YouTube is evolving as a social media platform every day, and new features are rolling out frequently. In recent months, YouTube Shorts have become an essential piece of YouTube’s strategy, with their development presenting a vast amount of growth opportunities for creators and marketers alike.

With the development of short-form content on one of the world’s largest video platforms, paired with more advertising capabilities, the need for a values-based digital marketing strategy has never been more important for marketers looking to make a large impact through simple content.

What are YouTube Shorts?

According to YouTube, “Shorts is the spot to shoot, share, and binge short videos (think 60 seconds or less) on YouTube. It’s where you can go to start trends, try out a dance challenge, bring your hilarious ideas to life, and more.” As we know, this feature was created to fairly compete with TikTok, in the same way, that Instagram Reels were created.

Conceptually, these short-form videos all work similarly though this has not stopped each specific platform from monetizing and making them their own — as they all function slightly differently. Notably, YouTube Shorts serve their creators who want another avenue to interact with their subscribers, while also relying on their algorithm to serve the right content to the right viewer.

On top of this, YouTube is the only platform that’s implemented short-form, “TikTok” style content as a companion to their long-form video content — as opposed to TikTok and Instagram, two platforms actively working to expand their long-form content options.

Given YouTube already has a strong algorithm for recommending relevant content to users who watch videos, it makes sense their Shorts algorithm functions similarly. Notably, Shorts also offers convenient opportunities to creators that TikTok has not yet rolled out, including:

• A scheduling tool that allows creators to schedule the timing of their Shorts going live, allowing more flexibility and opportunity to plan posts at opportune times
• The option to select whether their videos are for kids or not. Or if they’d like to restrict their videos to viewers under 18.
• Creators can edit their posts after publishing.
• The option to “unlist” the Shorts, which means anyone can view it with a link to that video.

How YouTube Shorts Can Affect Your Business

Though Shorts are still in an early development phase compared to both its competitors, YouTube is actively working to make Shorts an asset for both creators and marketers alike. In fact, when announcing its 2022 plans, YouTube confirmed that a shopping experience will integrate with Shorts, making this a huge step forward for YouTube as a company.

In addition to this, YouTube also confirmed that they’re exploring additional monetization options, as it plans to test BrandConnect for Shorts creators and integration of the Super Chat feature (in which viewers can purchase visually distinct chat messages). With that said, monetization features on one of YouTube’s newest, and soon to be most essential, functions offer a significant opportunity for brands and marketers alike to take advantage and drive additional value via Shorts.

Knowing that marketers will soon have the opportunity to drive product sales via shorts, it has become evident that now more than ever marketers need to adopt a values-based marketing approach to fully connect with their consumers and build long-term relationships. Video is one of, if not the most, essential ways to connect with users and garner lifelong customers — as made evident by social platforms continuing to give preference to video or animation-based content over static imagery. With the continuous evolution of YouTube, it’s evident that marketers must continue to build meaningful relationships based on mission, morals, and overall values.

What is Value-Based Marketing?

So what is values-based marketing, and why has it become such a buzzword in the marketing realm? Simple: Values-based marketing is a marketing strategy that appeals to your customers’ values and ethics. The strategy focuses on making a genuine connection with the customer beyond interest in a product or service.

In 2022, it’s no longer a consideration, but a requirement that companies perform meaningful actions to align with their mission, whether it be cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste, donating a portion of their profits to a charity, or simply working to resonate with their viewers through value and impact.

Mission-driven, inclusive, and meaningful values are what resonate with customers, and ultimately play a role in the decision-making process throughout their purchasing journey. Notably, many Millennial and Gen Z consumers who make up a significant portion of online shoppers, say they’re willing to spend more money with businesses that align with their values than with those that don’t.

On top of this, 74% of buyers are more likely to buy something from a brand after reading a story about the positive impact they’re having on the world. In order to positively impact the buyer journey, marketers need to think critically about their messaging, its meaning, and how this contributes to societal or individual improvement.

The Current Problem With Video Ads

Currently, marketers have the ability to promote their products in a few different ways via YouTube, with video ads being the most popular and the most accessible to all, regardless of budget size. With that being said, an incredible amount of ads are run on the platform by the minute, and a lot of those ads are, for a lack of better words, not great. Without a sound content strategy, a lack of meaning, and forced view-time, these ads run the risk of hurting the promoted product’s credibility rather than promoting it. In fact, 67% of adults say that once a brand loses its trust, there’s no gaining it back.

To break that down, here are a few examples of brands actively losing consumer trust in real-time via video or commercial advertising:

1. Disingenuous Branded Content

Obvious, but the Kendall Jenner/Pepsi debacle couldn’t be more on the nose when it comes to a failed attempt to resonate with their audience. We all know this commercial missed the mark, and we all know why: It’s tone-deafness to current events, and the commercialization of incredibly serious, historical events in the US.

2. Product Falsification & Misleading Claims

Far more often, video ads reflect false claims and features of their actual product. Notably, this is an issue that’s plagued mobile gaming app advertising for years, as “These puzzles [in the ad] only actually appear as random and incredibly rare mini-games that make up less than 1% of the actual gameplay.” Given the amount of false advertising served to viewers paired with the platform’s inability to properly monitor this, user trust is easily diminished.

3. Longform, Unskippable Content

As YouTube has extended the runtime of non-skippable ads to up to 15 seconds, viewers’ impression of the brand can skew negatively depending on the content served. Popular forums including Reddit and Google are flooded with users questioning the number of ads, and often noting how annoying they are. There are plenty of ads that fall into this category, but it’s important to note that brands can actively deter interest simply by wasting the viewers’ time.

Create Content That Engages Your Audience

When done correctly, YouTube video placements offer a wealth of opportunity, as 70% of shoppers say they’re open to learning about products from brands they see on the platform, and video is the most preferred format among content viewers. On a similar note in terms of format, 67% of users say TikTok inspires them to shop, even when they weren’t planning to do so, and 73% report that they feel a deeper connection to companies they interact with on the platform.

Shorts are more direct and easily accessible to active users, as they appear on the homepage, and also have a dedicated section within the Youtube app. With that, it’s essential that creators and marketers work to create content that aligns with their audience, instead of directly marketing to them. With values-based marketing, there are a few steps to execute this effectively through short-form content:

1. Align with a Familiar Value System

Instinctively align with new customers by understanding the current brand demographic and the types of consumers that already positively engage with the brand. Though organic and paid means, inform viewers that the brand aligns with their existing values.

2. Take an authentic position

With the above point, make sure the position is authentic instead of capitalizing on a viewpoint that fits the audience’s beliefs for the sake of alignment. Highlight the brand’s authenticity and genuineness through its core values. In other words, put your money where your mouth is.

3. Create meaningful interactions

Meaningful interactions with customers are quintessential in 2022, and integrating this with a values-based marketing strategy is no different. Ensure the content and followed interactions build a sense of community through mission-based values.

4. Support for specific organizations and causes

With values-based marketing, actively supporting specific organizations and movements that align closely with the company’s mission is of the utmost importance.

5. Be Genuine

This is the most obvious, but it cannot be overstated! Marketers may not think so, but users can see through marketing claims and are likely to pick up on passion vs. profit. If your content is not genuine, it’ll likely have the opposite of the intended effect. Serving users UGC from existing customers has proven to be a successful strategy on YouTube that effectively builds consumer trust. Not only that, but it’s one of the best tactics for marketers to implement as we move closer to and closer to a cookieless future.

The Big Picture

Platforms as large as YouTube don’t often roll out new content format options, so when they do, it’s essential that marketers, brands, and creators take the proper steps to effectively reach their audiences through meaningful, engaging content.

Compared to its two main competitors, Shorts is still in its early phase of development and has a ton of room for growth, as reflected in YouTube’s confirmed plans for the remainder of the year. As consumers continue to prioritize brand mission, values, and actions throughout their decision-making journey, Shorts present a significant opportunity for brands to better connect with viewers through their values, and by doing so to further garner an engaged online community. With advertising capabilities growing by the day, and an environment to better support creator partnerships, the sky is the limit.

The post YouTube Shorts For Business: The Case For Value-Based Marketing appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Despite the limitations on resources and time that ultimately come with a startup environment, marketing should never be swept under the rug when it comes to budgeting and planning for growth. Marketing is an absolute must for companies looking to drive brand awareness, a follower base, and consumer trust. Small businesses often pursue big goals — and rightfully so. Startups have the newness and innovation to leverage new trends and bring a fresh perspective to crowded markets filled with older legacy brands. To build from the ground up is often an opportunity and not a disadvantage, so long as startup marketers are able to proactively use it to pursue the most future-forward and culturally-relevant marketing strategies for their brand.

What is startup marketing?

Startup marketing is an effective marketing plan that focuses on driving rapid and measurable growth while adhering to limitations on time, resources and budget. Startup marketers are laser focused on achieving results that will build a solid foundation for future scaling, and tend to be extremely precise, strategic, and results-driven. Due to budget constraints, startup marketing often involves a combination of paid and organic strategies, both of which are monitored regularly to unlock platform-specific and data-backed insights.

One key philosophy of startup marketing is to do unscalable things in order to scale in the future. Paul Graham, a venture capitalist and co-founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, commonly advises startup founders to “do things that don’t scale”. This advice might sound counterintuitive at first, but what Graham essentially means is that there is value in going to extraordinary lengths to delight your first users. Do things manually, recruit users one by one, then gradually automate the bottlenecks after you have gathered sufficient learnings from your initially deliberately narrow market. Don’t underestimate the power of compounding growth, and focus on understanding your core consumer base before scaling to larger or different markets.

What are 4 key types of startups?

There are a hundred and one ways to categorize different types of startups — the nature of a startup is to be idiosyncratic and unique. That being said, startups are typically categorized into 4 key types:

1. Small business startups
2. Buyable startups
3. Scalable startups
4. Offshoot startups

Let’s go over them one by one.

1. Small business startups

These are lean, self-starter teams that are typically bootstrapped or self-funded. Small business startups are under less pressure to scale because they are not beholden to their investors’ goals and wants, which gives them the space to grow steadily at their own pace. These types of startups benefit from creating tight-knit communities from small, initial subsets of their target consumer groups, which can then compound into organic referral and/or acquisition loops.

2. Buyable startups

Buyable startups are when small teams build businesses from scratch with the intention of eventually selling it to a bigger player in their respective industry. Common in the SaaS industry, some notable buyable startups include Adobe’s acquisition of Figma, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and Google’s acquisition of FitBit. These types of startups benefit from conducting rapid experimentation to accurately and efficiently determine product-market fit.

3. Scalable startups

The category of “scalable startups” can be misleading, as it is in the nature of all startups to eventually scale; that being said, scalable startups are the types of startups that are relatively easy to scale compared to others. Apps, particularly ones with a social element, are a prime example of a scalable startup because they have a snowball effect of growth as they acquire new users. For example, the one-photo-per-day social sharing app BeReal grew exponentially as it leveraged the network effect to gain new users and grab the attention of potential investors.

4. Offshoot startups

Contrary to buyable startups, offshoot startups are companies that branch off from other corporations. Simply put, not all startups build from the ground up — some are able to leverage the expertise and resources of their parent company while maintaining the self-starter mentality of a small startup team.

What are the best marketing strategies for startups?

With limited resources and a pressure to scale, startups benefit from marketing strategies that play into innovation and creativity while still optimizing for immediate, efficient results.

Here are our experts’ take on the 12 best startup marketing strategies to date:

1. Rapid experimentation

With rapid experimentation, quick learnings are key to scaling and positioning. With lofty goals and little time, start-ups hit the ground running with little to no stopping. Startups should adopt a rapid experimentation mindset in terms of marketing, as it’s crucial for fast growth and quick customer acquisition.

Experimentation can be implemented via any channel, to any audience, and at any point in a customer journey. Rapid experimentation offers a unique opportunity for start-ups, as it’s a fast-tracked way to unlock efficient, sustainable growth. A growth-focused startup should constantly look for new ways to reach and define their target market, as there are an unlimited number of opportunities to increase customer acquisition pace and validate product and value propositions.

2. Social Commerce

There’s no denying that social commerce is one of the most important trends of 2023. Notably, more than half of the country’s adults are making purchases on social media. When looking toward 2025, Insider Intelligence projects that social commerce will be a $79.64 billion industry in the US alone, solidifying the fact that start-ups in the eCommerce industry must integrate social commerce into their marketing strategy in one way or another.

The power of social commerce comes from its ability to combine the efficiency of e-commerce with the community-driven and convenient experience that social media platforms provide. Social commerce is particularly important for Gen Z audiences, as the preferred search engine is rapidly shifting away from Google and more towards social platforms like TikTok and Instagram. This shift gives brands the opportunity to showcase their products or services in more creative and visually engaging storytelling methods.

3. Focusing on brand and value-based marketing

Today’s consumers are no longer satisfied with just a good product that meets their needs — they want to feel good about their purchases and look for meaningful relationships with brands. Brand marketing focuses on building the core identity of the brand to appeal to potential customers’ values and ethics, shifting marketing away from a typical product-centric approach to instead a more customer-centric one.

So how should start-ups begin to approach this? Consider answering these value-based questions to determine how they pertain to your business objectives and consumer values:

1. What’s memorable about your brand?
2. What’s unique about your brand?
3. What’s meaningful about your brand?
4. Who is your brand speaking to?
5. What problem does your brand solve?
6. Does your brand give back? How does it give back?

After determining where your brand falls in terms of core values, consider revisiting your target audience and redefining your competitors. Identifying how competitors speak to their customers is especially important, as it provides the unique opportunity to carve out additional space in the marketplace.

Airbnb’s success is a great example of where brand marketing can prove to be more beneficial than search advertising and performance marketing. Instead of relying on search engine marketing, Airnbnb invested more into brand marketing, using PR and marketing efforts to build their overall image and attracting guests through the strength of their brand. This strategy was a logical move given that 90% of Airbnb’s platform traffic is direct (aka unaided by search advertising), and it certainly paid off as Airbnb just had their most profitable quarter yet. More and more brands today are recognizing the importance of building a strong brand and a loyal community. Consumers can no longer be bought — they have to be wooed, attracted, and convinced by an overall brand mission. 

4. Leveraging a diverse set of marketing channels

Most users in the growth marketing space have been impacted by the iOS 14 update. Diversifying ad channels, or the oft-referred to “marketing mix,” is not a new concept — but diversification is arguably more important than it’s ever been in 2022. With increasingly difficult-to-close attribution data gaps and consumer privacy concerns taking center stage in 2022, marketers simply cannot risk performance by relying on one singular channel or one specific marketing tactic. Though hopping on marketing trends is tempting for all marketers, diversification is key, especially in a start-up looking to carve its place in the market.

So, where should start-ups look to diversity? Look in both new and old places. Evergreen tactics such as Google Ads, organic search, content marketing, and referral programs continue to drive success for marketers globally and have not felt the impacts as strongly as the social space has. They’re stable and have proved their longevity time and time again. Though evergreen, it doesn’t mean advertisers can’t find something new! Pairing trends with channels that have proved successful to marketers in previous years should be a strong consideration.

Tapping into TikTok as a core part of the marketing mix is also another way marketers can diversify their content across different channels. Though TikTok is not typically part of the traditional platform mix, the short-form video platform can be a powerful top-of-funnel driver for brand awareness and community engagement. The inherently rapid pace of the platform also makes it a prime channel for creative and content experimentation, and the learnings from those experiments can be leveraged to inform strategies for other channels.

5. AI Tools

With the popularization of copywriting tools like Copy.ai and Jasper.ai, as well as the rise of conversational AI like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, leveraging AI tools is a crucial strategy to approaching startup marketing in today’s modern landscape.

Copywriters and content marketers should use AI to automate, speed up and streamline their content writing process. If and when content writers are tasked with generating a large amount of content within a short period of time, they should be using AI tools to increase the efficiency of production. By using AI for the creation part of the writing process, copywriters can spend more time on revision, refinement, and strategy — all of which are crucial in ensuring both high quality and quantity of content.

In addition to copywriting, marketers can also use AI to automate a variety of more manual tasks such as ideation, editing, summarizations, research, customer engagement, etc. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s newly launched Bard can help startup marketers analyze large amounts of data and make better decisions to drive growth. We are living in an age where AI has become the norm; AI is shifting from a Silicon Valley toy into a real priority for a variety of different businesses and industries. Companies that do not integrate AI into their workflows, strategies and service offerings are going to fall behind those that do.

6. Gamification

Today’s consumers are constantly inundated with popups, ads, videos (cue the endless scroll trap) and more. Given the vast amount of information that is being thrown at users at all different touchpoints and platforms, gamification is a useful tool for startup marketers to hook users in and retain their attention through to the conversion phase.

The theory of gamification is rooted in the fundamental assumption that people are innately wired to want to become the best at what they do, and consequently look to be rewarded for their efforts. There are a lot of different ways to leverage gamification, whether it be through a retention-focused point system or a customization quiz for a product. At the core of any gamification strategy is to trigger consumers’ innate gameplay-mindset by activating the addictive dopamine loop that creates a natural desire to continue engaging with the brand.

7. Metaverse marketing

The lines between traditional reality and virtual reality are officially blurred, making it increasingly important for brands to understand how to connect with their consumers in the Metaverse space. Metaverse marketing is the practice of leveraging the Metaverse to build a strong brand presence through experience-forward and community-driven initiatives. Similar to point 3 regarding the importance of focusing on brand marketing, the growth of Metaverse marketing signals the need to move away from traditional marketing and focus on creating authentic, engaging brand experiences that foster strong relationships with consumers.

As a new entrant into the market, startups are at a particularly prime position to take advantage of the new developments and technologies of Metaverse marketing. The metaverse creates a whole new space for startups to build relationships with their consumers either through accessing established communities or by creating new ones. Though limited in terms of resources or scale, startups have the advantage of speed and flexibility, which becomes useful for jumping ahead of the curve and transitioning into new digital worlds in the Metaverse space. That being said, metaverse marketing can prove to be too expensive for startups that are early, so startups should reasonably evaluate if and how they decide to invest in this particular area.

8. Community-led growth

Community-led growth is a go-to-market strategy in which companies place value beyond their product or service by providing a platform to deepen consumer and brand interactions, providing educational resources, facilitating Q&A through real-time support and feedback, and building brand loyalty, trust, and advocacy. Community-led growth tactics offer an incredible opportunity to start-ups looking to further their product based on the conversation surrounding it.

Community-led starts with a successful product and continues momentum by building on the power of its enthusiastic consumers.

So how can start-ups take advantage of community-led growth?

1. Start by identifying what motivates your audience and what values they share.
2. Follow this by determining your platform – Where does your audience already live? Facebook Groups and Slack Channels are both key channels, though gaming communities communicate on platforms like Twitch and Discord, while other brands are hosting their communities on dedicated community platforms
3. After setting up your community platform, start connecting and fostering a community of users who align with your brand. Encourage these community members to also subscribe to your brand-owned channels beyond social media. This includes newsletters, blogs, and podcasts.
4. Gather consumer driven-data. Listen to your audience and work to understand what their interests are and what their lives look like. Once emerged, these insights can be incredibly valuable to improving your business and ideating the next steps.
5. From there, you should look to expand your community’s reach via industry experts.
6. Finally, your community could grow large enough to translate events offline, such as in-person events, ambassador-based sponsored events, and more.

9. Creator economy & UGC

Leveraging the rapidly growing creator economy to produce authentic UGC is a key startup marketing strategy for brands looking to gain and retain consumer trust. Brand trust is everything and leveraging UGC is one of the most efficient ways to establish it. Don’t believe us? Take a look at the stats:

1. On average, 60% of people said social media content from friends and family (word of mouth) impacts their purchasing decisions, while only 23% said celebrity influencer content was impactful.
2. According to a Comscore study, customer engagement is around 28% higher with user-generated content than with content that is professionally created.
3. 79% of customers say user-generated content has a strong influence on their purchasing decisions.

The growing amount of sheer content that is available online is making consumers more and more skeptical — meaning brands and creators will have to shift their strategies to provide authentic, value-driven content that aligns with their target audiences’ interests and beliefs. We see this shift reflected in the way that platforms are built too, with the rise of TikTok’s interest-based algorithm and Instagram’s move to incorporate more “recommended” accounts on a user’s feed.

Given this shift towards more authentic and consumer-centric content, startups can leverage UGC to expand their top-of-funnel reach, provide social proof, and build user trust and loyalty. The raw, unfiltered aesthetic of UGC is also perfect for startups that may not have the budget to allocate to creating ads with a high production value. The nature of creator partnerships are moving towards placing an increased importance on authenticity and value as opposed to follower count, meaning startups can take advantage of smaller micro-influencers and tap into micro-communities that have a more loyal, communicative and influential fan base.

10. Personalization

Consumers want to feel like a brand sees, hears, and understands their needs — which is why personalization is so important for modern brands looking to resonate with their customers on a deeper level. Content is not a one-size-fits-all strategy; in fact, 45% of consumers said they would seek other options if a company failed to provide a personalized experience. One way to do this is through content personalization, meaning you serve site visitors with content personalized to their preferences. If feasible, start-ups should consider integrating content-oriented tools into the marketing mix to better appeal to various customer segments in various places on the funnel.

Driving growth with a future-forward mindset

Startups must be innovative, resilient, experimental, and open to challenging traditional systems that once worked. As we move into a space where physical and digital realities are being blurred and AI is becoming the norm, everything listed above will play an increasingly crucial role in the startup growth space. With that being said, we know marketing is a constantly evolving space that will never have one singular best practice. With new channel opportunities launching frequently, we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for startups using them in their own innovative way in 2024.

The post Startup Marketing Strategies: 10 Tactics for Growth in 2024 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

In this article, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about Performance Max campaigns — including a breakdown on how these campaigns operate, how to set them up, the pros and cons, and how you can leverage them to drive success based on your goals! If that all sounds good to you, keep reading to learn how you can take your performance to the max with Performance Max campaigns.

What Are Performance Max Campaigns?

According to Google, “Performance Max campaigns allow you to promote your products or services across the Google Network by creating one easy-to-manage campaign.” In other words, Performance Max campaigns offer single-campaign optimization opportunities across multiple Google advertising platforms, which include: paid search, shopping, display, YouTube, and Gmail. The way this campaign functions is simple: the advertiser provides various assets appropriate for each channel including video, display ads, a shopping feed (if applicable), and ad copy featuring multiple headlines and descriptions. From that point on, the work needed on the advertisers’ end is significantly less, while the bulk is left to Google’s AI to pick, choose and test assets that work best.

Who Should User Performance Max Campaigns?

Without a doubt, Performance Max campaigns will be utilized by all Google-based marketers at one point; however, these campaigns are notably useful for in-house advertisers and those looking to set up a simple Google campaign without having to dive too deep into strategy. With Performance Max, advertisers are easily able to run ads across multiple channels with little lift and optimizations needed. Performance Max campaigns use a holistic approach to drive as much success as possible with the assets provided while utilizing Google’s AI bid strategies.

Optimizing Toward Your Goals Using Performance Max

Performance Max campaigns are currently limited to the types of goals they can be optimized toward. At the moment, these campaigns are available to advertisers looking to drive sales, online leads, or to drive users to a storefront. Goals that are currently not available to Performance Max campaigns include engagement, app promotion, product & brand consideration, and brand awareness & reach.

Setting Up Performance Max Campaigns

As we’ve already talked about, Performance Max campaigns are relatively easy to set up; however, we do recommend having a strategy in place before diving into this. Performance Max campaigns are broken down by asset groups, which are “a collection of creatives centered on a theme or related to a target audience.” In other words, asset groups are defined by the audience you choose to target and the assets that match your targeted audience.

What Assets Do You Need?

Asset groups consist of a variety of assets Google utilizes to reach all channels, including Search, display, youtube, Gmail, and shopping. With that being said, for your Performance Max campaign to reach all channels, Google recommends these specific assets to get started:

Text Specifications

• 1 Final URL
• Up To 5 Headlines
  • One headline should be 15 characters or less, while the others should stay under a 30 character limit
• Up To 5 Long Headlines (90 character limit)
• Up To 5 Descriptions
  • One description should be under 30 characters or less, while others should stay under a 90 character limit
• 1 Business Name
• 1 Call-To-Action
  • Shop, Learn More, Visit Us, Etc…
• Up To 2 Display URL Paths

Image Specifications

Each asset group can contain a total of 15 photos and 5 logo images. Some recommended image formats:

• 3 Landscape Images
• 3 Square Images
  • For store visits, use 1 square image
• 1 Portrait Image
• 1 Square Logo

Video Recommendations

Video is required for all Performance Max campaigns. If videos are not created, they’ll likely be generated based on other assets provided in the campaign. As a best practice, videos should be greater than 10 seconds long.

Looking for more tips on constructing the perfect YouTube ad? Learn more.

About Audience Signals

On top of providing assets to the asset group, Google recommends providing an audience signal as well. According to Google, “Audience signals allow you to add audience suggestions that help Google Ads automation optimize for your selected goals.” Though audience signals are not essential to campaigns, they are a Google-recommended best practice that will likely impact your overall optimization score.

The Pros of Performance Max Campaigns

Without a doubt, there are a ton of benefits Google offers to advertisers through their Performance Max campaigns. As we’ve talked about, Performance Max campaigns are the simplest way to reach multiple channels in one singular campaign, making for an improved user experience and easy campaign management.

Ease of Setting Up

Rather than creating separate campaigns for separate channels, Performance Max campaigns are relatively seamless to set up. After setting your standard budget, location targets, and choosing your preferred campaign settings, assets are uploaded in one singular area (see below).

With all assets uploaded in one place, the campaign presents how ads will be displayed on each channel. This is also a great way to see how your assets interact with each other, and if they convey the messaging you were looking for. The only thing needed beyond this point are extensions, which are not essential to activating the campaign.

Result-Driven

Like other Google automation features, Performance Max campaigns are naturally performance-driven. With this automation, Google’s AI automatically tests creativity and serves top-performing creative on top-performing channels based on its findings and what’s the most likely to convert. If you’re looking to hit specific targets, Google automatically optimizes toward the most conversions. For eCommerce-based campaigns, advertisers can take optimization a step further and optimize toward conversion value and target ROAS.

Holistic Approach & Full Channel Coverage

For most advertisers looking to take advantage of all of Google’s offered channels, this is without a doubt the biggest pro of utilizing a Performance Max campaign strategy. As stated, these campaigns are the most simple and straightforward way for advertisers to market across a number of different channels in one singular campaign, rather than running multiple campaigns across various channels.

Location & Ad Schedule Visibility

Despite having lesser optimization and insight opportunities compared to channel-specific campaigns, Performance Max campaigns do offer both location and ad schedule adjustments. This is essential for targeting your ideal location at top-performing times, and a feature all advertisers should take advantage of.

The Cons of Performance Max Campaigns

Despite offering a variety of benefits for advertisers, it’s important to note that Performance Max campaigns fall flat in a few areas — primarily in terms of campaign management and performance visibility. Let’s break it down:

Visibility & Transparency

Like other Google-automated campaigns, Performance Max campaigns are a black box. Though Google makes an effort to provide insight on top-performing audiences and rates ad creative on a “Great, Good, and Low” basis, there’s not enough data to highlight conclusive results about what’s working and what’s not. Not only are advertisers limited to the data Google chooses to provide, but there is also little to no visibility on channel-specific performance and how exactly the provided assets are being utilized. As these campaigns are new to the Google landscape, we’re hoping to see some drastic changes and improvements here.

Bid Limitations

Not only are insights limited, but there are specific bid limitations here. Performance Max campaigns are limited to one bid strategy – maximize conversions. With that being said, eCommerce accounts have the ability to choose “maximize bid strategy” and set a target ROAS, but that’s about it. If you were hoping to have more control over how your budget is spent or your CPC’s, look elsewhere and toward more channel-specific campaigns.

Cannibalizing Channel-Specific Campaigns

As stated above, Performance Max campaigns are a bit of a black box, meaning we have little to no visibility into performance, and notably – channel-specific performance. With no insight on where ads are served and how they’re converting, there’s no way to be sure these campaigns aren’t cannibalizing your other campaigns and leveraging the most successful keywords, placements, and audiences that have driven historic success. If you plan on running a Performance Max campaign alongside channel-specific campaigns – keep a close eye on how this impacts your performance both holistically and channel-specifically.

Asset Level Performance

Unfortunately, asset groups do not function the same way as ad groups do. There’s no way to evaluate how one asset group is performing over the other. In other words, there’s no way of knowing if you should pause the entire group on continuing to run it, with no insight on audience or hard data on creative performance. As marketers aim to be as data-driven as possible, this feels like quite a setback in terms of making the right decisions to drive optimal results.

Though audience insight is limited at the asset group level, the good news is that you can evaluate asset-level performance on the product tab, where you can evaluate product-specific performance. On the tab, the asset group is listed next to the product that was served.

Inability To Negate Keywords

If you thought you could prevent channel cannibalization by negating the keywords you’re already bidding on, think again. Performance Max campaigns do not allow for negative keywords or the application of negative keyword lists.

Limited Targeting & Audience Targeting

Beyond choosing audiences for your asset group, it’s difficult to evaluate audience performance. Like I mentioned above, asset groups provide virtually no insights on performance, and audience performance is no different. If you choose an audience signal for your asset groups, you won’t receive much information on performance outside of product performance. With that being said, make sure your audience signal is relevant to your product as you want to make sure you’re reaching users who could benefit from its use.

Device Limitation & Testing

Device performance and bid adjustments are a key part of optimizing Google campaigns, especially for advertisers looking to test mobile vs. desktop performance. Beyond the inability to implement device modifiers, Performance Max campaigns have yet to release information of device-specific performance, giving no clarity on performance. As a workaround, we recommend using analytics for all your device insight needs, but we wish Google would release it within their advertising interface.

Performance Max Best Practices

As we’ve had time to test Performance Max campaigns, we’ve put together a list of best practices and considerations for advertising looking to run a campaign.

Utilizing Audience Signals

Your audience signal determines who your ads appear to, regardless of the channel. Google recommends pairing an affinity/interested-based audience with a custom audience (Site visitors are a great one). Based on this audience selection, Google’s AI will begin to target users within this audience, while identifying users similar to this audience to target.

With that being said, not every converting user may fall into this category. Consider testing an asset group without an audience signal. For example, we noticed with audience signals and specific targeting, our shopping ads were not appearing to all users searching for the brands’ Trademark. After removing the audience signal, we were able to reach a larger audience with little impact on our ROAS. To ensure campaigns weren’t affected, we placed a target ROAS to maintain a level of campaign safety.

Choosing Assets

After deciding your target audience, ensure assets correlate with that same audience. Though gender brand awareness assets will perform well, it’s great to take things a step further to make sure you’re fully making the potential customer aware of how your brand fits their needs. For example, if you’re targeting users with curly hair to sell your hair product, consider having a mix of assets relevant to a curly-haired audience.

On top of relevant assets, always include promotional assets as well (if applicable). Sales, savings, and free shipping deals are some of the best ways to drive a click, and Performance Max is no different. Despite having limited insights into asset performance, value props are always rated as top performers.

Monitoring Your Performance Max Campaigns

Like most Google campaigns utilizing automated bidding strategies, they take around 14-30 days to ramp up post-approval. We’ve already talked about how Performance Max campaigns are a black box, so let’s look at what you can do to monitor and assess performance:

Utilize the Insights Tab

The insights tab is sometimes overlooked by marketers, but should not be neglected when reviewing your Performance Max campaign performance. Within the insights section, you can find a mix of top-performing audience segments and top audience themes. Though there are few immediate optimizations to be made based on these insights, consider taking these learnings and applying them to your other channel-specific campaigns (if applicable).

Product-Specific Performance

Good news for eCommerce marketers, with the migration from smart shopping to Performance Max campaigns, not all shopping insights are lost – they actually stay on par with the amount of visibility received via smart shopping. On the products tab, marketers are able to see which products are performing well in their respective asset group and can pause, enable, and break out partitions accordingly.

Extension Performance

If you previously added extensions to your Performance Max campaign, the extensions tab allows you to review their performance based on a few metrics: Impressions, cost, and clicks. Though data is limited, you have the opportunity to improve these if the data dictates it.

Location & Ad Schedules

If you added targeted location and ad schedules when you launched your campaigns, make sure that you always consistently check in on the performance. Advertisers have the option to add positive and negative modifiers here. Despite the fact Google’s AI already optimizes for you, these tabs still provide valuable insight on performance and give the option to easily exclude or scale back as needed.

eCommerce Campaigns & The Future of Smart Shopping

As Google continues to grow and evolve its advertising landscape, we’re seeing more and more of its earlier features phased out and replaced with newer, more advanced strategies. With that being said, Smart Shopping will be phased out in 2022. Though advertisers will no longer be able to create smart shopping campaigns, they will be able to maintain their current campaigns. Smart Shopping has been a valuable asset to eCommerce marketers for years, and we’re looking forward to watching the space evolve as more marketers migrate their efforts into Performance Max campaigns.

As a best practice, we recommend getting ahead of the curve before smart shopping is completely phased out. Though advertisers will be able to maintain their campaigns, it’s no secret that Google likes to prioritize their newest innovations, and advertisers not migrating before the phase-out date run the risk of devaluing their efforts. On top of this, it’s important to familiarize yourself with this new format.

Though Google recommends providing assets for all channels offered via Performance Max, it’s not necessary. If you’re looking to run only a shopping campaign, the only asset you’ll need is your feed connected through the merchant center. From the feed, Google will generate ads based on product feed imagery, similar to the way smart shopping works now.

Performance Max Campaigns & The Future of Google Marketing

To most marketers that have used Google’s advertising platform before, it’s no surprise that with each new release, campaigns become more and more automated. Notably, with Google’s recent announcement that they will be phasing out expanded text ads and smart shopping, it’s obvious automation is being pushed more now than ever. ETA’s and smart shopping are two assets that have been essential to marketers over the course of the last few years, and assets that aren’t very dated to begin with.

Performance Max campaigns are the most automation-driven campaign type we’ve seen thus far, and we can’t wait to see what’s next. Though there are valid concerns about this new campaign type, we’ve seen promising results and will continue to test to drive success for our partners. As Google continuously introduces new products while phasing out the old, we’re embracing this new era of automation and all the success it offers.

The post Performance Max: Everything You Need To Know About Google’s Newest Campaign Type appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.