A Simple Guide To Google Performance Max Campaigns For Your Business

Performance Max is the latest Google Ads, uh, campaign type, which Google released late last year. It is the buzzword at the moment with all marketeers and advertisers. So in today's session I'm going to show you how to set up the Performance Max the right way, what you need and what you should look out for to get that Performance Max working right from the, uh, day, from day one.

Hello, my name is Uzair, and thanks for joining in. It is 12th of May, 3pm, um, in the afternoon in the UK. I'm glad it's, it's a Friday, and hope you had a great weekend. So I'll start off with setting up the Performance Max, as to how we can go about setting it up, and towards the end of the session, if there are any questions, I will try my best to answer them for you. So let's get the show on the road. I just want to make sure everything is working fine, which it is, and yeah, that seems to be working fine today, and we shall get started.

Okay, um, so what is Performance Max? Following on my last session, which I talked about the Performance Max campaign, just to recap very quickly, this campaign type is one of the easiest ways to set up and run a Google Ads campaign. It has got text, display, video, Gmail, Maps and shopping, all six different types of campaign ads in one campaign.

So what does that mean for you? Well, it's six times less work, because if you are running a search, display, video, Gmail, shopping campaign, you will need to have separate campaigns, and that's what we've been taught all, um, all the way through: keep different campaigns, different campaigns for different types, in, uh, completely separately. So we don't mix display with search, we will never mix video with search and so on. This has turned things around, well, upside down on its head. You just need one campaign.

And the other thing is, if you struggle with keywords, match types, negative keywords and so on, it's great news for you. There aren't any. Uh, you just need to set up the audiences, and there are no more keywords to worry about. So let's go into our ad account and get started.

So you go, click new campaign, and depends on what campaign objective it is. Let's say sales. Then you have your conversion goal as purchases. Continue. I'm just making sure my screen fits your screen. Okay, that's a bit better. Then we have the campaign type. Here you want to pick up Performance Max. Put in the campaign name. This is a test campaign that we're running right now. And I don't think you can see the continue button, but it's just over here along the bottom on the right hand side. And start new, because I was doing a test one before.

All right, now on the left hand side, I'll need to keep juggling these around a bit. What Google have done is super simple and super smart. Now you know that you're at this stage. You got budget, you need to do bidding, campaign settings, asset group, extensions and summary. So we're going to go through each step, uh, one, one at a time, and go to the summary, where we are going to set up the campaign. Budget, I'm just going to keep it 1.1 pound.

Bidding. Now, conversions will focus on target, uh, CPA, or target's cost per acquisition, and the conversion value is going to set up for, to optimise for target ROAS, return on ad spend. So as we are running a ecommerce campaign, we will set up conversion value. If you were running lead generation, then you will set up a conversion.

Now, in here you can also set up a cost per action or cost per acquisition, which is optional. If it's a brand new campaign, I would not put anything in there. Let Google loose, bid aggressively. Initially the cost per conversions will be a bit high, but as the campaign starts to get the pace, you are going to see that the conversions are coming in at a really good price, and then you can put in a target CPA of whatever you want.

And the same with the ROAS, return on ad spend. Don't put a target ROAS. It's going to default to the 200 percent in Google Ads. So if you want to aim for 400 initially, when you've got zero data in it, don't put anything here. Leave it blank. Now, if you have got any questions, then please put them in the comment box or the question box around the video. This is being live streamed on YouTube, LinkedIn, where, as well as Twitter and Facebook.

And one thing which I did forget to mention when I started is, I'm going to be in New York on the 23rd of May and speaking at the Shopify meetup in New York by Merchant Mastery. We've got some amazing, amazing speakers, and if you are into e-commerce, then this is an event which you do not want to miss out on. We've got Scott, Simon from Merchant Mastery and Socialite, two of the most smartest marketeers for e-commerce businesses.

So if you want to really take your business, or I should say turn your hobby into a business, then you need to come and speak, listen to these guys. Courtney is going to be there as well from Merchant Mastery, and Nicholas from Recart, and I'll be talking about Google Ads.

And in September, I'm very pleased to announce that I will be speaking at the amazing Traffic and Conversion Summit, and that is from the 25th, or 27th to the 29th of September this year, and we've got some amazing speakers at this event, and this is going to be held in San Diego. I'm going to put the links afterwards under this video, so you can, um, go and check it out and hopefully make it to these wonderful events.

All right, let's go back here. So if it's, well, when you're setting up a campaign, it is a brand new campaign, don't put target conversion value or target CPA. Leave it blank. Let Google loose. Then we go on to locations. All countries, United Kingdom, or enter your location if you want to be running your ads around a certain radius. So let's say I'm in Leighton Buzzard and I want to target a 20 mile radius. I can just target that area and save it. Languages, for me English is fine, or you choose whichever language you want to target.

Then don't miss this one out, because quite often you will find that many people, when setting up a campaign, miss this one out. More settings. Ad schedule. So for an e-commerce business, yeah, 24/7 is fine, but if it's a lead generation and you just want people to see your ads during the daytime when you're open, then you can set up the schedule. Start and end dates.

Um, this is really important, and this is brand new. I'm going to zoom in a bit so you can see it a bit better. Okay, so you got two options. This is extremely important. Uh, this can pretty much make or break your campaign. Switch on or switch off. On means send traffic to the most relevant URLs on your website, which Google thinks it's relevant for that ad or for this campaign. It can also pick up some pages like privacy, terms and conditions, blog and all of those.

Now, if you are using this, then what you, you should do and must do is exclude those kind of non, uh, money making pages or non-converting pages. Right, put the URLs in here, should you decide that, okay, I'm just going to leave it to Google. It can read my website, it can see which is the relevant product to that relevant person. I prefer to send it to the URLs which we set up in our campaigns, so I will switch it off, and yeah, Google is going to say consider URL expansions, but it's entirely up to you. But for me, I'm going to switch it off for now. Actually, we all covered, and then we go next.

Now we are going to go through the asset ad group. So it's not called an ad group, it's called an asset, asset group, I should say, and if I do say ad group, it means asset group, because we're so used to saying ad groups in Google Ads. So one more thing to remember. Now, name your ad group name. So what we tend to do is to set the name of the audience. Yeah, if I'm targeting in-market audience, let's say in-market SEO and SEM, which we have, which I know they are, I would set that up.

Try to set up just one targeting per asset group and then have multiple asset groups. Then you can see which ones are working, which ones aren't working. Don't try and put 10 different audiences in the same one. Now, you saw that we've just jumped from campaign settings straight into asset group or ad group setup. There's no keywords, right? So this is critical. So you can test as much as you want. You can create custom audiences and so on, or custom segment. I'll show you in a minute.

Now, many marketers, agencies or freelancers are pretty scared as to, this will take away their livelihood. Why should a customer come to you to run the ads when it's so easy? Like I've just shown you, in five minutes, set up a campaign, and now you're on creating the ad. This is where the men are going to be separated from the boys, because this is where you are going to make or break your campaign: the creative side. You need images, you need, um, the text obviously, and the videos, and with video marketing you can take that campaign to that next level.

So what you want to do is to, as it says over here, um, images, add up to 20 images, add up to five logos and add up to five, uh, videos. I'll click image, plus image, and then I'm going to go to upload. You can also scan your website, or if you've got an asset library, you can choose from there. I'm gonna go upload, and I had created some. Now you can see over here, this is an, this is a square shaped image. This is a horizontal one. Square. Uh, where is my vertical? Oh, there you go, vertical one as well.

So I've created a handful of these just to show you guys. Select all of them, open. So you got 15. I've only selected a handful, but maximise. Why not upload 15? Put some effort in it to create these kind of images. It's super simple to use something like Canva, and this is what we use. As you can see, we use this on a very regular basis. We've got literally hundreds of these custom images over here, and you can create that and export them as either square.

Let's say if you, if I click on here and I want to resize this into a horizontal one, I can change that and resize. Now it has become. All I need to do is to rejig. See how quick this is. If I want to resize my name, my face or the headshot, there you go. If I want to do something like that, you can do whatever you want, but you get the gist. So that's done. Horizontal took me literally less than a minute, and if I want to make that into a vertical one, and I would do the same thing. It literally takes seconds. Done.

Right, so Canva is absolutely brilliant. We have the paid version, but the paid version is like 10 to 12 dollars per month. It's worth paying for it, or you can use the free version. Uh, it's entirely your choice. Okay, so once I've uploaded these, uh, sometimes you do get this message that some of your images aren't selected because we couldn't determine the best aspect ratio. So then just choose, uh, go into it and uncheck them. I think this one, it can't see there's a vertical one. So just reset, resave it, resize it, upload it.

So I've just uploaded a handful over here. Then you do the same with your logo and then with your, uh, video. So if I were to, let me see if I can upload my live stream for today. Does it recognise it? There you go. So I've gone. So you can put in your channel URL. I've got loads of these videos in here. Four, five. See how long it took me? Literally seconds, right?

The beauty with this is, you start to see the preview over here. You've got YouTube, yeah, Gmail, search, display and Discover, how your ad is going to look over here. As many images and videos as you possibly can, because that's how Google will be able to mix and match the various combinations. You can see at the top over here, the image, because I've only uploaded 5 out of 20, is giving me a half icon, that we need, you can add some more, whereas the video has got that full blue icon with the tick mark in it. That means I've completed this.

Now I need to move on to the headlines and the descriptions. Right, so I have got these pre-written to save some time. I forgot the URL first of all, so set up the final URL, because that's where I want the traffic to go to. Headlines, and is this the usual 30 characters long headline. It says five headlines. So I'm running this, let's say I'm running this for myself, um, to advertise my Google Ads Like A Boss coaching program. So this is how I will write my ads, with different headlines.

Okay, then there are five long headlines, which is 90 characters long. I don't know why they don't just say descriptions, but because of the different sizes, sometimes it will just take a headline for a smaller sized image, sometimes it's going to take a longer headline for a bigger size ad. So long headlines are up to 90 characters. Well, pretty much they are similar or same like description, but obviously you want to keep it different. Uh, copy and paste these. So if you have any questions, please start putting them in, because I will tend to them once I finish setting up this campaign.

So now we can see on the right hand side some of the images, or ads have got the image, some have got just the text, some will even have the video in it, like this one, and this is how good this format is. Now we got one description of 60 characters long, and then we've got five descriptions of 90 characters. Just the last few left. I want to set this up properly so you can see the ad strength as well.

Now, as you start entering the text, you will see along the top of the page the ad strength has gone to average. You want to have at least good or excellent. Now, because I haven't uploaded more images, I won't get any better than this, but over here I've got headlines is check mark, tick mark, as well as the description.

I can see my, you, YouTube ads over here like this, with the video. Gmail, the closed one will look like that. When they click on it and they open up, is going to look like that. Search campaigns is going to look like this, display campaign is going to look like this, and the Discover is going to be like that as well. I've set everything up.

The last couple of items is the call to action. If this was, uh, e-commerce, we want that to be shop now. If it's a lead gen, you can use learn more, apply now, or if it's for an insurance company, get quote, sign up for a PDF or a download or whatever your call to action is. For now I'm just going to use learn more. I'm going to put in SF Digital Studios as our India.

Then don't forget this little more options over here as well, because over here you've got the opportunity to put in some more keyword to make your ad more relevant. So if I go back to my search campaign, it's going to go here: digital marketing. You don't need to have that URL set up in your final. As this says, it's a display path. It's only for display purposes and not for actual URL, about the final URL, because the final URL is right at the top over here.

Okay, now the next important bit, because there's only two things which you need to do: write the ads and set up the custom audience or the audience signal. And, and now we have got create an audience. Enter the name. I'll do that in a minute. You