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There is no doubt that Google Ads is a powerful tool for ecommerce businesses globally, and with Google’s Performance Max, digital advertisements can be amplified and increase reach, ROI and drive more sales, which is also great news for a digital marketing agency. PMax campaigns work very differently than your traditional Google Ads, with the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence, more specifically, Machine Learning (ML). The learning curve may seem challenging but it actually intends to make it easier for you to control your campaigns and create goal-oriented strategies. It is being increasingly adopted by ecommerce businesses due its conversion-oriented approach. And as an ecommerce business, bringing conversion using Ads is a major target.

So, what is Performance Max? Google’s Performance Max acts as a unified campaign that takes care of ad bidding, where you should serve ads, control all Google channels – Search, Display, Maps, Discover, Gmail, and YouTube. The AI-driven campaign optimises ad performance in real time. But in order to take full advantage of this and use it as an ecommerce specific digital marketing solution, and leverage Google’s algorithms, ecommerce businesses need proper campaign structures and strategies.

Exclusive features of Performance Max

Here are 3 major features that make Performance Max stand out from Google Ad Campaigns.

• Ad optimization

All you need to do here is provide the major strengths of your product or brand, essentially what you want to promote, and fit it into each advertising channel. It uses what you set as your goal and assets to create automated campaigns and generate ad formats in accordance with what you provide, for each specific platform. It also shows where your audience is going to engage with you most, in real time and create campaign strategies accordingly.

• Smart Bidding

Manual bidding cannot be done while using PMax. But that’s probably for the better. Performance in all ad campaigns and audience signals are evaluated (using ML) and ad campaigns are optimised to maximise conversions and conversion value. Using the goals you have set, and your performance target, it allows you to target the correct audience by making use of attributes such as location, device, search history, etc.

• Generative AI

The powerful impact of artificial intelligence has affected digital marketing to a great extent, which it is a proper example of. It is the power of AI that gives Performance Max the beneficial edge that allows it to reach target audiences in a way that maximises conversion. Generative AI allows it to retrieve data in multiple forms and analyse it to give actionable results.

A Performance Max Campaign Strategy for eCommerce businesses

Customer acquisition is one of the most important goals of an ecommerce business. The customer journey has become tricky to decode due the presence of so many social media platforms. This is where Performance Max comes in. By using machine learning, it appears at the most relevant and crucial moment of a customer’s journey, and identifies the optimal ad for each consumer and when to deliver it. As a Google certified digital marketing agency, let’s lay out the major considerations while creating a PMax strategy –

• Business goals

The focus here is all about audiences. This is the foremost point to keep in mind in your campaign. As opposed to what Google advertisers have been doing, by focusing on keywords and search intent, it uses its entire focus on the audience. So instead of approaching in a way of what your audience’s search query might be, you need to ask questions like who they are, their interests, the problems they are trying to solve, the stage of life they are in, and so on. The more specificity of information you can gather about your audience, the better. Now, analysing whether all your products appeal to this particular list of targets, or do you need to create different groups of targets for different products. A lot of factors that centrally surround your audience will help you create a strategy that will place your advertisements where they will receive maximum recognition, and hence, conversion. And having enough knowledge about your customers (past or potential) will allow you to create the appropriate strategy.

• Customer acquisition

Now that you have acquired all that you can about your existing customers and potential ones, you can start figuring out which of your products or services may appeal to them. What you can do with your campaign is set the goal either for new customers only, or existing customers only or both. With PMax, you don’t have to worry about targeting a wide audience as it harnesses the power of AI/ML to run several ad campaigns to pursue sales from everyone. What you need to do here is educate it about your audience. For example, you may want Campaign A to target new potential customers, Campaign B to target your existing customers, Campaign C to target both the groups, you just need to make sure you have fed the correct information in the settings page of the customer acquisition section. A small point to note is that using an entire campaign to target just new customers may not lead to as many conversions as you expect. People who have already reached the bottom of the funnel are most likely to make a purchase. However, it is not a major concern as you will still get visible results.

• Bidding and budget strategy

Your campaign structure will be heavily influenced by cost per sale and desired return on ad spend for each category of products. Someone who is just starting out should focus on short-term goals that will allow their campaign to gather important data regarding sales, audience and traffic, even though cost and returns might be more relaxed. Once enough data has been collected on who, when, where and how to sell your products or strategies, you can start targeting more specific audiences and proceed to fulfil long-term goals. Since it does not allow manual bidding, you again have to adjust your settings for each campaign. Now as for how much you spend based on what your budget is, you have to set your bidding according to what return you expect – whether it’s maximum conversions or conversion value or maximum clicks.

Most strategies tend to work well when you have a lot of information that is accurate and actionable. Even though this can get you quick results, the key lies in how you set your business goals and expectations based on market research and statistical analysis. And as you move forward in your PMax journey, the only way to achieve success in this game plan is to keep yourself updated and well-informed with the above-mentioned key points.