Unified marketing efforts. Tangible outcomes. This is the future of advertising.
In our daily lives, numerous demands compete for our attention, making it challenging to stay focused. A cacophony of alerts, responsibilities, and even leisure activities like the newest Wordle puzzle, can feel overwhelming.
Similar pressures apply to contemporary marketers. The unpredictable consumer behaviours that span a myriad of channels and devices make it tough to establish meaningful connections. As a marketer, determining the optimal channels for engaging with your customers effectively can be a puzzle.
Performance Max campaigns, now globally accessible to advertisers, offer an integrated solution: a method to combine your advertisements across every Google channel within a single campaign. These new campaigns prioritize your marketing objectives. They are engineered to reach the appropriate audience, at the correct times, with suitable messages, via the right channels, such as Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.
With Performance Max, all your assets, including text, images, and videos, are gathered into a single "pool." These assets are melded using machine learning to generate tailored, persuasive ads that are disseminated to customers across Google's channels. The campaign utilizes automated bidding to strive for a unified goal, from lead generation to online sales, all within your budget, in real-time.
Performance Max further unlocks more of your top-tier audiences. By integrating your first-party data, it can assist in identifying more high-value customers, while revealing new segments you may not have previously considered.
Companies across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have already begun experimenting with these campaigns. Thus far, it has become apparent that advertisers using Performance Max campaigns see an average increase of 13% in total additional conversions at a similar cost per action. Here are some lessons they've learned along the journey.
Achieving distinction in a newly competitive market
South African financial services group, Nedbank, confronted a mixture of challenges and opportunities during the COVID-19 induced disruption. The nation's central bank dropped interest rates to mitigate economic fallout, while a surge in contactless payments and online shopping resulted in a competitive credit card market.
Nedbank turned to Performance Max to distinguish itself and boost conversions for its new gold credit card. The results were encouraging with a 64% increase in conversions and a 73% decrease in cost per conversion.
“Performance Max campaigns produced exceptional results in terms of click-through rates and cost per application, extending campaign reach and driving a high volume of clicks to the website”
Generating cost-effective leads with Renault
Renault's Turkey team, battling intense competition, aimed to generate the most potent leads across separate campaigns using different formats on various platforms. The challenge lay in managing this while synchronizing video, image, and search creatives across these campaigns.
Renault sought to reach a broad demographic of potential customers: those who interacted with Renault, were contemplating buying a new car, demonstrated interest in cars, or were in a sound socio-economic position. The team aimed to minimize the cost per conversion as much as possible, increase the lead volume and save time on the campaigns. So, they turned to Performance Max.
Through cost optimization and machine learning, the campaign ensured that underperforming creatives were replaced with new ones to improve outcomes.
“In a brief period, we achieved success with our agency OMD, reducing our cost per conversion by 86%. Solutions that prioritise automation and evaluate platforms under a single target will expedite brands in realising their marketing objectives in the medium to long term more efficiently and swiftly”
Discovering new channels by rethinking the upper funnel
Microspot, a Switzerland-based online shopping platform specializing in home entertainment and electronics, encountered a challenging market situation in 2021 with decreasing year-over-year search queries and increasing competition. The team signed up to use Performance Max with the aim of driving additional conversions and revenue on top of existing Google Ads campaigns.
“We thoroughly reviewed all our creative assets to ensure we’d achieve maximum coverage and the best possible performance”
The team included a variety of creatives, allowing Performance Max to determine which performs best for their set goals.
After six weeks of testing Performance Max, the team was able to increase revenue by 40% compared to Smart Shopping campaigns on the same product categories.
“Traditionally we’ve viewed channels outside Search and Shopping as an upper funnel — so it was a significant lesson to see that YouTube, for example, can be a relevant contributor when it comes to conversions. Performance Max became such a vital contributor to our marketing objectives that we now plan to implement it across all our accounts”
Driving user actions in automotive
MotorK, a leading automotive sales and marketing technology company in Europe, focuses on assisting car manufacturers and dealers to enhance their customers’ journeys. The company aimed to rapidly grow and acquire new customer leads for its partner brands. It eagerly adopted Performance Max campaigns, viewing them as a means to achieve its objectives by leveraging automation, thereby improving efficiency.
Finding new prospects was essential, but MotorK also wanted to simplify setup and ongoing management by using a single, unified campaign. The team started by averaging cost-per-acquisition (CPA) across existing Search and Performance Display campaigns to identify a CPA target. MotorK also provided each asset group with top-performing audiences to accelerate machine learning.
The campaign covered Google’s entire ad inventory, was easy to implement, and yielded strong results, including a 24% increase in qualified leads at a CPA comparable to Search and Display campaigns.
“We observed an overall enhancement in performance and lead volume month-over-month. It’s an effective way to achieve our desired objectives.”
The team is now escalating investment in Performance Max campaigns to cover more countries, including France and Spain.
Effective Strategies to Optimise Performance Max
As more marketers employ Performance Max, effective strategies continue to evolve. It is clear that establishing clear objectives — allowing the campaign to automatically prioritize the types of conversions that are most important to your business, regardless of channel — is crucial to success. Campaigns benefit from a suitable budget that ensures optimal results.
It’s also key for Performance Max’s automation to understand which conversions hold more value to your business. As the case studies above indicate, the more assets and options you supply Performance Max, the more combinations it can create to hit the ideal audience in the right places – and ultimately achieve your goals.
