Why PMax Feed Only Campaign is NOT Part of the Account Build SOP for eCommerce

Sun, Dec 11, 2022

John shares why Performance Max Feed Only campaign is not part of the General Account Build SOP for eCommerce they created. He also shares the negative effects that this campaign can have on your account, and so much more.

Listen the episode now to learn more about how to build a successful Google Ads campaign for your eCommerce store.

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0:00 Intro

0:30 Why PMax Feed Only Campaign is NOT Part of the Account Build SOP for eCommerce

4:00 Long-term consequences of running PMax Feed Only campaigns

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Transcript
John:

It's such a selfish network that it actually, there's more cons than p.

John:

In that campaign, cuz you can't scale it.

John:

I'd rather do a full bill pax campaign and die than run a feed only and have

John:

the client ask us questions each week.

John:

Well, well, why that happen?

John:

Let's go.

John:

I don't know.

John:

I've been, that was my fail point there is I, we, I think we didn't do

John:

enough into investigation beforehand.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Just quick point is we're still trying to figure out any other, like, mediums

John:

more so, like, for example, like discovery is something we'll probably

John:

end up adding on here in the future when we have more like clear understanding

John:

of how it would fit into this process.

John:

But Joan, I was also gonna ask too, if you wanted to go more in depth

John:

on why feed only is not on here.

John:

Yeah.

John:

So you'll notice that your feet only is not a thing anymore.

John:

Feet only is good.

John:

It's not a campaign type that we own feed only.

John:

If there was like a darker color than red, it would be feed only.

John:

It is a big, smart shopping campaign that also will capture search.

John:

Even if we don't want it to, it will capture search traffic.

John:

It will fight full PMM X.

John:

It'll fight extensive dsa, it will fight inbound search, especially on broad.

John:

it will any remarketing, whether it be YouTube or display or p main commax.

John:

It's such a selfish network that it actually, there's more cons than pros

John:

in that campaign cuz you can't scale it.

John:

It lives and dies on majority of remarketing and.

John:

It's something that is going to steal even from our main PAX campaign.

John:

if you intimately understand fee only, you can use it well.

John:

I know feed only fairly well for kitch.

John:

It's working extremely well.

John:

It's getting a better volume.

John:

It's actually remarketing the a hundred thousand dollars for the free

John:

ad spend that they get from Facebook.

John:

So I don't need to have a roaz, like there's very specific particular

John:

use cases as to when you should or should not use feed only.

John:

Feed only just saved Larson Jewelers, but I took 10 feed only campaigns.

John:

Pretty much that's what they were doing.

John:

Whittled it down to one.

John:

I said, we're gonna have to rebuild the entire account.

John:

Once those new campaigns are rebuilt, I'm shutting off feed only.

John:

This was just to save on their row and just to not have them die while

John:

they're trying to get onboarded.

John:

feed only is, not something that we should move forward with cuz you can't

John:

control it, can't scale it, and you don't know what's going on and you

John:

don't know where it's gonna go next.

John:

And it still goes everywhere.

John:

So if it only is be essentially being removed just because it's not.

John:

It's a hack and it's a bridge.

John:

it's not a campaign strategy that we're like, aha, now we'll use it this way.

John:

, you don't have any control, you have no signals, you have no assets.

John:

So again, it's the enigma that will go away and it's not something I think that

John:

we should really lean into in the future.

John:

I'd rather do a full Bill Pmax campaign and die than run a feed only and have

John:

the client ask us questions each week.

John:

Well, well why that happened?

John:

Let's go.

John:

Oh.

John:

So I think that's, it is just better bet.

John:

can you give an example when you say, well, why did that happen?

John:

Like, if the client is complaining, why'd that happen?

John:

Just trying to understand what, why did he'd only die of a performance?

John:

Yeah, like, I don't exactly know what you meant by that.

John:

I'm just trying to understand what what are the Negative consequences

John:

of running feed only, like long-term negative consequences of running feed.

John:

Only because that's at sort of BC we have such small budgets and oftentimes

John:

brand new accounts that all we're trying to do is get the client to not

John:

freak out within the first 30 days.

John:

So getting the very bottom of the funnel is like, great.

John:

But then I'm trying to understand the long term Like you were alluding

John:

to some, but I didn't understand.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And so I think that for here, as an example For this client,

John:

feed only makes sense for them.

John:

I'll answer your question.

John:

The why did it happen on feed only?

John:

Those are things that we'll never be able to ask or answer.

John:

and we should not run them if we can't answer them.

John:

So I know if this thing dies off, I'm gonna say, well,

John:

what happened on Facebook?

John:

What happened on Instagram?

John:

And did any products that were in stock selling, well go out of stock?

John:

And I'm not targeting those, products well on other campaigns and those

John:

products that we're targeting, overlapping, or doing better.

John:

Like I can answer all those questions, right.

John:

So feed only.

John:

That's what I'm saying.

John:

When you have a very specific scenario where feed only does fit, you'll

John:

be able to answer why or why not.

John:

The feed only did well or not because you're choosing to run it because

John:

you know what it's exactly going to do For low budget campaigns like

John:

rigidity, your clients here, it does make sense as a starting point.

John:

It doesn't make sense.

John:

It also makes sense though, to run them at the same time as a pmax.

John:

full build out.

John:

the campaigns that you have are, they running other traffic from other sources?

John:

Is it performing well?

John:

What is the time lag of those other on an average, like if you look

John:

through analytics, like do you increase your decrease Facebook?

John:

Yeah, I did.

John:

Okay.

John:

Now I can see a correlation about 20, 30 days later, I want to repeat traffic.

John:

If the people buy 1.2 times versus three times, feed only

John:

will live and die by that.

John:

So there's a lot of use cases as to why you should or should

John:

not run that campaign type.

John:

I'm running this also because I started negating brand out of all the other

John:

Performance Max campaigns and the speed only was doing a good job at

John:

capturing the brand of traffic that I'm spawning from my other campaigns.

John:

And b, capturing remarketing dynamically of other traffic from Facebook.

John:

So that's.

John:

there's a lot of conversions here.

John:

There's 90 on the brand or 20 on the brand, and then 23 then they start to

John:

kind of dwindle down after that, and then you'll see kind of pop up more often.

John:

There's.

John:

Et cetera.

John:

So this campaign will do some cold traffic for sure.

John:

It will do some more traffic for sure.

John:

And it will suck all of the remarketing and even compete

John:

with all these other campaigns.

John:

But what this allows me to do is keep a baseline of knowing

John:

that I'm gonna always spend.

John:

like 4K in the last two days, and I know I'm gonna make 3,200 and I'm gonna

John:

keep an 83% roaz and I'm fine there.

John:

Why?

John:

Because this is dynamically remarketing, a hundred thousand dollars worth of

John:

free traffic from Facebook, and they don't care what the Roaz is here.

John:

It's not their money.

John:

So again, very, very, very specific use case.

John:

Now, over the course of longer term, since this heavy remarketing,

John:

I'll have a hundred and 37 roaz.

John:

So I can spend.

John:

91 to make 1 24 K and I know I need to have above 1.47 and

John:

I'm at 200% of the account fine.

John:

All this did was just tack on additional $124,000 and keep me above a two.

John:

Can I kill that campaign?

John:

Yeah.

John:

What will it go to?

John:

2.2.

John:

What will I lose?

John:

$125,000.

John:

That's not worth it.

John:

Is that gonna come anywhere else?

John:

No idea.

John:

It's free Facebook traffic.

John:

I don't know what's going to do if I don't try to Remark.

John:

So again, it's really, really, really, really, really hyper specific to

John:

use feed only for a specific reason.

John:

But we wanna make sure that if we're going to run it, and if

John:

they say, John, why did that die?

John:

Well, a, it didn't.

John:

I've been monitoring the roaz and making adjustments every two to three days

John:

going down, but this isn't my main focus.

John:

The only change that I've made in this thing since it started it's

John:

just been budgets last 30 days.

John:

I haven't touch.

John:

I've not made one change to it.

John:

There it is not a campaign.

John:

it's a bolt on.

John:

So that's what's interesting is I, we use it very, very seldomly and

John:

very specifically, but I don't think that should be our main reasons.

John:

Sorry, follow up question for all of the accounts, I'm sure at

John:

Solutions eight, where there's a lot of shopping only campaigns and we

John:

wanna try to transition away from it.

John:

What do you think about the idea of adding an asset group only campaign?

John:

For a while and then kind of doing a switch where you turn off the

John:

shopping only campaign and add the feed so that you don't have two sets

John:

of feeds running at the same time.

John:

Like would, do you think that idea might.

John:

I don't know.

John:

It's hard to tell what would happen, I guess.

John:

are you saying like an asset only on a feed?

John:

Only I then combining them, yeah.

John:

Like to try to transition away from shopping only instead of having, a full

John:

buildout asset pmax with feed so that you have two feeds now running side by side.

John:

What do you think about getting the asset group only campaign up and running?

John:

And then like one day making the switch, basically pulling the feed

John:

into the asset group only campaign and shutting off the shopping.

John:

Only the things I would've to see, I'd have to know if that would work

John:

well or not, is there brand search in the non feeded asset only campaign?

John:

If there is, what attribution model are we looking at for the account?

John:

If it's data, Does the model comparison tool show slightly more favorable?

John:

Favorable first clicks, two feed only, and less clicks to asset

John:

group only, or is it vice versa?

John:

That'll tell me if you're getting shopping and then brand or if

John:

you're getting getting inbound.

John:

D s A dynamic or marketing.

John:

that's a possible scenario.

John:

One could be the other very, very easily and vice versa,

John:

or even switch back and forth.

John:

Can you say that last sentence again?

John:

Yeah.

John:

So asset group versus feed only.

John:

If you look at the model comparison tool inside of Google Ads, if you

John:

see that there's more first click coming into one campaign and more last

John:

click coming into the other campaign.

John:

Mm-hmm.

John:

, it could mean that the feed only is gaining a shopping click and the

John:

asset group only is getting a branded conversion after they have that shopping.

John:

if it's flipped, it means that you have people coming in from DSA or

John:

Discovery or YouTube that's getting dynamically remarketed by feed only.

John:

So one could feed the other in both scenarios.

John:

So yes, it will work or no, it won't work . It's just depending.

John:

, yeah.

John:

Hard to know how to transition away.

John:

But yeah.

John:

It's probably gonna be a very common scenario, especially for all

John:

of the starter PPP c clients who are adopted by Solutions Eight, or

John:

should say, graduated two solutions.

John:

You're like a foster parent.

John:

. Caden, you said something about standard shop also works.

John:

Yeah, I was just mentioning that like, just another use case of it would be sort

John:

of like what you're doing for where it's, can't remarket the like other, medium.

John:

So you have to kind of throw it into PAX for it to remarket.

John:

And then also whenever you target an audience on shopping, it tends

John:

to be a lot more expensive and it doesn't expand out of that audience.

John:

So that could be good or bad, but it doesn't function the same exact

John:

way as like a feed only pmax if it were just shopping as well.

John:

Now say that now the audience isn't shopping.

John:

Say that again?

John:

when you go into the settings on standard shopping and you have an

John:

audience that you're targeting, you can't turn on optimized targeting on that.

John:

But on pm m Max's default, right?

John:

So like, let's say you're targeting like, you know, pet lovers or whatever, and

John:

then it will stay within that audience.

John:

It won't expand out of that audience.

John:

Whereas Pax Feed only will expand out of that.

John:

Yeah, and what I found with that is that CPCs are higher

John:

on targeted audiences than not.

John:

yeah.

John:

That's actually what my test was.

John:

I've just been doing nothing but excluding their converters,

John:

but I can't exclude them.

John:

I can only bring it down negative 90% bid adjustments, which is

John:

I'm bidding 50 cents, minus 90%.

John:

I'm not gonna get those converters.

John:

, And if I did, and it's a five second conversion, you, I don't really care.

John:

That cost of acquiring existing customer, Sorry to interrupt, but Caden, did

John:

you say audiences inside of feed only?

John:

Feed only doesn't have audiences?

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:

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John:

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John:

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John:

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John:

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John:

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John:

that I know what I'm talking about.

John:

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

John:

hit me blowing the comments.

John:

And now back to your regularly scheduled.

John:

Well, I'm saying audiences like how Pmax works as it expands

John:

outside of the audience.

John:

So like one thing that all like test out will run like, you know, brand

John:

search keywords as like an audience signal inside of feed only, and that'll

John:

expand outside of just people that are, typing in the brand search keywords.

John:

It'll type in and build a look like audience from that.

John:

But then it's not feed only anymore.

John:

It's if you have a audience.

John:

Well, it's still feed only cuz you have no assets, but you're

John:

just pushing it towards like the audience that you wanted to capture.

John:

Oh, okay.

John:

We've never tried that.

John:

Interesting.

John:

Yeah, so it's, it's like there's feed only, there's feed plus audience and

John:

there's full BPI Max and then Glen has his hand raised Or it's a really

John:

small high five like Yeah, just on your point there, Caden, talking about

John:

standard shopping, if we, we can put audience segments as targeting, but

John:

we could just populate everything, every single audience that we've got in

John:

observation and just keep an eye on that.

John:

And then we could put that into targeting, build out.

John:

We could scale out standard shopping campaigns using audience targeting only.

John:

That's true.

John:

But I've seen like CPCs are generally higher in whatever reason Google's

John:

targeting for that audience.

John:

So like whenever you're trying to segment and target an audience,

John:

the adverse CPC will go up.

John:

So you have to bid even higher on it versus just leaving it open.

John:

So it's a debate to have.

John:

I'm just putting like a point out there that if you target expect to

John:

have higher CPCs, well we could then also then start building out some

John:

low, medium, and high priority and put different bids in them then.

John:

Yeah, or you can even target those, or you can set those observations of

John:

those targeted audiences and then do a negative 20% bid adjustment to control

John:

the C P C using it like an observation.

John:

That's a good idea.

John:

Yeah.

John:

We've got a lot of options with standard shopping.

John:

Yeah.

John:

that's the beauty part about this though.

John:

But here's the best part is if performance Max has better standard shopping

John:

performance, and I'm using that as an air quote, like we have, let's say 30

John:

assets and they're all called traffic and, optimized targeting actually has

John:

brought us, keywords and, essentially search categories that we never really

John:

would show up for because of a feed.

John:

That's the benefit that p m max has in shopping is p m max will almost take a

John:

DSA query and show a shopping ad for it.

John:

You can't do that inside of standard shopping.

John:

You have to optimize the feed for that.

John:

that client that I just brought up with, that, that's what that tells me is those

John:

search categories are telling me that there's almost like an a inbound search

John:

element to it that my feed and my search ad are showing for, and I'm getting clicks

John:

Just as a multi-channel attributed click.

John:

It's just like, yeah, it came in.

John:

It came in anywhere.

John:

It came in from an inbound search in the search category.

John:

Was it shopping or search?

John:

Yes.

John:

that doesn't really tell me much but it does tell me that there's

John:

probably potentially less feed optimizations that need to be made

John:

if you're running that inside.

John:

Promise Max, does that mean feed only with or well built out signals.

John:

Perhaps again, this is another tool in this toolbox.

John:

I think that what we've done is sometimes kind of discount a custom

John:

build as a cookie cutter build.

John:

And just say, all right, so let's run like, you know, PAX Brand YouTube, and

John:

then just, Could choose whatever EO goes.

John:

And I've been, that was my fail point there is I think we didn't do

John:

enough into investigation beforehand.

John:

That ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

John:

And I think that a lot of times when we come in our Wednesday

John:

meetings, it's, why'd that die?

John:

I'm like, well, what are they spending on Facebook?

John:

We're like, Oh, we all don't know why It's not because we're bad marketers.

John:

We just never asked that question before and asked it in the wrong point.

John:

We should have asked in the beginning or known about it in the

John:

beginning and built around that rather than building everything

John:

and how we think it's gonna work.

John:

Well, finding out the outside influences, tank our campaign, and

John:

then come back and say, oh, , we didn't realize that they shut off Facebook.

John:

So that's sometimes that not, I'm not saying that's, it's a stream case, but

John:

like, Hey, they ran a sale on Facebook.

John:

Oh, well, because 75% of our campaign structure inside of Google Ads is

John:

highly dependent upon omni channel.

John:

When someone runs a sale on Facebook, we see that sale tick

John:

up inside of Google, that's bad.

John:

That's not.

John:

That's bad for us unless it's brand campaign.

John:

But our pmax should not skyrocket from a Facebook sale.

John:

That means that we're doing too much remarketing and too much inbound traffic.

John:

Traffic from Facebook.

John:

We should see a sale that happens on Facebook that we don't know about,

John:

not affect our Google Ads account.

John:

Cold traffic's not just gonna arrive on the site, be like, ah, who is this person?

John:

Wait 20% off.

John:

I will buy now an 14% convers rate.

John:

That doesn't.

John:

Everybody runs a sale the first time that you give to their website.

John:

You just named that as the price in your mind, and then try to learn who they are.

John:

That happens on Facebook though, so that's why this is gonna be giving

John:

us more well diversified scenario that we can actually start to run

John:

our cold traffic campaigns and.

John:

Be less dependent upon omnichannel sources.

John:

Facebook is still a very, very big contender, huge contender.

John:

Us as really good marketers are not going to ignorantly discount

John:

the value that Facebook brings to a marketing mix where we can't be

John:

as ignorant to say, no, no, no.

John:

Google doesn't, eh, Facebook's Facebook.

John:

we don't have anything to do with them.

John:

That 600,000 RO ads that he got in a brand campaign was all us.

John:

We know that's not to be the.

John:

. So we have to not live and die by potential omnichannel disruptions and

John:

being able to be more independent from omnichannel control placements, bids,

John:

and search terms while running alongside of PAX and see where they overlap and

John:

have that success or where they have those failures are gonna be important