Increase Conversions with Performance Planner (full set)

Have you ever asked yourself these questions?

"How will my campaigns perform next quarter?" "Is there a better way to distribute my current spend to drive increased conversions for my current Google Ads investment?" "How much budget do I need for my Google Ads to achieve key performance indicators (KPIs)?" "How can I use Google Ads to drive more sales, while remaining profitable and further grow my business?"

Performance Planner Best Practices:

1. Create separate plans for each marketing objective. Don't add all brand and generic campaigns into the same plan. That's because different campaigns often have different marketing objectives. Incremental conversions are achieved by creating separate plans for each marketing objective. 2. Set bids and budgets using non-last click conversions. By default, Performance Planner will forecast conversions based on what's included in the Conversions column in your Google Ads front end. To allocate budgets that drive incremental conversions, set bids and budgets using non-last click conversions in your Conversions column. 3. Regularly check your plan. Forecasts improve when plans are generated closer to the actual run date. Make sure to regularly check back on your plan before implementing it.

How to use Performance Planner

1. Learn Create a new budget plan to learn the best bids and budgets for your campaigns to drive incremental conversions. 2. Explore Explore further optimizations and forecast how you can grow your business with Google Ads. 3. Do Review and implement changes prescribed by your Performance Planner plan. 4. Repeat Ensure you react to external factors and optimize to the target metrics set. Use Performance Planner on a monthly basis for best results.

Optimal budgets and bids are crucial to getting the most of your marketing budget! Here's how Performance Planner can drive more conversions at different spend scenarios.

1. The additional conversions you can generate at the same spend using Performance Planner. 2. The incremental number of conversions you can achieve and maximum amount you can spend without diminishing returns (maintain your current CPA cost per action) 3. The incremental number of conversions you can achieve and maximum amount you can spend at your desired target CPA goal (in order to remain profitable) 4. Additional spend and resulting conversion scenarios at higher target CPA goals (reduce profitability to increase total conversion volume)

By planning your Google Ads budgets in advance, you can:

1. Understand the future spend potential of current Google Ads campaigns to help drive budget decisions 2. Take advantage of seasonality to capture incremental opportunities 3. Set optimal bids and budgets across your campaigns to help ensure that ROI performance is maximized 4. Find new opportunities to grow your sales volumes with Google Ads

Key Performance Indicator (KPIs)

A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.

What's the main goal of the Google Ads Performance Planner tool? Select the best answer. A. It helps you forecast what your minimum budget should be across campaigns. B. It helps you forecast and guarantee a return on investment based on future budgets. C. It helps you forecast and determine your budgets, while also improving your return on investment. D. It helps you choose your future bid strategy.

A. It helps you forecast what your minimum budget should be across campaigns. B. It helps you forecast and guarantee a return on investment based on future budgets. C. It helps you forecast and determine your budgets, while also improving your return on investment. D. It helps you choose your future bid strategy.

Tip

Based on 250 random Google Ads Customer IDs*, Performance Planner highlighted how to find an average 43% increase in conversions — for the same investment — by reallocating bids and budgets between campaigns. It's also been seen to highlight how to grow conversions by 80% for the same CPA (no diminishing returns). *Source: Internal Performance Planner pipeline data

Planning is the crucial first step to achieving success with Google Ads

Digital marketing is constantly evolving, which helps businesses like yours connect with more customers. By planning your Google Ads budgets on a monthly basis in advance, you can help ensure that when people need products or information, your ads can meet them at the right time to help maximize conversions and achieve your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Knowledge check Which of the following are components of Performance Planner's forecast methodology? Select all that apply. Forecasting Simulation Validation Machine learning

Forecasting Simulation Validation Machine learning All of these are components of the forecast methodology.

Forcecasting

Google Search ad auctions — made up of billions of searches per week — powers our forecast engine. Get accurate forecasts Forecasts are based on Google data and your account's historical performance, and then validated using machine learning. That means Performance Planner plans are more likely to hit KPIs than prior estimation methods

Recap

In this course, you learned about the value of planning for success and how Performance Planner can help you maximize your return on investment.

How often is it recommended to repeat the budget planning process? Select the best answer. Monthly Daily Annually Weekly

Monthly Daily Annually Weekly

What changes will Performance Planner recommend?

Once you use Performance Planner to create a plan with the target date, campaigns, budget, target conversion volume, and target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) for upcoming periods, the tool will provide one of the recommendations below. These recommendations are campaign settings forecasted to help drive maximum conversions and the most efficient return on your investment for your targeted budget.

Simulation

Our forecast engine simulates relevant ad auctions with query level variables, including seasonality, clickthrough rate, competitors, landing page, and time of day.

How does the Performance Planner work?

Performance Planner determines the optimal bids and average daily budget allocations across all of your campaigns to help increase the number of conversions you can achieve for any future spend scenario.

What's the Google Ads Performance Planner?

Performance Planner is a new forecasting tool that uses machine learning to reveal the possibilities for your Google Ads campaigns. With this tool, you can explore forecasts for your upcoming monthly, quarterly, and annual budgets for current campaigns, while also helping to improve your return on investment.

Why use Performance Planner in Google Ads over traditional forecasting methods?

Performance Planner highlights growth opportunities for your Google Ads always-on campaigns. Having the optimal budgets and bids is crucial to making the most of your marketing budget and growing your business with Google Ads.

Note

Performance Planner is a planning tool and does not optimize in the Google Ads front end toward forecasted KPIs. Unpredictable external factors in a dynamic auction environment can mean Performance Planner forecasts may have discrepancies, so it's important to continually monitor performance and optimize toward performance targets.

Note

Performance Planner is different from the Recommendations page. On the Recommendations page, you can apply optimization suggestions to help improve your campaigns. Whereas Performance Planner is your go-to tool for deciding the budget required to help reach your marketing goals.

Tip

Performance Planner is our newest tool in Google Ads to help you answer the questions above and determine the advertising budget required to help reach your marketing goals.

How do I see and implement these recommended changes?

Performance Planner provides a CSV download with the recommended bid scaling, Target CPA, Target ROAS, and average daily budget amounts. You can manually apply these suggestions through the Google Ads campaign management interface, or you can download a Google Ads Editor file and upload to Google Ads Editor to see and action the recommended changes.

How does Performance Planner forecast campaign performance?

Performance Planner uses a combination of account history and machine learning to power forecasts. In Google Ads tools, forecasts must meet a certain level of accuracy. As a result, the confidence interval of these forecasts is likely greater than that of other available forecast tools.

Performace Planner Process:

Performance Planner will generate a forecast of what your campaigns will achieve for a future period, if you make no changes to your current campaigns. This forecast is represented by the grey dot. Using Google's seasonality data and insights, Performance Planner will predict the results if you use optimal bids and average daily budgets across your campaigns to maximize the number of conversions for any future spend scenario. These results are represented by a blue line. When you choose a spend point on the blue line, Performance Planner will improve your ROI by reallocating spend between campaigns through adjusting bids and average daily budgets. See these changes in the campaigns table or via CSV download.

Search Maximize Clicks or Maximize Conversions campaigns

Recommended average daily budget

Search Manual cost-per-click (CPC) or Enhanced CPC campaigns

Recommended average daily budget and campaign bid scaling (1.5 scaling means + 50% bid scaling)

Search Target CPA or Target return on ad spend (ROAS) campaigns

Recommended average daily budget, Campaign-level Target CPA, or Campaign-level Target ROAS

Here are some additional factors that you should check while budget planning: Repeat the planning process monthly to find growth opportunities in Google Ads and optimize for your target metrics.

Seasonality Take advantage of seasonal trends throughout the year. Market Share Get ahead of fluctuating auctions due to activity from other businesses and other external factors. Growth Use Performance Planner to compare previous periods and see a forecast of the growth possibilities you can drive using Google Ads.

Why should I use Performance Planner every month?

Seasonality, fluctuating auctions, and competitors mean that Google Ads campaigns should be planned and optimized on at least a monthly basis. Using Performance Planner every month lets you optimize your budgets and bids so you can drive more conversions for the same investment.

True or False: It's best practice to separate campaigns with different marketing objectives into different Performance Planner plans, so that spend is not reallocated between two different marketing budgets or objectives.

True

Validation

We perform forward and backward measurements of accuracy for thousands of campaign samples — across one, seven, 30, and 90 day periods — to ensure we're making valid recommendations.

Performance Planner Best Practices

Use non-last click attribution conversions Performance Planner forecasts for conversion types that are activated for the Include in Conversions setting in the Conversions column. To allocate budgets that drive incremental conversions, include non-last click attribution conversions in the Include in Conversions column. Create multiple plans for campaigns that have different marketing objectives It's a best practice to separate campaigns with different marketing objectives into different Performance Planner plans, so that spend isn't reallocated between two different marketing objectives. Instead, consider grouping campaigns by marketing goal or budget. For example, you could split consideration and intent-focused campaigns by separating generic search campaigns (such as a campaign containing keyword "suv sale") and brand search campaigns (such as a campaign containing keyword "buy Landriver suv") into separate plans. Use the performance targets feature Unpredictable external factors in a dynamic auction environment mean that Performance Planner forecasts may have discrepancies. As a result, it's important to continually track and optimize performance. Use the performance targets feature to monitor targets set in Performance Planner and receive alerts and recommendations when a campaign isn't on track Use optimization score in the Recommendations page to improve your campaigns Performance Planner is used for forecasting future periods and recommendations in Performance Planner can be used as guidance to ensure seasonality and budget reallocation are accounted for future periods so you can prevent your campaigns from becoming "Limited by Budget"

Machine Learning

We use machine learning to fine tune forecasts and achieve a higher level of accuracy. Get the benefits of machine learning Performance Planner helps you discover the best bids and budgets so you can drive the most conversions for any spend scenario.

Knowledge check How often should you repeat the budget planning process? Select the best answer. Weekly Annually Daily Monthly

Weekly Annually Daily Monthly You should repeat the budget planning process every month to maximize your growth opportunities