How to Optimize Performance Max Campaigns for MORE Sales [Google Ads 2023]

Can you make your campaigns work harder?

Google Performance Max is a powerful advertising tool that can help you maximise your results and reach the audiences who are most likely to convert. To get the most out of your campaigns, it's important to review performance regularly and optimise accordingly.

With this article, we'll explain what goes into taking a deep dive into Performance Max campaigns, discussing the metrics that show success, testing strategies to drive improvements, and more. Allowing you to become an expert with Performance Max.

In a previous video, I have taken you through how to set up your Google Ads campaigns. It's now time to start showing you how you can optimise your campaigns.

And today, let’s go through Optimising your Performance Max campaigns. In the video below, I am going to show the core optimisation actions of:

• Reviewing your ad assets & optimising your product feed

For best results, I recommend that you use my Google Ads eCommerce optimisation checklist, and you can get free access just by following the link in the video description.

Below, you will find these steps in writing and a few additional questions answered.

Review & optimise ad assets

Optimising your Google Performance Max campaigns for the best performance starts with reviewing and evaluating your ad assets. Headlines, descriptions, images, and videos are the elements that can have an impact on campaign performance, so it is important to prioritise them.

Best practice suggests asset group collections as the initial step in optimisation, then viewing details and scores of each ad asset. Once you glean insights from the overall score, click the view details button. You will see that each asset has a performance score assigned by Google, which can be low, good or best.

Focus on each asset with a low performance score. If it's a headline or description, change them to a new variation - or you can use the suggestions from Google as well. If it's an image or video, try to judge why it might perform poorly and replace it with a different one that you think is better in that regard.

Review & optimise product feed

Optimising the product feed starts with ensuring all relevant data is included and taking steps to ensure that incorrect or out-of-date information is eliminated. This can include removing products from the feed if they are no longer available, ensuring product images are up to date, and double-checking that pricing information is accurate.

When it comes to digging into the performance metrics, you will want to get into each listing group and review them individually. The most important metrics to focus on are cost per conversion and your ROAS numbers. You want to make sure that you are spending the most amount of money on the products that bring in the most profit.

When reviewing the performance of your campaigns, change the timeframe from the default range of three days to sixty or ninety days. This will give a more comprehensive overview of the campaign, giving you better insight into the true performance of the assets.

Longer viewing periods also allow seasonality, short-term fluctuations due to one-time events (such as a competitor blowout sale or an extreme weather event), or circumstances with delayed leads and conversions to be factored into understanding an ad’s success. Coupled with ongoing A/B testing, constant review over several time lengths can help campaigns to thrive long-term.

How long does it take for Performance Max to work?

It can take some time for your Google performance max campaigns to really take off, depending on the sector you're working in. Generally, around six to eight weeks is the norm, but it sometimes can take 12-16 weeks for it to really begin producing results.

It’s a good idea to be patient and assess results at various stages throughout the process; don’t wait till the 16 weeks are up before measuring your data, as you might miss out on important adjustments that could otherwise improve outcomes and get you better results.

Making sure to review and tweak regularly is key, as even tiny changes can make a considerable impact over time. Monitor successes as well as failures throughout the campaign period and act accordingly in order to experience maximum payoff from your efforts.