Why I don't use 'Feed Only' Performance Max campaigns

One question that I get asked time and time again is, what are my thoughts on ‘Feed Only’ Performance Max campaigns?

And you only need to do a quick search on Reddit or Youtube to see that people are discussing this at length.

So, to put it bluntly, I don’t like Feed Only Performance Max campaigns and they are not a strategy that I use or intend to use in 2023.

The reason for this is two-fold:

1. Firstly this is not how Google Ads designed Performance Max campaigns to be used because Performance Max campaigns are designed to be one campaign that shows your ads across all of the available networks or search, display, YT, Gmail and not just shopping. 
   
   So I have always found it very dangerous to go against the core settings of a campaign - because each Google Ads campaign has built-in rules to the algorithm, so even thinking you can fight against this with a top-secret strategy is just silly.
   
   
2. Even for people who are pushing this strategy, if you really listen to what they are saying and look at their examples, they also say that the ‘Feed Only’ Performance Max campaign option should just be a last resort strategy and not be a core lead off a strategy that you start with for Performance Max.

So essentially, they use it as a “hail mary” type strategy when every other strategy has failed. 

So now that I made my position clear, I want to discuss the BIGGER issue here for why people are trying this strategy.

And the answer here is sometimes the hardest one to hear, and that is that if you are not seeing results with your Performance Max campaign, it is done to one or more of the 4 reasons below:

1. Your campaign is set up and using the wrong structure
2. You are not optimising your Performance Max campaign in the right way
3. Your ad assets so your ad copy, images & videos suck
4. Your landing page is not user friendly

To help you with the first 2 issues, if you follow the link in the video description below, you can get free access to these 2 amazing tools:

1. My Performance Max account set-up guide which will help you set up your PMax campaign correctly.

2. My Google Ads eCommerce optimisation checklist, which lets you know exactly what you need to optimise in your Performance Max campaign every 72 hours, every week, every month & every 90 days.

So let’s now focus on the other 3 issues. 

The first one is that your ad copy, images & videos suck. 

Whenever I review a Performance Max campaign that is underperforming, one of the first places I review is the Ad Assets because it amazes me how many times people just throw together some ad copy and images and then wonder why your campaign is not performing. 

Your ads are critical to success for 2 reasons:

• It’s the first thing people see about your business, and its the reason whether they click on your ad or your competitor's ad.
• If you have a lower CTR than your competitors, very quickly, Google will start to show your competitor's ads more than your ads. The reason why is simple. Google only gets paid when someone clicks on an ad. So Google has a very clear financial incentive to show ads that have a higher CTR.

An easy way to improve the Ad Assets of your PMax campaigns is to always be reviewing your ad assets and removing any with a low score.

And this brings us to the last reason why your Performance Max campaign may not be working, and this is because your landing page is not user-friendly.

Remember that for success with Google Ads, you don’t only need to have a successful Google Ads campaign, you ALSO need to have a well-designed & easy to use landing page.