Advertising has grown exponentially since the 2000s. We’ve witnessed how–from being the centerpiece of marketing–radio and television commercials were pushed aside as online advertising moved front and center in crafting marketing strategies.

But with so many brands competing for the attention of millions online, how does one stand out and connect with the right audience? It’s one thing to be noticed and another challenge to be seen by your target market. Without the right understanding and formula when it comes to your digital strategies, this can make online advertising expensive.

Can Google’s Performance Max help in this regard?

Advantages of Google Performance Max

Before we talk about the advantages, let’s briefly discuss what Performance Max is.

Performance Max is a type of campaign that automates the targeting and delivery of ads based on the details that you, as the advertiser, provide. Okay, basically like most other online advertising platforms, right?

Here’s the key feature: Performance Max can run across ALL of Google’s ads inventory, including Search, Google Display Network, YouTube, Gmail, and Discover.

With Performance Max, your business can have:

Better insight: You’ll readily see the assets and audiences that are working. This ensures you can immediately optimize and refresh creatives or produce ones that can perform just as well.
Automation: Performance Max automates the targeting and delivery of ads based on the information you provide. This allows for a faster learning phase and helps you reach more audiences faster.
Higher chances of conversion: With better insights and automation, it’s easier to reach audiences who are more likely to convert. The fact that Performance Max runs across all of Google’s Ads Inventory helps a lot.

What Can You Do with Google Performance Max?

With Performance Max, you can:

Set Your Budget: Not only can you set your budget, but you can also set your bidding strategy, which includes the max value, conversions, and cost-per-action.
Control the Specifics: Like many campaigns, you can also control location targeting through Performance Max. Besides selecting multiple locations, you can likewise control the language, ad schedules, and campaign run dates.
Set Up Ads: Of course, you can set up ads, which, in Performance Max, is called an “asset group,” because it is an asset to multiple platforms.
Automate Target Audience: Performance Max will “automatically” show the ads to “people who are more likely to convert to your goals.” However, you can speed up the process by providing more information or “signals.”
Set Up Ads Extension (kindly link to ads extension article): You can set up ad extensions based on your goals. Case in point: If you’re going for lead generation, Google might recommend setting up a lead form extension.

How to Maximize Your Google Performance Max Digital Strategy

After learning more about the advantages of Google’s Performance Max, including the things you can do, it’s time to discuss how you can maximize this campaign strategy.

Here are some tips worth considering:

Run the campaign for at least 6 weeks. This gives Performance Max enough time to gather sufficient data to compare performance.
Create as many assets as possible.
Be mindful of variety. For instance, prepare at least 5 images for your assets. Likewise, prepare 5 versions of text assets (headlines and descriptions).
Take advantage of the “signals” for audience automation. For all business types, Google recommends using relevant audience lists.
Make use of Google Ads Conversion Tracking instead of Google Analytics.
Refresh your creatives (ads) as it is your most powerful tool to drive performance. Google recommends focusing on unique content.
Utilize visual inventory to target new audiences. This is because people almost always look for images for inspiration on what to buy online.
For weekend events (sales), consider starting your campaign early – about 2 to 3 weeks in advance. You can refresh your ads from the generic creative art card to the sales-focused post. That way, you’ll have time-based ads without compromising the performance.

The success of these, of course, depends on various factors like your product, customer journey, etc. The good news is, you can ask experts for support in setting up the creatives, budget, and bidding, as well as reporting to ensure that you get your ROI.

Is Performance Max Right For You?

Short answer, yes.

But it also depends on your conversion goals you set with your conversion rate optimization agency. Used to your advantage, Google Performance Max can help you reach more audiences who are likely to buy your product. It gives you the convenience of launching your ads in one go, rather than going to each of the Ads Inventory and running multiple campaigns.

Once you know how to effectively control your creatives, budget, bidding, among other things, you might be able to spend less on advertising. But, of course, you must be careful not to forget your other digital marketing strategies.