How to Move Your Client from Smart Shopping to Performance Max

Advertisers have already received the last notice from Google to migrate their Smart Shopping Campaigns into Performance Max campaigns by September 2022. Since April 2022, Performance Max is no longer a beta product of Google, which has now been released for everyone to access and try.

If you already get enough notifications from Google, you’ll probably know that Google Performance Max campaigns have bundles of benefits and advantages compared with a general Smart Shopping Campaign including: Easier Ad Campaign Optimization, Unlocking New Audience Segments, More Substantial Data Insights, and More Targeted Creative.

Common Questions About Switching to Performance Max

It sounds fancy, but your client will definitely have many concerns about how Performance Max works and how it performs. Some of the more common questions might be:

Should I build a campaign from scratch? Does it send my campaign to the learning phase again?
I don’t have a design team/video production team. What do I do if I don’t have those fancy visuals which seem essential for a good performance?
What’s the best possible way to optimize Performance Max? How can I control the spending and how can I make sure the performance is good?

These are not only questions from clients but also as an agency proccessing the migration. First, Smart Shopping campaigns will fade away, and we need to have some buffer time to adapt to this change. So, we must deal with all the road blockers and push on with the project.

How to Upgrade Your Smart Shopping Campaigns to Performance Max Campaigns?

Basically, there are 2 ways:

Create 1 Performance Max Campaign from the scratch
1 Single Click Upgrade

We suggest using the 2nd option, which will better utilize and transfer your past data into the new Performance Max Campaign. Here are some notes for you to understand how it works:

The newly created Performance Max Campaign will automatically take your product sets from your current Smart Shopping Campaign.
It will automatically generate some creative assets for you that only meet the basic requirements to publish your campaigns. Many parts will be empty, which will cause bad performance if you just leave it like this. So actually, you need to set up everything about creatives on your own.
You must know after the migration, the old Smart Shopping Campaign will be put into a status of “removed” and can’t be able again forever. This is the most significant disadvantage of 1 Single Click Upgrade.

Google Performance Max campaigns have bundles of benefits and advantages compared with a general Smart Shopping Campaign including: Easier Ad Campaign Optimization, Unlocking New Audience Segments, More Substantial Data Insights, and More Targeted Creative.

Now you have your Performance Max Campaigns set up. The next step is to identify 3 elements that might be missing:

1. Creatives

Text Ads
- This is a really simple and effective element you can add to your campaign
Image Ads
- These can be filled with some scenario/product images if you don’t have any other better choices at the beginning but it’s important to improve your visual materials later.
Video Ads
- If you want to create videos manually, you can through Google itself by going to “Tool & Setting” > “Shared Library” > “Asset Library”

2. Audiences

Put all the audiences list you have into the Performance Max Campaign, including in-market audience, affinity audience, customized audience, and re-marketing audiences…

3. Listing

Editing everything on your product feed, giving each item a proper label. Then separate them into different asset groups with proper visuals in that group. Everything about the product listing is the same as Smart Shopping Campaign.

While these steps might feel simple, they’re crucial to the success of your campaigns. If you need guidance, you can do so with the help of Adcore’s Elite Service.

How Does It Perform After Migration?

Some of our clients with Adcore have already tried to start the Performance Max Campaign from the scratch. A client selling consumer electronic products received ROAS 40% lower than the Smart Shopping Campaign in the first 2 weeks of migration with the same spending. Because of this, they’ve paused the Performance Max Campaign to wait for the disappearance of the Smart Shopping Campaign, and once that happens they’ll resume their Performance Max Campaign.

A sports products advertiser received similar ROAS data with more ad spending in the first 2 weeks. They did a great job of inserting good quality creativities and visual materials.

There are some common cases where the Performance Max Campaign didn’t spend enough compared to the given budget after the migration. Under this situation, it is essential to make sure to check the settings to ensure everything is correct. If there are no apparent errors, try the seasonal bid adjustment to boost the spending a little bit. Then, spend more time figuring out what’s the best possible way to optimize the Performance Max Campaign. For example, break 1 Performance Max campaign into multiple campaigns with different ROAS targets. Make a better segment on asset group with product listings and related creatives, etc…

Final Thoughts

As a professional digital marketing agency, we are on the front lines of all the significant changes on popular channels, so we aim to dig out the most insights and develop our way to solving problems. So, check out our other articles to find more optimization tips and other information for Performance Max Campaigns and be sure to take a look at our Marketing Cloud for further assistance for all your marketing needs!

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