Performance Max Playbook

We get it.

You've probably heard loads about performance max at this point.

Since their launch in early 2022, they've taken over the digital marketing landscape.

Performance max has lead the way for machine learning and inspired other platforms to launch algorithm controlled campaign types, such as meta's advantage +.

What actually is 'performance max' though?

It's essentially all of Google's networks rolled into one campaigns.

Google will serve your ads across shopping, search, YouTube and more to get your desired conversion.

Therefore, they’re almost infinitely scalable as there’s so many eyeballs to reach.

Pmax has changed the advertising landscape forever, and you need to be running it.

But while you might have heard of performance max, you probably don't know all the exciting details about it.

The details that could help you add an extra $100k/m to your brand in just the next few months.

In this post, we're going to give you our playbook for performance max campaigns.

Everything we've learnt after spending over $10m+ on them over the last 18 months.

Setting up Performance Max

Set Business Goals

1. Set clear objectives: drive traffic, boost brand awareness, or increase conversions.​

2. Typically, the focus is on driving purchases for eCommerce stores.

3. Select a campaign with the "purchases" goal.

Market Research

1. Use Google's Keyword Planner to gather relevant search terms.​

2. Use your own previous converting search terms from search / shopping campaigns.

3. Leverage Google trends to understand market direction.

4. Utilise Google analytics to see which audience segments convert best.​

Conversion Tracking​

1. Create a GTM account

2. ​Add GTM code to every page of your website​

3. Link GTM to Google ads​

4. Create a new tag for ‘Google ads conversion tracking’​

5. Link the tag you created to the Conversion ID and Conversion Label from Google Ads.​

6. Create a trigger as ‘page view’ for when user lands on your thank you page.

   
   

   That's the boring stuff out the way! Once you've set your goals, done your research and set up accurate conversion tracking, you're ready to launch your campaign.

   
   

Building Performance Max

1. General Settings​

2. Gather all your product images (both square & horizontal) and product videos​

3. Create a new campaign in Google ads

4. ​Set the objective as sales​

5. Select performance max​

6. Choose your merchant centre account

7. ​Choose **max conversion value** bidding if you have a range of different products / prices

8. ​Choose **max conversions** bidding if you just have one product / price point

9. ​DON’T tick optimise for new customer acquisition.​

10. Choose one specific country (don’t target multiple countries in one campaign if you want best results)​

11. Turn final URL expansion ON (unless your campaign is for a specific set of products rather than a broad category)​

12. Turn auto created text assets OFF​

13. Set your budget to 2-3x your average CPA (cost per acquiring a customer).

Asset Group Creation

• Create an asset group with:​

• A listing group of the specific products you are targeting with these assets

• ​A final URL directing to the product(s) the creatives are advertising​

• Up to 20 images​Up to 5 logo variants​

• Up to 15 short headlines (15-30 characters)​

• Up to 5 long headlines (50-90 characters)

• ​Up to 4 descriptions (50-90 characters)

Audience Signal Creation​

• 10-15x keywords​

• 3-5x competitor URL’s​

• 3-5x ‘your data’ audiences (remarketing)

• ​3-5x in market segments

  
  

  Great! Now you've built out the campaign itself, we need to know how to optimise it so we can continue to see results week after week, month after month. Remember, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. (If you're hitting your ROAS targets, change nothing!)

Optimising Performance Max

Campaign Structure Optimisation​

• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.​

• Begin by looking to just exclude products and maintain one campaign structure.​

• However, if the following conditions exist:
  
  Poor performance with a specific product group
  
  Differing goals for a specific product group (budget/ROAS/Sales)

• ​Then segmentation may make sense.

• 
  

Asset Group Optimisation​

• Review your headlines, descriptions, images & videos.​

• Remove/Replace any with a low performance score.​

• Record this replacement.

Review Audience Signals

• ​If impressions are low/ROAS is slowly stagnating, then try expanding your audience signal, with new audience segments etc.

• If costs are high, then try de-leveraging your audience signal by stripping back audience groups / search terms that aren't highly relevant. 

Review Listing Groups

• ​Review the performance of individual products.​

• Exclude any individual products that have very high impressions & spend over a sustained period of time with no conversions or a very low ROAS.​

• Excluding poor products to allow for more budget to be spent on higher performing products. (Allow for up to 100 clicks in a 30 day period first.)

Optimise Product Feeds

• Optimise product titles (to include brand name, keyword modifiers etc.)

• Optimise product descriptions Optimise product images (to stand out against bland competitors.)

  
  

That's everything! Actually, no there's more. If you want a practical tool to leverage in order to ensure you include all of the value in this blog post when launching your own performance max campaigns...

We're giving away our pMax launch checklist for absolutely free:

Interested? Get it for free HERE!