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Performance Max best practices for lead generation

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Performance Max is a powerful tool for lead generation. By harnessing the full power of Google AI, it automates bidding, targeting, and creative optimization across all Google channels: Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. This means you’re able to find high-quality leads at super scale. However, AI is only as good as the inputs it receives in order to understand what success means for your business and optimize for the right leads. To drive the best results from Performance Max, you need to power it with great data, steer it towards the conversion actions you deem valuable, give it strong creative assets to work with, and iterate your strategy with the insights it shares. Follow these best practices to set your campaigns up for success.

For additional best practices, review:

Power your AI with strong measurement

Set the stage for success by providing Performance Max with the time and data it needs to understand your goals.

  • Fuel your AI: Google AI requires a solid measurement and data foundation to fuel your campaigns for optimum performance. Follow the steps outlined in the “Build a strong measurement foundation” section of our general Lead Generation best practices guide.
  • Once these building blocks are in place, allow at least 6 weeks for your campaign to run before making major changes, giving Google AI the opportunity to learn and gather enough data to make meaningful optimizations.

WHY IT MATTERS

Your inputs control the output of AI-powered campaigns, especially for channels and surfaces that don’t use search queries as their intent signal. As a result, it is critical to feed it the right conversion data, whether it is a lead score based on form attributes or predicted lifetime value from your analytics team. Think of this as a virtuous circle: share data inputs as a signal and Performance Max will optimize across channels using this critical information to identify what factors are most predictive of high-quality leads.

  • Set clear goals and signals: Use lead generation specific goals, like “Contact”, “Submit Lead Form”, “Book Appointment”, “Sign-up”, “Request Quote”, “Qualified Lead”, or “Converted Lead”, in order to drive the highest quality leads for your Performance Max campaigns and access enhanced protections against invalid lead activity. Optimize to deeper funnel conversion actions where possible.

Steer your campaigns

Steer Performance Max with precision towards the right audiences and maximize its impact.

Choose the right bidding strategy:

Tip

Make sure to select the conversion goal that’s closest to a sale or closed deal, but that also has at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days to give you enough data volume to optimize for the most valuable leads. For more information on value-based bidding, watch our miniseries with Ginny Marvin here.

  • If your primary objective is lead volume, use a conversion-based Smart Bidding strategy like Maximize conversions to focus on generating the highest volume of leads.
  • Setting targets: When maximizing conversions, select the most valuable conversion goal, ideally one further down the funnel that’s as close to the final sale as possible, and set your target CPA close to your maximum acceptable cost-per-lead.

Tip

Choose a single stage of the sales funnel to bid towards. Bidding to more than one stage (for example, website visits and converted leads) within a single tCPA strategy can be duplicative and lead to suboptimal performance.

Captivate with creative

Craft engaging content and optimize the user experience to attract and convert high-quality leads.

  • Maximize your asset variety: Provide a wide range of high-quality text, image, and video assets to meet the diverse needs and mindsets of different customers. More assets means more potential ad formats that can be created for different channels and users. Building new creative is easier than ever with generative AI tools. Watch how you can get the most out of generative AI. Track your “Ad Strength” metric in the Asset Groups section of your campaign for a quick snapshot of your creative’s effectiveness. Aim for an “Excellent” rating to maximize your campaign’s potential.

We found that advertisers who improve their Performance Max Ad Strength to “Excellent” see 6% more conversions on average.1

  • Optimize your lead forms: Simplify the lead capture process with lead form assets to maximize conversions. To improve lead quality, consider adding qualifying questions and authentication elements like reCAPTCHA.

Iterate with insights

Understand your campaign performance and uncover new growth opportunities.

  • Monitor and analyze: Utilize reports unique to Performance Max like Search terms insights and demand forecasts to gain valuable insights into campaign performance.
  • Make data-driven decisions: Use asset-level reporting to identify top-performing creative assets and bid strategy reports to understand inputs and nuances of your bid strategy, including the top signals being used to optimize your bids.
  • Ensure brand safety: Use “Placement Reports” to review and exclude any placements that are not a good fit for your brand.
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1 *This applies to all Performance Max campaigns (with and without GMC feed)

Source: Google Data, Global, Ads, February 2024.