Performance Max is a new campaign type from Google Ads that allows advertisers to run ads to all their inventory from a single campaign. But, is it a good campaign type to run for all marketing goals?
Advertisers can have many different goals for their marketing. For local businesses, most often the goal is generating leads. However, some have the goal of selling their products as well. Both goals are focused on generating revenue, but they are not both the same.
Lead generation and eCommerce are distinct from one another. One deals primarily with services, and the other deals primarily with products. More specifically though, lead generation has to do with getting someone interested in contacting your business to use it’s services, while eCommerce has to do with getting someone to use your shopping cart to buy your products.
Lead generation, therefore, requires that your business know who contacted you and how they found you, while eCommerce requires you know if someone bought something and how they came across your products. And that is really the most important distinction when considering the question of this article, “is Performance Max a good campaign for both of these goals?” Let’s consider a few things with those requirements in mind.
1. Attribution
Attribution is important in marketing. Attribution let’s advertisers know which campaigns, ad-groups, ads, and keywords triggered a conversion (a lead or a sale), and make it possible to optimize campaigns for more conversions. Performance Max doesn’t provide keyword metrics, or a search terms report (it’s similar to a display campaign in it’s targeting), so attribution can only be provided at the ad-group (listing groups) and campaign level. This is more of an issue for lead generation than it is for eCommerce. Let’s see why.
2. Relevance
Relevance is also important in marketing. I’d argue that it’s especially important in lead generation campaigns, because lead quality can be poor (which is bad), but sales are always good. Performance Max campaigns make gauging relevance very difficult, because, as mentioned above, they don’t provide search term information. So, it’s virtually hopeless, from the platform, to try and understand whether the leads that were generated from the campaign were likely to be good. You can look at other tools to try to get a pulse on relevance, such as your CRM or call tracking provider. But, if you aren’t paying for those marketing tools, then gauging quality will be nigh-on-impossible. If your goal is sales, then you can at least tell if your campaign is generating revenue, assuming you have eCommerce tracking.
3. Proof
You know what else is important in marketing? Proof! Marketers need to be able to prove that what they are doing is actually working. On the eCommerce side, it’s pretty simple to prove if a Performance Max campaign is working well because you can see how much it spent vs how much revenue it produced. If, for example, it produced 4 times more than it spent, then you can confidently say that the campaign was effective. However, on the lead generation side, it’s very hard to prove if the campaign is effective. You may have a very low CPL, and a very high ROAS, but because there is no “relevance” data, marketers will have a tough time proving that the leads weren’t junk, or some confused person who though they were contacting a different business – both are pretty common.
Conculsion
Performance Max campaigns can be great for many goals, but I would tread lightly when using it for lead generation. If coupled with a CRM that integrates with Google Ads, I’d be a little less reserved, but many local businesses aren’t using such CRM’s. I’ve seen great results on eCommerce campaigns, and think that it’s a great campaign type to test to drive sells.