Performance Max for B2B – How to Grow Your Business with Paid Ads

Performance Max is the maximum amount of reach for the optimal amount of money. Google has made it clear that if you want to max out your potential – this is the way to do it! And, as we are somewhat Google connoisseurs, we thought that what a great idea it is to tell you all about maximizing your advertising efforts! As the #1 Video Game Marketing Agency, we know a bit or two about just how to optimize your marketing efforts. 

So, if you want to improve your Google Performance Max campaigns for your B2B efforts and are tired of using traditional search ads to find your target audience – we have got you covered. Ad campaigns have no secrets for us, and we can help you do wonders with your customer data. So, let’s optimize bids, get some broad-match keywords into work, and make your B2B marketers happy! This is the ultimate guide to improve your campaign’s performance!

What Is Performance Max?

Let’s start with some basics. What exactly is this Performance Max that everyone is talking about? And most importantly – how can you use it to your advantage?

The shortest answer would probably be that it’s just another way of using the machine learning algorithms from Google but on a much broader scale. Performance Max does not limit itself to search themes but covers a whole range of Google services. There are essentially four layers of where you can find Performance Max:

• Display
• YouTube
• Search
• Discover

Each one of those has a different way of helping you convert customers. It’s especially important in B2B, as businesses operate on various different platforms, and simple search campaigns may not be the best way to approach the topic. 

Each Performance Max campaign focuses on a business goal that you set for it. And it proves to work time and time again. Plenty of companies have seen a rise in their ROAS after introducing Performance Max. However, one that Google consistently emphasizes is the average 12% increase in conversion value for retail advertisers who switch from Smart Shopping campaigns while maintaining the same or better return on ad spend. 

Why Should You Use it for B2B Purposes?

We all know that Google Ads is the way to go when it comes to digital marketing. And B2B-oriented companies are always looking for a more holistic approach to marketing than customer-oriented companies. Marketing to other businesses is aimed at a smaller group of professionals in their field. Those people do not make sudden or rushed decisions based on a hunch. Hence – it’s harder and more expensive to market to the B2B customers. So, the Performance Max kind of advertisement is the best approach that you can have for that purpose. And here’s why.

More Conversions for Less

Lead generation is key when it comes to B2B advertising. And what better lead generator can you ask for than one of the most useful tools on the market – Google Performance Max? Based on the research from Shoptimised on 2179 Google Ads accounts, where they compared the budget for the Performance Max campaign to Standard Shopping and Smart Shopping, Google Ads had a 641% ROAS increase in nine months. For Standard Shopping campaigns, the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) declined from 583% in Q4 2021 to 492% in Q2 2022. Conversely, Smart Shopping campaigns saw an increase in ROAS, rising from 599% in Q4 2021 to 641% in Q2 2022.

Performance Max is outperforming the other Google digital marketing schemes, and Google is outperforming the competition. So, if you want to play with the best, you need to find yourself among the best.

Cheaper Leads

Additionally, the audience signals seem to point to the fact that Performance Max can help you not only with optimizing your existing search campaigns or maximizing conversions but also with gaining PMax new leads. And – for a better price than your average search campaign. Even with smart bidding.

It was exquisitely shown in the example of Allianz Insurance. Based on their findings, they claim to be using Performance Max for their Google Search campaigns for targeting car insurance products. Their primary objective was to generate more car insurance leads while minimizing costs. Through this initiative, Allianz not only met its goal but also saw a notable decrease in the cost per lead by 15%. So, performance advertisers can definitely be happy with that bidding strategy!

More Data

Even more, Google Performance Max will not only give you cheaper and better options but also allow you to gain more insight into the minds of your partners. Because it utilizes many different ways of advertising, it’s only understandable that you will be able to garner a lot of information from multiple sources. Landing pages of different websites from the Display part of Google, some video viewers, keyword targeting enthusiasts – every aspect of your target group, as well as your website traffic, can and should be analyzed. This is for this single campaign but also for budget optimization and other Performance Max local campaigns. It’s not always about getting the highest ad rank; it’s sometimes about what Google’s machine learning can tell you about yourself. 

How to Optimize Your Campaign for Google Performance Max?

So, now that you understand the diverse range that Google Performance Max operates in, let’s see just how well you can utilize it to your advantage. Of course, this would be different than optimizing for e-commerce Performance Max or Performance Max for retail, but the main concept remains the same. 

Let’s now go over the different ways that you can get more converting customers through your Google channels. 

Be Unique!

The best way to maximize your performance max is to be different from all the competitors and use the means that you were assigned to the best of your abilities. For example, if you have access to videos, create something that will make people turn their heads. 

YouTube is the second largest website after Google, so conversion rates can be astronomical with their help. Additionally, create an ad copy full of multimedia ad extensions to make it stand out. The professionals are expecting something professional in the end, so it’s understandable that to convince them, you have to do a little bit more than simply putting a price tag under their noses. 

Google’s real-time understanding of the first-party data can help you with the same prioritization that you would be using for traditional advertising.

Test, Test, Test…

Google Ads Performance Max uses quite a lot of options for advertising purposes. So, to get the best performance for similar audiences, you may need to get some high-quality testing. Fortunately, Google Ads allows you to create a different campaign type for different audiences and test out various scenarios. That way, by getting into Google properties, you can change things up a bit from a campaign level to get to the right audience. You can do some placement exclusions to negative keywords and add even more assets to different promotion channels. Overall – dig deeper to get enough data to finally get your campaign off the ground!

Review and Monitor

And finally – make sure to review and monitor your Google Performance Max campaign. Check your budgets to find out if the campaign is getting out to the right audiences and is not stuck on a single platform. B2B marketing is usually set to get new audiences and users, so it’s important not to get stuck on the same user base repeatedly. To ensure the success of your marketing efforts, you need to find out where your campaigns are being shown and focus on what is important to you. As it’s usually a goal-based campaign type, see if you are getting the attention you wanted whether or not you are not overpaying for your marketing efforts. It’s essential to do it the right way, as the Google Performance Max can be pretty expensive. The data shows that you should put in at least 150 dollars per day if you want to see great results. Considering that the least amount of time you can put it on is six weeks – it’s safe to say that you need to keep a close eye on your investment.

Performance Max for B2B – Tips

So, now that you know how to create and optimize your Performance Max campaign, let’s go over some useful tips and best practices for you to check out. Of course, this does not mean that this will work for everyone, but those are just simple and basic tactics you can use in most circumstances. Different goals will require different approaches, so be sure to review those before introducing them in your line of work.

Search and Remarketing Are Important!

It can be pretty understandable that getting the right goals with the right insights may not be the easiest thing to do. And – you may be tempted to only focus on what may bring you the most customers. However, we advise you to focus not only on the placement of your ads in the Display network or YouTube. Think about keyword-based search campaigns, as they are still pretty great for optimizing your marketing efforts. Additionally, it puts a lot of emphasis on remarketing. It’s one of the best ways to get even more people interested in your products, especially with B2B campaigns. Companies that were somewhat interested in your line of business did not do it by accident, so remarketing to them can be quite a good idea.

Fill Up Your Archive!

Additionally, make sure to create many different assets and fill up your archive. The more elements you add to the Performance Max campaign, the greater the chance that someone will see it. You will be able to get the best results from creating something unique and accessible through many different mediums. Make sure to create plenty of different images, videos, ad copies, and such. Even more, go to your customer match lists and see who’s on there. Change it a bit if you feel like it’s missing some crucial information; add something that you feel would be a creative insight into the situation. In our opinion, the more, the better with Performance Max, so keep your creative assets full of promise, and they will blossom with leads!

Set Yourself Goals!

And finally – make sure that you have attainable goals that you want to achieve. The more thorough you are with presenting them in your conversion goals, the more likely it is that you will actually be able to achieve them. The best thing about this type of campaign is that it allows you to have multiple goals. You can prioritize potential customers, create remarketing lists, and promote your brand at the same time. 

It’s especially important for B2B, where you don’t always want to rely simply on getting the sales conversions but to get some qualified leads. If you understand what you are trying to achieve and you do it the right way, your online sales will skyrocket. Of course, B2B businesses are always on the lookout for new potential customers as they focus on profit. Finding the right goals for your particular line of business may be challenging, but we are positive that you will find a path to finding out exactly what you need.

Performance Max for B2B – Conclusion

And here we are, at the end of our road! As you can see, with Performance Max, you can maximize conversions, leads, and reach across all of Google’s channels. It’s a high-cost, high-return strategy. Although, if you think about it, the costs may seem high at the start, if you have placements on so many different channels and you get new users each step of the way – it’s only understandable that you would have to pay extra for that. 

Nevertheless, the campaigns are cheaper than what you can get with usual Google Ads when you look at the return on ad spend factor. And that’s really the most important one if you think about it, as it allows you to actually get back what you have invested into marketing.

That’s it for today; thank you so much for stopping by! If you are interested in more marketing/PPC/SEO-related knowledge – we have a lot of it on our site. Feel free to browse through all of it, as we are positive that you will find something to your liking. Of course, we also recommend that you check out our services as the #1 Video Game Marketing Company – GamerSEO. See you in the next one!