Google Ads Performance Targets

Key Takeaways

Google ads performance targets is a way for advertisers to track metrics important to specific campaigns to see if they're reaching their goals in order to do this you have to create a campaign group and a campaign group can either be one campaign or a variety of campaigns spread across a few different campaign types so this video will show you how performance targets work we'll show you how to create a campaign group and the settings of a campaign group and then we'll show you which metrics can be tracked and where to find it within Google ads to see if you are reaching the goals that you want within a given time frame before we head into Google ads I wanted to give a pretty high level description on how performance targets work when creating a performance Target you have to create a campaign group now one of the first things we do when we head into Google ads will be to show you how to create a campaign group and when you're making these you can either select one campaign or choose a combination of campaigns from a few different campaign types within Google ads you can create performance targets at any point and even after you have saved it you can always go back in to your campaign groups and performance targets and edit them at any point this makes perfect sense because Google understands that your goals and the target metrics that you want to reach could change at any point and then based on what you have set your performance targets at within the campaign group Google ads will estimate to see if you're on track to meet your goals for that specific campaign group now these are very easy to set up but there's a good amount of advertisers that don't know that they exist because they're kind of buried within the Google ads interface so let's hop into Google ads and we'll show you where to find performance targets camp paint groups and how to set them up we typically like to use the pay media Pro's demo account when we're making these videos but for this one I can't do it because we don't run any campaigns so I don't have any metrics to use for performance targets so because I had to use a client account there's going to be a lot of stuff blurred out and I apologize for that have you seen the navigation I'm in the main campaigns overview and from this initial view performance targets or campaign groups are not visible in order to find it you may have to go within the navigation and click on show more even from there still not visible so we need to scroll down and there we see performance targets as well as campaign groups and the first thing we need to do is to create a new campaign group since this is brand new within the account we're going to go and click on the blue plus button which is over here after you have already created your first campaign group to create a new one you'll have to click on this second plus button so either or within the new campaign group you'll have to name it already got it out of the way and the first thing you would do would be to select the campaigns that you want to be in the campaign group this particular client account is just very search heavy with some display but but a campaign group can be any combination of search shopping video or display campaigns so one example would be holiday campaigns you could have December holiday campaigns within search shopping display video you could group all those into one if collectively they need to reach some sort of goal in my case I'm just going to select a few options here I chose four campaigns within this account that are industry specific the ones that I don't have checked are very generic terms hence why I named this campaign group industry specific we typically see better return from these campaigns combined both with Google ads metrics as well as the sale qualified lead metrics that we get within their CRM one important thing to note about campaign groups and that is a campaign can only be in one campaign group at a time so going back to the holiday example if you already made a campaign group for Christmas put a bunch of campaigns in there already any one of those campaigns within a Christmas campaign group would not be allowed to be added to just an overall holiday campaign group because you've already entered it within one but as I said in the intro slides campaign groups can be edited at any time so you see in the X buttons here you can always remove a campaign from a group if you want to add it to a better categorization so then let's go down a little bit and really look at the performance targets for this campaign group the performance Target will track a single group of metrics so if I go up and click on this Blue Link we will be able to choose which metrics we want to track and we get three to choose from they're going to default to conversions but if I click on the drop down I can change the performance Target metric to be clicks conversion value or unique users unique users is pretty straightforward let's say you have a campaign group that's really focused on brand awareness and reach you might be interested in looking at unique users because we understand that it's possible that users will see your ad multiple times with conversion value you're going to get metrics that'll look at the value generated from conversions alongside with specific cost information now it's easy to say value is just associated with Revenue but we know we could set value within our goal setup whether you're importing your goals from Google analytics or within the conversions section up in the top navigation which will live under your tools and settings with clicks you'll get metrics for tracking the number and the cost of clicks but for this client I am going to stick with conversions metrics for tracking the number and cost of conversions next you will look at the date range you would want to select for tracking these metrics monthly was the default option but if we head to the drop down menu again you can change it to weekly monthly quarterly or if you choose custom you'll get a calendar where you can select the date range if I click out of that then you have the option to tell Google if you want this to repeat just select your day and then tell Google how many days you would want this action to repeat in my case I'm going to look at this on a monthly basis pretty much just choosing the default options that Google had in place already and then we need to choose a performance Target for the conversions option we can set up performance Target for spend number of conversions as well as average CPA as I said earlier this client knows that the industry three specific campaigns provide the best return so we want to make sure that collectively these campaigns are getting a certain percentage of their monthly budget we could easily control this with shared budgets if you want to know what that is you can watch this video right here but I still like to have more control with individual daily budgets because performance between the four campaigns I've selected still fluctuates so since I'm not using shared budgets I still want to track performance targets to make sure that these four are still spending a certain amount so in this case I'm going to select between and then add in my minimum and maximum for number of conversions we could choose greater than or equal to or between I'm not looking for a range here we're looking to grow and scale these campaigns a little bit so I'm going to choose greater than or equal to they're telling me we had 25 conversions within October for now I'm going to leave it as the same yes I said we're looking to scale and grow here normally say shouldn't you put more because that is our goal that is our Target however I understand once we get into the later half of Q4 performance slows down for this lead gen client 25 year over year would be better performance and as I've already said multiple times I can always go back in and edit our performance targets if seasonality is really in play and we see there's a variety of average CPA less than or equal to or between this particular client doesn't care so I don't need to include it if I'm happy with the performance targets that I have set up for the campaigns that I've made within this campaign group I can click done but first i'm just going to look at what other performance targets are available depending on the other metrics that are available to select let me open up another window okay in this window I am measuring by clicks and there we see we could set performance targets for spend again and instead of conversions and CPA we get average CPC as well as number of clicks time frame will remain the same if I change clicks to conversion value span is included again I can add performance targets for total value of conversions and then I can also add for average row as if you're fairly new to the pay media industry that is returned on ad spend and then if we change the target to Unique users spend is again the default and then the only other app option would be number of unique users so those are your other options but I have already saved the industry specific campaign group so once everything is saved so then we can head back into the main campaign group section within Google ads to show you what it looks like it's wonderful get the Google ads mobile app notification it's kind of locking a little bit but we went back to the campaign group section the very bottom of the left-hand navigation and there we see our campaign group all the metrics within here I haven't customized The Columns or anything it's all looking at the date range that I have set here this is just looking at current performance this is not the performance targets that we created we would have to go back into the performance targets section and here we see different columns that we cannot change or edit you see the column information is pretty much what I set up within the campaign group and the metrics I chose for this particular performance Target I want this running every month I'm focused on conversions for now I want at least 25 conversions and I want to make sure that the campaigns within this group spend between this amount if I head on over and click on the campaign group we see the current month that we're in is active and Google's already prepping for next month with a scheduled status for December so since I set it up to be recurring monthly we'll just have to come back later on and see if we're meeting our performance for December clearly we have to wait until December actually happens for anything active like the current month the performance data right now is still being collected we see actual numbers that are blank right now that is because I just created it I can come back fairly soon and start to see the actual numbers in there based upon performance and then your status could also say pass so once we do hit December my November status will say passed and then we can come back and review if we met our performance Target goals for the month of November performance Target stats are calculated day to day and any changes that you make to a current campaign group will not affect the metrics of any past performance so it could be something that you may need to note separately if you're moving or adding specific campaign groups might not be a fair Apples to Apples comparison and of course to edit this specific campaign group you just need to click on the blue pencil if you want to you can choose a different metric to Target change your numbers or in my case if I do want to start looking at average CPA I could add that last Target for the specific metric now again since I just created this I'm not getting all the information that you will see within your performance tab targets so for this last piece we're going to jump to a Google ad support page to look at the final status information that we will get from our performance targets overview when reviewing your performance targets Google will also give you a status to see if you're on track to meet your goals so Google can let you know if you're on track pretty much to see where you are in the month and if you're on Pace to meet the goals that you have set within your performance Target metrics you can get a status report to see if any of your metrics need attention this is during the time frame of the current performance Target pretty much it's the nice way to say you're not on track you could have a status of Target met this is going to happen for past status performance targets or if you've quickly met your target within the current time frame and then the last is Target not met and this is definitely just for past time frame in my case I set my performance Target up to be monthly so let's say November we don't hit 25 conversions in the month in December I can come back and look and they will let me know for that specific metric if I didn't hit at least 25 conversions it'll say that within the status column and that is pretty much what we can do with Google ads performance targets we may not get a ton of different metrics to review but for something as simple as tracking a group of search campaigns or a theme of campaigns like the holiday option I mentioned earlier it's really easy to get simple reporting straight to the point to see if you're meeting the main metric goals for the month hopefully we can get some additional features in the future I'm a big video guy so I would like some video specific metrics to track for those campaigns but who knows we have to deal with what we have currently if you have any additional questions on Google ads performance targets how it works how to edit them how to set them up please let us know in the comments below thanks for watching our video we really appreciate it if you liked it give us a thumbs up below if you really liked it maybe think about subscribing to the paid media Pros YouTube channel and you'll 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