Paid advertising is the most convenient way to ensure your message reaches potential buyers. It is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes to reach their target audiences and maximize their return on investment. Google Ads, in particular, has become one of the most popular options for businesses looking to drive traffic to their website and increase sales.
It is important to highlight that Google Ads is a leading pay-per-click (PPC) platform for B2B and B2C digital marketing strategies. It gives users a range of powerful tools to evaluate and refine their campaigns, with numerous advantages, including:
With its vast array of features, it can be used in many different ways to create effective campaigns that deliver results.
Google Ads has now introduced a new type of paid search campaign, Performance Max, to help brands maximise their campaign performance.
Performance Max campaigns work across all of Google's inventory (search engine results pages [SERPs], Gmail, Youtube, etc.) with different materials like ad copy, graphics and videos, known as asset groups. These campaigns allow brands to set their desired outcomes, such as clicks, conversions or sales. Google Ads will then use machine learning to identify the most effective combination of ad extensions and formats to use, as well as the best bids for each keyword.
This automated level helps minimize wasted costs and accomplish the highest ROI possible, helping you make your website visible on Google, and increase website traffic and conversions.
It is important to note that while Performance Max campaigns have potential advantages over traditional search advertising, they shouldn’t be used without proper planning and evaluation. It is still vital to create well-crafted ads with compelling copy and attractive visuals, as well as monitor performance closely by tracking key metrics such as cost per click (CPC) and conversion rate.
At Snell Media, we can help you reach the customers that matter most to your business with our comprehensive Performance Max campaigns. We will help you set up and optimize a strategy that is tailored to meet your specific goals.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about setting up and running performance max campaigns with Google Ads so that you get the most out of your paid advertising efforts. We will discuss how to set up an account, choose the right keywords, track key metrics such as impressions and conversions rate and much more useful information.
Who we are: With over 25 years of experience, SnellMedia has created thousands of successful B2B Google Ads campaigns for clients primarily in SaaS, manufacturing automation and health tech. Book a 30-minute consultation with a senior, Google-certified member of our team today. During the call, we’ll answer any Google Ads-related questions you have and audit your account to provide your marketing team with valuable feedback they can implement to double or maybe even triple your lead generation.
Performance Max is an automated campaign type that is similar to (but still slightly distinct from) a Smart campaign. These campaigns use Google’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create highly personalized ads that target users with greater accuracy.
They work with multiple creative assets such as text ads, shopping ads and more. Based on performance data such as impressions, clicks and cost per click (CPC), Google Ads will continuously adjust your bids and optimize the placement of your ads to maximize reach. The platform also uses Smart Bidding strategies to improve campaign performance further.
The process starts by creating multiple ad variations with different targeting attributes, like age range, gender and location. These variations are then tested and measured over time to determine which ones produce the highest return on ad spend (ROAS). This data is used to continuously refine the campaign, ensuring it always delivers the best performance.
The campaign also gives you access to a wide range of insights such as view-through rates and cost-per-action data, with which you can refine your campaigns for the best performance.
With this powerful tool you can:
All while ensuring scalability and efficiency across all platforms. – allowing you to maximize your ROI.
With all these benefits in mind, it’s no surprise why many B2B companies are considering using Google Performance Max in 2023.
A feature of Performance Max is automated keyword research. Unlike other digital advertising campaigns that require expertise with keyword research for PPC, Google's Performance Max can self-generate keywords with Google technology based on the customer type of your choice. Google collects the search term from general search results pages and matches your ad groups with high intention buyers.
Automatic keyword generation is a time-saving innovation for businesses. Saving the valuable hours spent researching and brainstorming which keywords would be most advantageous for your product or service means companies have more time to make strategic, game-changing plans for their brands. This is also a good function to avoid manual mistakes or gaps.
Google's real-time understanding of finding high-intent audiences allows it to create the best combination of ads and then, with Performance Max, present these over Google’s entire inventory. AI not only helps identify the best ad combination but also automatically tests and optimises your campaigns for you. You don't need to worry about A/B testing or manually changing your ads.
Additionally, the AI of Performance Max can identify the buyer activity of your target audience in different channels and map out their buying journey. With this feature, Performance Max can show your ads in the channel where they are most effective at a frequency that converts your audience.
Performance Max campaigns are also a good way to test and collect business data for future marketing objectives. This advertising strategy can help you decide the next move for your PPC B2B lead generation strategy, whether it be to run local campaigns or responsive display ads, or any other campaign type available on Google.
Initially, after you set up your Google Ads account, you need to choose the type of campaigns from search campaigns to display campaigns, shopping campaigns, etc. After, you have to set up every single campaign one by one if you want to run ads in different formats.
With a Performance Max campaign, you only need to set up one campaign, asset group, one target cost and your target customers. Performance Max campaigns calculate which combination can perform best and show your ads with it. You don't need to worry about which ad copy is the most suitable for your product or service.
This advantage is also implied in the choice of Google channels. Performance Max detects your audience signals and places your ads in the channels that can maximise conversions. It is a smart way to reach your conversion goals in one ad spend, and you can also avoid the task of scheduling ads in campaign planning.
Lastly, Performance Max also helps increase brand awareness by delivering ads on multiple platforms, including Gmail and YouTube. Google Ads and Pmax are the only paid media channels that have been able to support this function. The more people see your product or service, the more likely they are to remember and use it in the future.
To run a Performance Max campaign, businesses need to provide Google with different types of assets to create a competitive ad. These assets include headlines, descriptions, images and videos. Using multimedia materials in one single campaign offers advantages where other campaigns may fall short.
Using videos and images can help your ad stand out from the rest on the SERPs or social media platforms. Studies show that people are more likely to remember your product when they see both pictures and videos rather than just one type of asset.
If you find yourself struggling with creating videos for your ads, Google is here to help. For the Performance Max campaign, Google collects all the visual content available for your brand and makes auto-generated videos for you. As the biggest search engine in the world, Google can even utilise your brand's competitors’ content to create assets with its machine learning technology.
Performance Max helps new customer acquisition and lead generation with its ability to find audiences in similar customer segments. With the customer data offered by businesses, AI identifies and locates the potential customers that have a high intent to convert.
Google's real-time understanding of consumer intents and preferences, paired with your input using audience signals, can help Performance Max to unlock new customer segments you may not have expected. This information can be used to improve your customer targeting and help you identify new growth opportunities.
By utilising customer segmentation, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are better focused and more effective, leading to improved return on investment (ROI).
This automated campaign type allows you to focus on strategic performance drivers like creative optimisation, campaign planning and collecting insights.
To set up a Performance Max campaign, you need to create an ad asset that includes text, graphics and video. Google will then use AI and machine learning to identify the best keywords and ad copy for your audience.
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Performance Max serves both search and display networks. Google Search, Image Search and Shopping Ads belong to search networks. Gmail, YouTube and websites in the Display Network are all examples of display networks.
By serving on both search and display networks, advertisers have the opportunity to reach potential customers on a variety of platforms. A PPC creative agency can also maximise the creativities of their clients to reach the full potential of a paid campaign with Pmax.
Additionally, Performance Max offers the ability to customise campaigns for different types of devices, making it easy to reach potential customers no matter where they are. As a result, it is the ideal solution for businesses that want to reach a wide audience with their advertising campaigns.
There are a few key metrics you can use to measure success:
By monitoring these metrics, you can get an idea of how effective your campaign is and make any necessary adjustments. This data is crucial when it comes to PPC analysis. We strongly suggest you set up your Google Analytics account and track your campaign performance from the very first day to get a full picture of your campaign.
What do you expect to see when you start a Performance Max campaign and what kind of B2B marketing campaign examples can you take from it?
One example is Allianz Spain, an insurance industry leader that tries to get the most out of its marketing budget and has successfully increased efficiency and profits through Performance Max campaigns by 15 percent.
Another example in manufacturing is LJ Welding. Google Ads is always an effective marketing strategy for LJ Welding in creating quality B2B leads, with rewarding results from search campaigns. However, by adding a Performance Max campaign to these, LJ Welding has been able to lower its CPR by 67% and generates 3.7 times more clicks than the traditional search campaign.
Performance Max also helps with categorising and identifying the high potential materials from LJ Welding’s multiple asset groups. This information is valuable for further strategic planning and future campaign design.
Adnami is another PPC for SaaS success story with Performance Max. As a company that provides a SaaS service of rich media ads for B2B, Adnami relies on outbound marketing for lead generation. To shift to a demand generation approach, Adnami tried a PPC service with both inbound search campaigns and Performance Max campaigns.
Both campaigns brought new leads with high conversion value, but Performance Max recorded superior results with 72% lower cost-per-contact and three times more new contacts generated.
Are you curious about how Performance Max could change your business and boost your revenue? Book a 30-minute call with our senior expert and find out more.
Are you excited about how PPC and Google Ads can change your business? Are you intrigued by Performance Max campaigns but not sure they’re suitable for you? As an experienced PPC agency, we have some insight to share with you and help you make the best choice for your campaign.
If you are a company that is looking for a fast and effective way to generate new leads, PPC is the solution for you. But which PPC campaign should you start with? From our experience, every product and service has a different approach to setting a PPC ad, including choosing from different campaign types (search, display, YouTube, etc.), setting a budget and preparing ad assets.
From our point of view as a PPC management company, for brands that want to start their first campaign with Google Ads, we recommend that you spend 80% of your budget on setting up a Performance Max campaign and 20% on a campaign type of your choice.
The idea behind this strategy is to use the machine learning, multimedia approach and cross-inventory features of Performance Max to find out the highest converting campaign for your product/service. You can test your market quickly and thoroughly with Performance Max by going through data like best ad combination, best engaging channel and ad scheduling.
Once you’ve collected enough data on your customers’ preferences and found out which combination can achieve higher conversions, you can adjust your campaign budget immediately (a great feature Google Ads supports) to set up the campaign that performs best for your brand.
For brands that have already worked with Google Ads for a certain period of time and are satisfied with the positive improvement it brings to your marketing campaign, we suggest you spend 20% of your budget on setting up a Performance Max campaign.
The purpose of this strategy is to use the AI of Performance Max and find new customer segments and opportunities for your business. The machine learning function of Performance Max has the ability to examine customer behaviour across multiple channels and identify which ad type has the best effect in each place. With this technology, companies can get a thorough overview of their buyer pattern and spot new opportunities to generate leads.
Another reason why Performance Max is good for companies with Google Ads experience, especially for B2B brands, is because it exposes your brand multiple times in different channels to build deeper connections with audiences.
B2B sales cycles are long. Decision-makers require a deeper understanding of what you sell and a greater level of trust in your brand than B2C. Performance Max helps you build a relationship with B2B clients effectively and efficiently by exposing your brand multiple times across various channels.
Although Performance Max is a powerful tool for increasing online sales and generating leads, there are still some points you need to keep in mind to start an optimal campaign.
Although Performance Max has the power to auto-generate visual content, as an experienced PPC management agency, we recommend brands make some effort in creating custom high-quality assets for their campaign.
The reason for this is that custom assets usually result in a higher CTR and conversion rate, as well as lower cost-per-click.
Moreover, by creating custom assets, you will have more control over the message your brand is trying to deliver. This is essential for building a strong relationship with potential customers.
Another suggestion to help start a successful campaign is to create a high-quality, goal-orientated PPC landing page.
A PPC landing page is a standalone web page created specifically for your ad campaign. It should have a clear and concise message that matches the ad copy, as well as a strong call-to-action that encourages users to take the desired action.
The quality of your PPC landing page will affect the performance of your campaigns. A well-designed and effective landing page can improve your conversion rate and make sure all the traffic brought by the Performance Max campaign can convert.
Before starting your high-converting PPC ads, check out some PPC landing page examples and tips to create one that works for your business.
You can change any setting in Google Ads instantly. Each time an optimisation change is made, we suggest you wait for 1-2 weeks to have enough data to determine how that change impacted the campaign.
Google's search ads are shown above the organic results. They are the first thing people encounter when conducting searches. For a good Google search ad, you should expect a CTR of 2% and over.
Who we are: With over 25 years of experience, SnellMedia has created thousands of successful B2B Google Ads campaigns for clients primarily in SaaS, Manufacturing Automation and Healthtech. Book a 30-minute consultation with a senior, Google-certified member of our team today. During the call, we’ll answer any Google Ads-related questions you have and audit your account to provide your marketing team with valuable feedback they can implement to double or maybe even triple your lead generation.
