Max performance it’s one of the biggest shifts towards automation we’ve seen from Google. How do we make it work this holiday shopping season?
Ideally, you would have prepared everything in advance.
Black Friday is approximately 30 days away! If you’re just starting now, you’re already behind.
Here are some ways to move forward.
1. Audience signals
This is the most underrated part of Performance Max, but probably the most important.
Google gives you the ability to enter signals about who the system should target. Upload your customer and email lists, compile top keywords, use interests, and more.
We’ve had success with the following audience signals:
Customer agreementHigh Value Customers 2021 Holiday Shoppers Email SubscribersCustom IntentCompeting Names and URLs High Intent (Bottom Funnel) Keywords.
advice: Use Klaviyo and Google Ads integration.
2. Asset groups
With PMax, it is important not to shock the system by making drastic changes. It’s better to make smaller, more incremental changes.
You can use these approaches:
Create a new asset group for promotional items. Bundle new promotional creatives and extensions.
If you’re creating a new asset group, do so within the same campaign so that product-level historical performance is used.
Be patient and give it some time to collect data and increase. It may take time!
Keep in mind: Creating top performing campaigns for BFCM is not recommended because the learning period takes too long to ramp up.
It’s best to add new resource groups to existing top-performing campaigns or layer promotional resources with existing resource groups.
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3. Data feed
Data feeding is important all year round, but especially now!
Google Shopping and Performance Max do not allow you to target based on keywords.
The system uses your product information to understand which search queries should show your ads.
4. Ad extensions
Ad extensions (assets) are an easy way to launch promotions without making system-breaking changes to your campaigns.
You can and should add promotional extensions in two places:
Google Merchant Center for ShoppingGoogle Ads for Search, YouTube, etc.
In Google Merchant Center (GMC), you’ll want to make sure you have promotions enabled under Growth > Manage Programs.
Once you have the option to create promotions, go to Marketing > Promotions and click the big blue button to submit your promotion information.
note: GMC promotions are very demanding and subject to manual approval, so make sure you set this up correctly. It is especially important to select the product correctly. (Step 2 below.)
Give yourself time and send all promotions in advance, just in case.
Step 1: Promotion type
Step 2: Setting up the promotion
In Google Ads, promotion extensions (assets) can be added at the account or campaign level. Just click on the Assets tab and add new ones.
5. Offers and budget
Give the system room to act But don’t make super drastic changes.
We recommend increasing budgets and reducing tROAS targets incrementally. Again, do not crash the system.
Every time you increase your budget, you force the system to find new audiences. It may take time for the algorithm to find a new audience that works well.
Also, keep in mind that as you increase your budget, you’ll likely see your advertising costs increase as well.
6. Smart shopping style
You can run Performance Max without any assets, just using your product data feed. This forces the system to work similar to Smart Shopping with more locations available.
This is a great way to capture high-intent traffic at scale.
7. Social style of payment
Additionally, you can run Performance Max without a data feed which will exclude Shopping placements and only serve display ads.
If you see success with Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, this can work really well for you.
And make sure you have the basics of PMax configuration, reporting and optimization covered by reading the following articles:
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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About the author
Menachem Ani, founder of JXT Groupis a digital advertising expert with over a decade of success developing high-impact marketing strategies for online retailers and lead generation clients.
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