For many advertisers, leveraging Google Ads Performance Max campaigns can be a stepping stone. However, it is essential to understand their advantages, but also their limitations, to successfully optimize your strategy. We will see in particular in this article that there are particular difficulties for actors whose objective is the generation of contacts. We will then see that one of the ways to overcome these limitations is the exploitation of CRM data.
The Challenges of Lead Generation
Before understanding how to boost the success of your Performance Max campaigns, it is essential to remember that not all advertisers encounter the same problems. As this article is essentially focused on campaigns with a contact generation objective, ecommerce seo agency let’s first see what their particularities are.
“Lead generation” advertisers face unique challenges, different from those encountered by e-retailers. Indeed, they must not only attract the attention of prospects and arouse their interest in their products or services, but also ensure effective follow-up to convert these contacts into customers.
This often involves developing a solid engagement strategy, such as nurturing, which consists of maintaining the relationship with the prospect through different channels and personalized content, to gradually lead them to purchase. This process, often done offline, makes measuring the effectiveness of lead generation efforts more complex. This contact follow-up phase can be more or less long depending on the sectors of activity and the maturity level of the prospect. The latter is generally different depending on the acquisition channels. This is why it is essential to understand these challenges to put the appropriate strategies in place. book marketing services
The benefits and limits of Performance Max campaigns
Performance Max campaigns frequently offer the ability to generate incremental conversions, particularly in addition to search campaigns, and generally at a lower cost per conversion. Campaigns which therefore work very well in parallel, although the search network is also a Performance Max channel. However, due to their nature of providing less control over search terms and delivery locations, Performance Max campaigns can often result in lower quality or more difficult to process contacts.
Indeed, as we have seen previously, not all Internet users making a contact request have the same level of maturity in their search for goods or services. As Performance Max campaigns open up to other networks such as display or video, which are often less intentional than search, the quality of the contacts generated can often appear lower.
As a result, even though the cost per conversion may be lower, the final cost per sale may be less attractive, particularly due to the lower conversion rate or longer lead time. So, how can we improve the final results and include these campaigns in a complete digital strategy? One of the answers lies in leveraging CRM data.
Importing CRM data to improve results
CRM data can provide real added value when it comes to improving the performance of your campaigns. They can help direct the Google Ads algorithm toward profiles and queries that are most likely to generate not only a contact, but also a sale.
The principle is simple: by integrating your CRM data into Google Ads, you can guide the algorithm towards your final objective and no longer just contact generation, so that it focuses on the prospects who are most likely to convert into customers.
To do this, you must create a new conversion objective which will be based on offline data, imported from your CRM. These could be conversions that were generated by clicks or calls from a Google Ads ad. So that the platform can match your data with the original click or call, there are two possibilities:
- import Google Ads click IDs (GCLID)
- import contact details, including email or phone number, of prospects who have become customers.
Once you have set this up and have verified that the data is correctly reported to the platform, simply set your new conversion objective as the main objective for campaign optimization. Be careful, however, to ensure that you have a significant volume of conversions and, above all, transformation journeys that are not too long. In fact, Google will only be able to go back 90 days to match your imports to the original clicks or calls. If you lack data or the lead times are too long, it may be interesting to start with intermediate stages of your customer journey (micro-conversions). For example, producing a quote or a first sales meeting.
Integration of the notion of value of CRM data
To go even further in optimizing your Performance Max campaigns, there is a second step which consists of taking into account the notion of value in your CRM data. In other words, the objective is no longer just to focus on contacts who become customers, but also the turnover or margin they generate. By integrating this notion when importing offline conversions, you can direct the algorithm more towards contacts with higher added value. This will allow you to use bidding strategies usually reserved for e-retailers such as “Maximize conversion value” or “Target ROAS”.
In short!
In conclusion, Performance Max campaigns are a powerful tool for generating leads. However, we frequently observe that their very nature tends to generate contacts with a lower conversion rate than search-only campaigns. To optimize their performance and improve final results, the exploitation of CRM data can prove essential. This helps direct the algorithm towards the profiles and queries most likely to generate sales and value for your business, which transforms these campaigns into a real business-generating lever.
If you would like to know more or be supported in implementing such a solution, do not hesitate to contact our Google Ads experts.
