Digital marketing is a cost-effective, high-impact way for small businesses to connect with consumers and compete with larger companies. It is possible thanks to its unique property that allows firms to operate with limited resources and time. It also allows them to outsource various aspects to augment their marketing team’s efforts.
Below, we discuss why Google’s Performance Planner is so crucial for businesses and marketing managers who choose this route. We also explain how to use this tool for the best effect. Let’s jump right into it!
What is the Performance Planner?
The Performance Planner is a part of Google’s digital marketing suite. It works alongside AdWords, Analytics, Search Console, and many other tools to make it easier for businesses to promote products and services via Google. This tool allows you to predict Google Ads performance for Search, Display, or Shopping campaigns, taking into consideration billions of search queries, as well as updating data every 24hrs.
The program then simulates relevant ad auctions over the past week to 10 days. It gives you an insightful output that also takes into account variables that can affect performance (seasonality, competitor activity, past and existing performance, and landing page).
Why Use the Performance Planner?
The Performance Planner is essential for controlling costs in online advertising campaigns. It tells you how to adjust your budget and bids to optimise for a specific metric across all your campaigns.
The system uses machine learning to deliver its results. It involves analysing billions upon billions of search queries in order to make better decisions. This tool allows you to calculate the potential impact of changes to your campaign on specific metrics. It helps you align your ad campaigns with your goals.
The Performance Planner is so efficient because:
- It will make recommendations that can be validated by machine learning and optimise your campaign.
- It allows you to create campaigns tailored to your advertising spend.
- It offers opportunities during seasonal periods.
- You can test different campaign settings before implementing them.
How To Set up the Performance Planner
You can find the Performance Planner in your Google Ads account.
The tool will automatically choose the most eligible ad campaigns. If your campaign doesn’t appear, it probably doesn’t meet the criteria. You can find all the requirements by clicking here.
The most important criteria for campaigns are:
- In the last seven days, the campaign has received over three clicks.
- It uses bid strategies, including manual CPC, target CPA, or enhanced CPC.
- It produced at least one conversion in the last week.
- It runs for 72 hours or longer.
If you cannot use the Performance Planner, it might be due to the following issues:
- Your ads are running for less than 72 hours.
- You do not receive clicks or conversions.
- Your campaign was deleted.
- You are using a shared budget to fund your campaigns.
Once you have identified an eligible campaign, you can choose the performance metric you wish to track from the drop-down menu. These include conversions, conversion value, and clicks.
Next, choose the forecast period (in dates) and the time period (number of days) you want to cover. If you wish, you can also select a target. Most marketing professionals put their CPA or ROAS (conv. Value/cost) as the goal.
Understanding the Results
The Performance Planner will generate two resources: a Plan Summary, which lists the metric increases and decreases per campaign, and an Ads Editor file, which can be uploaded directly to Ads Editor. The latter allows for streamlining any changes you want to make to your budget or bids.
- The summary graph — This clean, simple graph tracks campaign performance according to your input settings. It gives a visual representation of the forecast. If your campaigns perform well above Google’s expectations, they should be above the blue line. If they are below it, you will need to adjust your bidding or spending to get them back on track.
- The before/after comparison table for metrics — This table tracks the spend, key metrics, and target metrics along both existing and planned tracks. It makes it easy to get a high-level overview of your campaign’s growth potential.
- The compare tab — This chart is useful for keeping track of existing settings, planned settings, and past performance. Its straightforward format makes it simple and easy to understand.
Reviewing and Implementing Your Plan
Google Ads Editor allows you to review and execute your plan. This way, you can optimise your ad spend, performance, and results.
Here’s how you do it:
- Sign in to your Google Ads Account.
- Click on the Tools and Settings icons. They are located in the upper right-hand corner.
- Choose the Performance Planner.
- Click on a plan you wish to review and then implement.
- Click on the Download icon. Again, this icon is located in the upper right-hand corner.
- Select the Ads Editor file(.csv).
To review and implement your plan, follow these instructions. They will help you import a CSV file into Google Ads Editor.
