Scaling Performance Max Campaigns for eCommerce Part 1

Tue, Sep 27, 2022

If you’re running Performance Max campaigns for eCommerce but your campaigns are not scaling, John is here to help! In this series, he shares why Performance Max works wonders for eCom, and how he uses this knowledge to scale campaigns.

In the first part of the guide to scaling Performance Max campaigns for eCommerce, you’ll learn:

– Why you should start by identifying what isn’t working in your PMax campaign

– How to discover areas of opportunity to scale your PMax campaigns

– The specific campaigns that boost PMax for eCommerce

– How YouTube campaigns can help scale PMax campaigns for eCom

– Why Discovery campaigns can be good for awareness but bad for eCommerce

PS: This guide series is from an internal Solutions 8 training. We’re sharing everything with you, our dear subscribers, to show our gratitude for the overwhelming support you’ve given us. We value you and your growth with Google Ads. 🖤💚🤍

0:00 Intro | Scaling Performance Max Campaigns for eCommerce

1:04 First, identify what’s not working in your PMax campaign

7:34 Work with the best Google Ads agency in the world

9:15 If you already know that DSA is working, what else can you do to scale?

13:43 Why John doesn’t like running Display campaigns

15:32 Facebook is inefficient but it’s a powerful machine for brand awareness

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Transcript
john:

When we're talking about different ways to scale a commerce.

john:

The first thing we have to identify is since we will be running performance,

john:

max free eCommerce, because it's the most powerful campaign type.

john:

What we have to identify is what are the areas that are not working?

john:

What are areas that may be suffering?

john:

eCommerce is direct response by nature.

john:

That's what eCommerce is.

john:

That's why we measure it.

john:

Usually with new customers in row as, and at least CAC

john:

it's, very new customer focus.

john:

So if we're already launching performance max, so we already know

john:

that the areas that performance max are going, where else should we go?

john:

That's towards the goal.

john:

So what's interesting.

john:

There is performance max found the channel that works the best.

john:

That's what its job is.

john:

And then it remarks those people internally to the lowest hanging fruits.

john:

That's why performance max works so well for e-commerce, but

john:

we have to identify is that.

john:

channel actually working.

john:

And then what else can we add to it?

john:

Facebook is still very, very, very powerful.

john:

I'm not gonna be, The Google ads agency owner here is saying

john:

that Facebook works well.

john:

It does.

john:

This is something actually that we don't do much.

john:

We usually leave a lot of this up to performance max, but there is ways

john:

that you can start to identify a very specific portions of your performance.

john:

Max are failing.

john:

So performance.

john:

Max gives you a few.

john:

Kind of key insights into what it's liking and what it's not.

john:

So when we're talking about different ways to scale it commerce, the first

john:

thing we have to identify is since we will be running performance,

john:

max free eCommerce, because it's the most powerful campaign type.

john:

What we have to identify is what are the areas that are not working?

john:

What are areas that may be suffering.

john:

And let me pull up a account and I will share screen here.

john:

So that we can see what would be working and what would not be working.

john:

Now, if we have nor beam we can use nor beam also to help us identify this,

john:

but I'm gonna use this training first into saying where, how we identify.

john:

What's not working.

john:

Yeah.

john:

All right.

john:

So.

john:

This is one of the areas that we're going to look for instead of a

john:

performance max campaign and say, okay, well, how can we supplement?

john:

So when we're looking at, I'll just use this one, for example this campaign

john:

here we have, our RO as goal is 1.07.

john:

So we're already doubling the RO as goal, which is good.

john:

And this is just in the last seven days, but now we need

john:

to identify what's working.

john:

What's not.

john:

So the first area, and this is something we've covered already, but

john:

so it'll be a little bit of refresher.

john:

is YouTube working inside of.

john:

So the first thing that we're gonna do is go into our columns and add our views.

john:

Also add our whoops view rate, and then we're also going to

john:

add our average cost per view.

john:

Now, what this is gonna tell us is an insight into how the YouTube campaign.

john:

I know I have.

john:

Drug use policy.

john:

There we go.

john:

This is what is gonna help us identify as YouTube actually engaging and now know

john:

that YouTube inside of performance, max is more heavily skewed towards remarketing.

john:

So we're talking about creative ways, to scale eCommerce.

john:

The YouTube portion inside of performance.

john:

Max is only used when it does.

john:

Good new customer engagement that starts to convert.

john:

If it's more heavy shopping or if it's more heavy search, which we're

john:

gonna look at identifying that way.

john:

Now you're gonna see the YouTube turns more into remarket.

john:

So we can't simply just go into a campaign with the performance max running

john:

and just start adding campaign types.

john:

What that will do is actually start to compete and start to pull out

john:

of a performance max campaign.

john:

And if it's a very similar audience, what we find is that well, performance

john:

max used to sell $10,000 in, products a week, and then we start YouTube and

john:now YouTube sells:john:

Max sells.

john:

What we didn't scale, we just did is just divide, which isn't a really good way

john:

to creates not a creative way to scale.

john:

So we have to identify the creative ways to scale by saying, where

john:

can we expand into, so inside of this, this campaign here, what

john:

we're gonna look at is the views.

john:

So the views are gonna be specific to YouTube.

john:

And we're gonna see here that we have no views.

john:

We have no view rate.

john:

We have no average cost per view.

john:

So right now YouTube is not running at all.

john:

Inside of this performance max campaign.

john:

That's good to know.

john:

It did at one time it was running and now it's not running at all.

john:

So we're getting a two X return though.

john:

Okay.

john:

So what about shopping?

john:

Well, if we know that this campaign here has sold 139 conversions,

john:

where are they coming from?

john:

So the unknown right now is gonna be the display G S P and discover,

john:

which we know for a fact is not.

john:

eCommerce.

john:

It's not heavy direct response, not inside performance max.

john:

Anyway, so we have to look at well, is it search or is it shopping now?

john:

If we remember the number 139, we can go into our listing groups, actually, before

john:

we do that, just know that this 1 39, I'm using conversions by conversion click.

john:

I'm not using conversions by conversion time.

john:

It's very important because when you go into your listing groups, they default

john:

to only conversions by conversion, click, not conversion by conversion time.

john:

So I wanna measure the same metric throughout your investigation so

john:

that you're not saying like, wait a minute, this is actually showing more.

john:

Why is that?

john:

Not match up?

john:

So use a conversion.

john:

That is not gonna be by conversion time.

john:

Use it by the click and I'll share, share with you.

john:

Why?

john:

So?

john:

139 conversions.

john:

And we hop into our products here as an example, and we see, well,

john:

what's, selling well in that last seven days, I see three and one, four.

john:

So four has sold inside of my listing group out of a hundred

john:

thirty nine, a hundred thirty five did not come from my shopping.

john:

Now, I know this already to be the case in this one.

john:

That's why I'm using this as an example is because we have a heavy amount of

john:

search and not heavy amount of shopping.

john:

We actually already tested shopping in this account before and failed miserably

john:

because we know that the competitor in this, brand's competitor spends 12 times

john:

more than what we do just on shopping.

john:

And they also pay more per click than what the product is actually worse.

john:

So.

john:

So we're getting priced outta shopping performance.

john:

Max identified that still brought us a two X return.

john:

It just did not come from the shopping portion.

john:

So now this is one thing that we would say is a creative way to increase as well.

john:

We haven't really tried to strategically outpace our competitor inside of shopping.

john:

That's an area for expansion.

john:

That would be one way to creatively scale e-commerce is to run a

john:

standard shopping campaign.

john:

Let's say I maximize.

john:

So that we can try to get as much viewership and traffic as possible

john:

without basing it off of what?

john:

Well, my RO as is terrible.

john:

Now, what else am I gonna do?

john:

It's an expansion opportunity to creatively scale eCommerce.

john:

We're running performance.

john:

Max is already giving us the return and the RO as that we need

john:

on the channel though, that we are not currently engaged in.

john:

now what we look at here, well, if we look at the sizes tab in the

john:

same, same area, out of 139 sales.

john:

This is not a glitch.

john:

I'm interrupting the video you're watching because I need to remind

john:

you that I'm always looking for people to join our team.

john:

So if you're passionate about Google ads and you wanna work with the best

john:

Google ads agency on the planet, please go to so late.com/apply.

john:

Speaking of working with the best Google ads agency on the planet, if you're having

john:

trouble with Google ads and you want professional help, that's what we do.

john:

You can go to.

john:

So lake.com that's S O L eight.com to apply for your

john:

free no obligation action plan.

john:

And if I've.

john:

Any level of value at all.

john:

Maybe think about giving me a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel.

john:

That's how we choose the YouTube algorithm.

john:

So they actually know that I know what I'm talking about.

john:

If you have questions, comments, concerns, or confessions hit

john:

me below in the comments.

john:

And now back to your regularly scheduled program, we see that 65.

john:

Now this is, this is gonna be removed.

john:

We actually just been thinking all of our brand last week, it

john:

spiked up and then it went down.

john:

So just ignore this part here, just for example, normally this

john:

doesn't have brand in there.

john:

We'll see the search term here.

john:

That's selling that product very well.

john:

And we're also seeing different variations and even different internal cross sell

john:

opportunities between these products.

john:

So we can see here that the majority of these searches or sorry, majority

john:

our conversions are coming from search.

john:

If you took the 1 39 minus four, you have 1 35.

john:

Add these up here.

john:

This would equal one 30.

john:

So now we've identified that the only true channel that's really

john:

working inside a performance max is DSA the DSA portion of performance.

john:

Max works.

john:

I already also know this to be the case because we did a competitive analysis

john:

on the people running on, search.

john:

And they're not spending that much there.

john:

So this is our area to, scale.

john:

This is a way to evaluate it.

john:

Now, if we know that DSA is working, what else can we do?

john:

Well, I couldn't run a standard search campaign, because I'm just gonna start to

john:

compete with all of the good performance that's happening inside a performance max.

john:

So what you don't wanna do is say, wow, search is working.

john:

Let's start another search.

john:

All you're doing now is just dividing it.

john:

So we don't wanna divide.

john:

We wanna see ways to expand.

john:

So one of the areas that we are discussed, we'd be running it.

john:

Let's say standard shopping campaign.

john:

I maximize clicks with the low budget, not enough to bring down

john:

the overall ROAS of the campaign.

john:

But if I can get more shopping clicks, I may be able to earn more

john:

remarketing, even through performance max or a return user through my brand.

john:

So one of the areas that we are now identifying is where else can I go?

john:

That makes sense that I have not currently in, or that I have not gone

john:

in be into before we already know that YouTube isn't working either.

john:

So since YouTube, isn't actually active in this performance max campaign.

john:

If I start a YouTube campaign, I'm not competing with anything, it's a value add.

john:

It's not a division of users.

john:

It's a new cold traffic.

john:

We've actually done that in here already.

john:

And we're already running a a YouTube campaign in here.

john:

Now this is more branded and this is just a big account, but in the

john:

YouTube campaign that we're running here now these video campaigns

john:

are actually adding in more sales.

john:

Do this here, So this YouTube campaign right here is already

john:

adding in more conversion value that I didn't have before.

john:

This is not actually hurting anything that we're doing on performance.

john:

Max.

john:

We already know performance.

john:

Max is not running YouTube.

john:

So when we started to add YouTube in last week, we made 36 more prescription

john:

returning customer 95% cold traffic.

john:

90, 95% of cold traffic users, essentially those new customers.

john:

And this is also helping to scale into a newer audience, B new customers

john:

and C give us an overall volume lift of sales rather than simply.

john:

Would be dividing if I was starting a search campaign.

john:

So one of the areas that we wanna look at before we dive deeper into

john:

the subcategories is what kind of additional campaign types can we use?

john:

So specific campaign types to test outside performance.

john:

Max, this is the topic that we're talking about now.

john:

That was one of our subtopics, the specific campaign types.

john:

Are gonna be non overlapping value add, but also towards the goal that we need,

john:

whether it's Roaz, whether it's sales, whether it's scale, whatever that may be.

john:

We look for areas of opportunity to dive into that.

john:

We're currently not the YouTube campaign, for example, is probably one

john:

of the best ways to scale eCommerce.

john:

eCommerce is direct response by nature.

john:

That's what eCommerce is.

john:

That's why we measure it.

john:

Usually with new customers in row as, and at least CAC it's

john:

very new customer focused.

john:

So if we're already launching performance max, so we already know

john:

that the areas of performance max are going, where else should we go?

john:

That's towards the goal.

john:

So's because e-commerce is direct response.

john:

YouTube helps a lot.

john:

Why the average cost per view, very inexpensive.

john:

So for not a whole lot of money.

john:

And I know 14,000 is, but it's not.

john:

When you compare it to the 268,000 that was spent, the 14,000 here is attracting

john:

a lot more new users by impressions.

john:

And we're also getting a lot more views.

john:

And our view rate is above area of, of what is it called?

john:

Optimization.

john:

So we wanna be above a, a 22% view rate on average, that's where we've

john:

seen people start to push and we see them actually engage in audiences.

john:

Say, these people are actually engaged.

john:

We may not see one click, you know, sales, which is usually how we measure.

john:

No, we measured the what's it called?

john:

A YouTube campaign, but.

john:

We could look at other KPIs to know that this is actually an area of expansion.

john:

We have another client that actually sells a product.

john:

And I won't call 'em out by name or anything like that, but we have another

john:

client that sells a product that 88 or 89% of all of the spend and sales come from

john:

the YouTube channel inside a performance.

john:

And we're actually going to scale that.

john:

So what's interesting.

john:

There is performance max found the channel that works the best.

john:

That's what its job is.

john:

And then it remarks those people internally to the lowest hanging fruit.

john:

That's why performance max works so well for eCommerce, but we have

john:

to identify is that actually, is that channel actually working?

john:

And then what else can we add to it?

john:

So when we're talking about the different types of audiences, though,

john:

whether we find that display works.

john:

I'm not a big display person.

john:

I haven't cracked that code.

john:

I think it's my opinion too fatty in terms of absent kids games,

john:

even though we push 'em away, they still come in at a high rate.

john:

And it's also click farm date, really like they, those get clicked on a lot.

john:

So display is something that I think should be reserved a little bit more for

john:

our existing audience or users or, even just like a, re-engagement not really

john:

even necessarily remark, but there could.

john:

something that we have a list.

john:

I, like display a lot.

john:

GS P Gmail sponsor promotions is part of discovery.

john:

And so discovery sometimes can offer you a lot of false positives.

john:

So for example, if you have a whole bunch of clicks on discovery, they're

john:

actually not clicks to your website.

john:

They're opens of the Gmail ad in GS.

john:

So some false positives can come in from discovery that I think we'll need to try

john:

to refine those strategies a little bit more and we'll kind of go into it further.

john:

But in terms of G in terms of discovery, discovery is heavily GSP.

john:

And I've done that a few times by looking at how many clicks we got

john:

on our discovery campaign versus.

john:

Views to the website and it was about 10%.

john:

So if we had 900 clicks, we actually had about 90 people.

john:

So for awareness, it's good, but that's not really good for, e-commerce unless

john:

we're looking to scale out with, not really taking into consideration Cerro

john:

as, so just know that that's gonna be something that is gonna be a little

john:

bit more hard to scale effectively, unless we really refine that audience

john:

down to, you know, engage users.

john:

So.

john:

I still like YouTube, the best for eCommerce.

john:

This is the best way for us to engage a new cold audience on a product that they

john:

haven't seen before and really mimic what the successes that Facebook has.

john:

Facebook is still very, very, very powerful.

john:

I'm not gonna be the Google ads agency owner here is saying

john:

that Facebook works well.

john:

It does.

john:

It is a brand awareness machine.

john:

That works very well.

john:

There's been a lot of businesses still today that are building

john:

their company on Facebook.

john:

It's inefficient, but they can't deny the fact that it's very powerful and

john:

it works and engages an audience.

john:

That's never heard about a product before post-survey responses

john:

when you're running Facebook.

john:

A lot of times they're like, yep.

john:

I heard about it on Facebook, just because that is where they usually first see them.

john:

The problem is that's their only channel . So it's just, shock

john:

and blasting of people, of, of interrupter style marketing.

john:

And you just hit a point of diminishing returns where it's like, yeah, it's

john:

a one row as, but I'm not making any.

john:

Our YouTube campaign is going to act very similar to that.

john:

Only we get the benefit of having a direct response element of our

john:

campaigns tied to a top of funnel.

john:

So I still think that YouTube is, the best way.

john:

Well, we'll talk about discovery and we'll talk about display soon.

john:

Here, but first I wanna dive into a little bit more about YouTube, just

john:

because I want to go into InMarket audience segmentation and the use

john:

of curated content and remarketing.

john:

So I'm gonna kind of take a little more of a, YouTube focus