some pressure from your client oh search is wasting money switch them off don't it says here clearly that it is designed to complement Performance Max help you drive performance based okay conversion goals, delivering more conversions and value by optimizing performance in real time across all channels using smart betting so there's no bidding to be looked at or worried about it will automatically bid for you it combines Google's automation technologies and these are just the usual blurb I'll skip this through because I'll go through how it is done benefits okay unlock new audiences drive better performance we finding this more and more to be accurate and is performing really well.

Get more transparent insights which is pretty good. Steer automation and simplify campaign management and easily optimize your ads. So basically all you do is when it comes to optimization is either the audience or the targeting you can optimize all your ads and there is nothing much to it. Okay. You helps you find more converting clients, drives more value.

This is just the usual blurb. When to use it. Okay, best option to use it. Your specific advertising and conversion goals, right? You've got to have your conversion tracking setup otherwise it will not work. You've got driving sales or generating leads. Want to maximize your performance of your campaign. And aren't limited by which channel your ads appear on.

So if you're not worried as long as you want your sales or leads you do it but what you all need to do is to upload your video in there as well you need to have some videos and that will obviously go on YouTube access all your Google channels and so on. Google has automation campaign inputs. Okay, let's see what we can input.

Performance Max uses machine learning tools to optimize bids and placements to drive conversions but you provide important inputs like the audience signal and this is what our audience is all about, right? And you can also target your customer data. So, if you got a database of emails and a customer list, you can upload it and then you can give it to Performance Max.

We haven't tried it actually this bit which I am going to try very soon and see what happens. And then you need to have some text images and videos to input or put them in your ads. Okay provide important inputs about what type of conversions are most valuable to your business by applying conversion values and setting the value rules okay account based brand safety and this is the usual stuff alright so enough about what this is let' go into our account.

I'll try to enlarge it a little bit more. Okay, that should work. Click on new campaign. The objective either sales, leads or whichever I'll go with leads. Must set up your conversion goals, right? Continue. Then in here you will see this new little box called Performance Max. We don't need the Merchant Center for this. Okay. Select the country or if you're selling products then you put in your Merchant Centre account over here.

So you can sell e-commerce products as well and we are running on at least two accounts and one of them is working wonderfully well. The other one is starting to take up but it is highly advisable that you do that as well. Name your campaign whatever name you want to put or whatever the naming convention you have.

Start New. Because this is my test account. That's why it's asking me to create a new campaign. Come on, wake up Google. It might have thrown me out of that campaign. Yes it has. Alright, let's start again. New campaign and it is always very slow when you're trying to go live and do something. Okay let's try again see what happens if this behaves I know what's happening is because I hadn't finished that last one.

Okay, let's done it now. Okay. Can you guys see this okay now the good thing about this Pmax is the way they have set it up is these are the one, two, three, four, five steps which you need to create the campaign is super simple actually the interface is really good because they've broken this down in two stages so all you focus is on the budget first of all what is your budget this is a test one I'm not going to worry too much about it what are you focusing on your bidding whether you want conversions or you want conversion value which is your ROAS return on ad spend if I was to go to conversion then you switch over to the target CPA bidding which is the over here the targets cost the action so you can set up you say I want to lead for £10 or whatever it may be.

Or you can say if you are an e-com I want 500% ROAS, right? I'll just go to conversions, set up a conversion action. £10. Next. Now you'll get some weekly estimates over here as well as to what you can potentially get for your budget. I should have gone to the last one or were you back again? And yes next.

UK location where whichever one you want or you can enter or you go to advance search and then it's the same pop up comes up where you can set up your radius targeting as well if you want. I'm happy with what we've got. I'm going to put in UK and then more settings at schedule running all day long fine start and end dates if you want don't need to worry too much about it and this one as well now you've gone straight into your asset group or what they call the good old fashioned ad group what we tend to do is we name it as the targeting of that audience so if we are targeting in market audience for let's say digital marketers I'm going to call it digital marketing or if I'm targeting Email marketing and so on we'll name it so we know what that ad asset group is all about, right?

And I'll show you in a minute how we do that and that is what we call the audience signals then you put in your website, add up to 15 images. You can either upload, you can either scan it from your website or you can just this is my test account. I'm just going to select a handful of these images, right?

And save. Make sure that you own the copyright and not infringing on somebody else's copyrights. Very important. Somebody can easily sue you for this. Put your logo I think I have some logo here, there you go. I select them into ratios. One is the square and one is the rectangle one. So videos up to five so you got 15 images up to five logos and five videos and this is how we can see how the ads are going to look then you put in your headlines five headlines keep adding to it if you click on view suggestion it will then look at your landing page I'm just going to do this for the sake of this exercise.

Right I've got my headlines then I have a long headline over here which you can add up to five different long headlines so if you're running search campaign you can copy it from there because the same 90 characters long over here and the 30 characters for the headlines then you got the descriptions as well one is a short description up to 60 characters long and then you've got four I can't keep up with these different ad types and formats as to which headlines and how many we need so it's is here look add 160 character description and up to four other descriptions so one is 60 characters long and the other one is 90 characters long once you've done that automated oh sorry call to action not automated I don't know what this automated is oh okay that means is Google is going to decide itself no I don’t want that I want learn more, get quote, what have we got?

I think learn more I quite like it because it's very informal and there is no strong call to action that you could do buy now or sign up anything like that. Put in your name of your business. More options you got path one path two always put in the keyword over here for up to 15 characters long and this is the key over here now at the bottom which is create audience signal you got your custom segments now these custom segments you probably have already built it in your account right you got your infinity topic in market all the other ones over here as well so if I go in here and search for there you go.

So I've got my competitors or my test I mean these are all my test custom audiences which I've used it in the past. I'll just put in affiliate marketing. What I don't tend to do is to do it like this. Lots of these audiences because I don't know than which one is working better than the other. So if you want to try different ones you either set up in a separate campaign or a separate asset group.

One, targeting per campaign ideally. And this is how we test it. You've got your business data website. This is your remarketing. This is powerful because it really just goes after it. You don't need to worry about setting up a separate target remarketing. You got your website visitors and YouTube users and you can create a new data list as well over here.

Which will take us for us to upload our customer list yeah is it will take us over here. Demo you don't want to target 18 year olds and the retired people set it up and that pretty much is how you set up a I'll just call it first you need to call it affiliate marketing as my audience name and then remember I said earlier on you have got to change that name for the asset group.

So now I know that this group is targeting affiliate marketing. So we keep it super simple. Ideally you want your edge ad strength to be excellent or strongest or whatever it's called. I think it's called excellent. So it will go to poor average good and then excellent. So you want this all to be done because I haven't uploaded the images videos and descriptions at the moment.

And then you can see the preview over here how it's going to look on YouTube. This is on the mobile, Gmail, Search, display, discover so all the channels and then over here if you check on that little laptop icon you can see that this is the display ad these are really cool because these are responsive display ads you don't need to have different sizes all you do is throw in all your assets in here Google is going to mix and match all of these for you closed which going on the Gmail is going to look like this and when they click on it and they open it up is going to look like that.

And then YouTube is how your skippable ad will pop up. Your companion banner will be on the right hand I don't know why it keeps on defaulting and the companion banner will pop up here okay so this is how easy it is and the last bit which you will need to do is to set up the extensions it won't let me go oh it has taken me to the next one here so whichever extension you want like the call extension I want to add it I'll just put this there lead form, sitelink, you can use your account level sitelink if you like or you can add more extensions over here structured snippets, price promotions, callout and so on next obviously there's some issues in my asset groups so I need to fix it but then you will come here review your campaign check everything is okay there's some problems in the asset issues and that's it really it's super simple try it you'll be really pleasantly surprised.