Performance Max for Store Goals: Complete Guide

Are you wondering if there’s any specific way in which you can use Google Ads to bring more traffic to your physical store? While online reach is important for your business’s growth, helping people take real-world actions like visiting your store matters just as much. That’s exactly where Performance Max for store goals can help you. 

PMax campaigns for store goals are designed to help merchants and advertisers promote their stores across different Google properties, such as Google Search Network, Maps, YouTube, etc. 

These campaigns can ensure that you are successfully meeting all your offline business goals by following the right Performance Max best practices.

In this guide, you will learn how to setup Performance Max campaigns for store goals, how these campaigns work, where they appear, and other important details that you must know for making the most of these campaigns for your offline business’s success.  

What are Performance Max Campaigns For Store Goals? 

Performance Max for Store Goals is a subtype of Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. These campaigns are designed to help businesses drive offline actions and maximize in-store value, such as store visits, calls, in-store purchases, or even direction requests. These campaigns allow businesses to provide all the essential information their potential customers need to decide when and how they should visit their stores. 

With Performance Max for store goals, Google enables you to easily promote your store across Google’s largest properties, such as: 

• Google Search Network 
• Google Display Network 
• YouTube 
• Gmail 
• Google Maps 
• Business Profile Page 

To get started, you only need to define the store locations you want to promote (either by linking your Business Profile or with the help of affiliate locations), your campaign budget, and provide ad assets. Then, Google AI handles the rest. The system automatically optimizes bids, placements, and creative combinations to reach people who are most likely to visit your store.

PMax campaigns for store goals also use radius targeting to deliver ads based on the user’s proximity to your store and their likelihood of visiting.

💡What is the difference between Performance Max campaigns for store goals and Local Inventory Ads? Performance Max for store goals is a broad campaign subtype that promotes store visits, sales, calls, and directions across prominent Google properties. Local Inventory Ads, on the other hand, help advertisers promote their in-store products to nearby shoppers on Google Search and Maps.

Benefits of Using Performance Max for Store Goals

Let’s discuss some reasons why you should run Performance Max campaigns for store goals: 

1. Multi-Channel Reach: As we learned earlier in the blog, PMax campaigns for store goals appear across multiple important Google properties, such as Google Search Network, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. 

This improves the reach of your ads. Moreover, it empowers you to display your ads to potential customers across different touchpoints in their buyer journey. For a clearer understanding of how these ads manifest across various platforms, you can explore some PMax ad examples that illustrate their appearance on different Google properties.

2. Leverage AI and Machine Learning for Campaign Setup: Like all other PMax campaigns with different campaign objectives, even PMax campaigns for store goals are powered by Google AI. Google’s powerful AI automatically generates different types of campaign settings, such as bidding, placements, etc. Additionally, Google AI ensures that your campaigns are optimized in real time for optimal results. 

This ensures that there is less manual intervention from your side, and you also achieve better return on ad spend with less effort. 

3. Dynamic Radius Targeting Around Store Locations: For these PMax campaigns, Google employs radius targeting. Radius targeting enables you to reach out to those customers who are within a certain distance from your local store. This ensures that instead of casting a wide net and reaching out to every user, your ad only targets those users who are more likely to visit your store in person. 

4. Integration with Local Inventory Ads: PMax for store goals can be used in conjunction with Local Inventory Ads. If you already have an active local inventory feed on Google Merchant Center, Google allows you to advertise your in-store products directly when you set up Performance Max campaigns for store goals. 

Setting Up a Performance Max Campaign for Store Goals

Before you set up your Performance Max for Store Goals, there are some prerequisites you must complete:

Prerequisites for PMax Campaigns for Store Goals 

1. First, you will have to define the store locations that you wish to promote with these campaigns. You can accomplish this by either linking your Business Profile or choosing location assets (formerly known as affiliate location extensions). 
2. Along with store locations, you will also need to set a campaign budget and provide some ad assets. With these inputs, Google AI will optimize campaign settings such as bids, Pmax ad placements, and even asset combinations. 

Step-by-Step Process to Create Performance Max for Store Goals 

Follow this process to create Performance Max for Store Goals. 

Step 1: Create a PMax campaign and select your goal. 

• Go to your Google Ads account, and click on the ‘Create’ button from the left side menu and select Campaign. 

• Select ‘Local Store Visits and Promotions’ as your campaign objective. 

• Then select Performance Max in the campaign type. 
• Choose from different conversion goals such as Store Visits, Get Directions, etc., that will help you improve Local Store visits and promotions. 

• From “Campaign Feeds,” select the locations that you want to promote with your ads. Remember, you can target: 

a. All locations with your Business profile.

b. A specific subset using location groups. 

Important: After you add store locations, Google automatically decides where to show your ads based on those locations. This means that you don’t need to manually use radius targeting, as Google’s system knows where your stores are. Therefore, Google also recommends not adding any extra geo-targeting.  You can still exclude those locations separately if you want to avoid showing ads in a specific area.

• Optionally, you can choose to advertise in-store products if you have turned on local inventory ads earlier. 
• You can also select a specific Merchant Center account to advertise products in your PMax campaigns for store goals. 

• Add a Campaign Name and click on Continue. 

Step 2: Choose Bidding Preferences

Select your bidding preferences from the different options available. You can choose from: 

• Conversions, for which you can set a target cost per action; or 
• Conversion Value for which you can set a target RoAS. 

You can also tweak your bidding settings specifically for Customer Acquisition. 

• Select the option to ‘Adjust your bidding to help gain new customers.’ 
• Within that option, you can either select ‘Bid higher for new customers’ while also driving overall purchases by reaching all customers, or ‘Only bid for new customers.’ 

Note: If you wish to use Customer Acquisition for bidding for new customers, you will need to have an audience segment with at least 1000 active members in any one network. This helps to identify existing customers.

Step 3: Set up Campaign Settings

Before you finalize your campaign settings, you must note that:

• Google does not recommend Location targeting for campaigns set up for offline conversion goals. However, you can still use advanced targeting to target users who have shown interest in your business or who are near your business’s location. 
• Ad scheduling will not be available for PMax campaigns with store goals. Why? This is because these campaigns have local actions associated with them. 

In this step, you will need to add the Languages to restrict where your ads appear based on the user’s and the site’s language settings. 

You can also adjust other settings such as: 

• Start and end dates of your PMax campaign. 
• Campaign URL options for tracking templates at the campaign level.
• Page feeds to link to custom pages. 
• Brand exclusions which enable you to prevent your ads from showing on specific branded terms.
• Age exclusions to prevent your ad from appearing to a specific age group. 

Step 4: Add Performance Max Signals 

PMax signals enable businesses to provide valuable information about the people they want to reach to Google. You can guide Google’s system through these signals to better understand who should see your ad. 

You can add two main types of signals: 

1. PMax Search themes  
2. Pmax Audience Signals 

In addition, Google allows you to provide additional information such as demographics, interests, and detailed demographics. 

Step 5: Set up Assets and Asset Groups

In the next step, you will have to create asset groups. Start by adding an asset group name. Then start adding crucial assets of your PMax campaigns, such as headlines, descriptions, images, videos, or even other assets like sitelinks, callouts, etc. 

Google will automatically assemble these Performance Max assets into all possible and applicable formats and showcase the most relevant ad and its creative to the viewer. 

But, remember, while adding assets, you will need to follow Google’s guidelines, such as you can only add:

1. Up to 15 headlines. 
2. Up to 15 images, etc. 

Pro tips: You can also use Google’s AI to generate assets for your PMax campaigns. All you need to do is, in the “Asset Generation” step, provide some information about the products and services you want to advertise and what sets them apart from your competitors. That’s it. Once you provide this information, click on “Generate Assets” and Google will provide headlines, descriptions, images, and even videos that you can review and edit before finalizing. Focus on adding a variety of high-quality assets that help you get a ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’ Ad Strength rating. The ad strength metric provides you with feedback on how well your ad creatives follow Google’s recommended practices for optimal performance.

Step 6: Setting Your PMax Campaign’s Budget

Now you will have to define your campaign’s daily budget. This budget will also be helpful in determining the monthly charging limit of your campaign, which is calculated by your average daily budget multiplied by the average number of days in a month.

You must note that your ad spend can vary depending on the day, but you are never charged more than your monthly spending limit. 

Also, for PMax campaigns, Google recommends that you set your average daily budget at least three times your CPA or cost per conversion. 

💡Keep in mind, daily spend can sometimes go up to twice your average daily budget on high-traffic days. However, it will balance out and not exceed your overall monthly budget.

Step 7: Review Campaign Summary and Publish

On the Summary page, review the campaign details, edit any settings you want to, and then publish your PMax campaign for store goals!

Optimizing Performance Max Campaigns for Store Goals 

Here are some tips that will help you optimize your Performance Max for store goals.

1. Use Audience Signals Properly: While these campaigns are powered by Google AI, you should add strong and relevant audience signals. With these audience signals, Google’s system will optimize your campaigns effectively and display your ads only to those users who are more likely to take an action and support your offline conversion goals.

2. Run Campaigns for a Sufficient Duration: Google recommends running your campaign for at least 30 days. This is because when your campaign runs for a short duration of a week or so, Google’s system may not complete its learning period smoothly. And it may even fail to attribute store visits properly.

However, if you are running a campaign for a seasonal event like Black Friday, it is fine to run your campaign for a shorter duration.

3. Your Google Account Should Be Eligible for Store Visits and Store Sales: Google recommends that you should only setup PMax campaigns for store goals within those accounts that are eligible for store visits. If not, then you should optimize your campaign for local actions such as direction clicks, contacts, etc.

Additionally, your account must also be allowed for store sales and eligible for store visits.

For insights on testing and refining these strategies, consider exploring Performance Max Experiments.

Note: Not all accounts are eligible for store sales. You should verify the eligibility criteria before setting up store sales as a conversion goal. You can read about it and learn what store sales are from this official Google page.

4. Optimal Business Locations Per Account: Google also recommends that your account should have a minimum of 10 business locations for store visit campaigns and a minimum of 5 locations for campaigns that focus on local actions. This is because more locations act as more data points for Google to learn from.

Important Metrics to Track for PMax Store Goals

For your PMax store goals campaigns, you can track different metrics. Below, we have shared some important ones: 

1. Store Visits: Helps to understand the number of users who visit your store after interacting with your ad. 
2. Store sales: This tracks in-store sales that can be attributed to ad interactions. 
3. Local Actions: These will help you measure different local actions, such as phone calls, website clicks, etc., initiated from your PMax campaigns for store goals. 
4. Local visits (impressions): The number of times your store’s location-based ad was displayed to users.   
5. Call clicks: The number of times users clicked on the “Call” button to call your store after they saw your PMax ad for store goals. 

Note: In addition to these metrics, you can also analyze asset reports for your PMax campaign to understand how different assets perform and how their performance compares to each other.

Common Challenges and Troubleshooting 

Let’s also understand some of the challenges of Performance Max campaigns for store goals. 

1. Data Eligibility: As discussed above, not all accounts are eligible for some metrics like store visits and store sales. Thus, it is important to verify if your account will be eligible to report these metrics.

Additionally, your ads should have sufficient clicks or impressions, and your store should also have enough footfall. This is to ensure that your ads pass Google’s privacy threshold. Without these, your account won’t report store visits. And as a small business, you may need to rely on local actions like calls or direction clicks.

2. Modeled Conversions: Store visits, store sales, and other similar metrics in Performance Max campaigns are modeled conversions. This means they are not directly observed but are privacy-safe, aggregated estimates created using data modeling techniques. 

While modeled conversions are generally reliable, they can have a margin of error and may not always perfectly represent actual in-store behavior.

Thus, it’s always recommended that you use these numbers with other tactics like gauging foot traffic yourself and using that alongside Google’s reported numbers.

3. Limited Manual Control: As is the case with PMax campaigns, you can’t manually select bidding settings, placements, etc. 

The only way to optimize your campaigns with store goals will be to use as many assets and audience signals as possible. 

4. Measurement of In-Store Influence: Performance Max campaigns cannot measure every aspect of in-store behavior. For example, if a user views your ad on YouTube and later comes to your store but leaves without buying, or if that user saw a billboard and then they searched for your store (PMax might take credit if they clicked your ad).

Thus, ensure that you use Performance Max campaign reports as part of your broader, integrated marketing strategy. 

Advanced Strategies for Performance Max Campaigns for Store Goals 

Some advanced strategies that you can apply to your Performance Max campaigns for store goals: 

1. Assign Conversion Values to Goals: Google recommends that advertisers and businesses assign specific values to goals like store visits, calls, direction calls, etc. For example, store visits can have a value of $25, and calls can have a value of $10. 

These conversion values help Google prioritize the most valuable actions for your business. 

2. Use First-Party Data for Audience Signals: If you have first-party data such as customer emails, phone numbers, etc., you should use those as PMax audience signals. These will provide Google with relevant data to understand who your real customers are, and thus, its system will optimize your ads accordingly. 

3. Refresh Creative Assets Regularly: Based on your ad’s performance, you should update your assets by utilizing the asset group report. To maintain high ad strength, keep refreshing headlines, descriptions, videos, etc. 

Conclusion 

Performance Max campaigns for store goals offer a powerful way to drive offline actions. By using Google AI, multi-channel reach, and smart targeting, you can connect better with local customers. Make sure to optimize carefully and track the right metrics for lasting success.

Good luck! 

FAQs 

Q1: How does Performance Max help achieve store goals? 

Performance Max campaigns leverage Google’s machine learning to optimize ad delivery across various platforms, targeting users likely to visit your physical store.

Q2: What types of store goals are best suited for Performance Max campaigns? 

Goals such as increasing foot traffic, promoting in-store promotions, and boosting offline sales align well with Performance Max’s capabilities.​

Q3: How do I set up Performance Max campaigns to drive in-store visits? 

To set up a Performance Max campaign for store goals, first create a new campaign and select “Local Store Visits and Promotions” as your goal. Then link your Business Profile to show store locations, choose which locations to promote, and select your preferred conversion actions.

After that, set your bidding preferences, adjust your campaign settings like languages and exclusions, and add audience signals to guide your targeting. Then upload strong creative assets, set your daily budget, review the setup carefully, and finally publish your Performance Max campaign.

Q4: Can Performance Max optimize for both online and offline store goals? 

Yes, Performance Max campaigns can optimize for both online and offline goals. You simply need to select the right campaign objective while setting up your PMax campaigns. 

Q5: What type of audience signals can help you improve the targeting of your PMax campaigns for store goals?

To enhance targeting, use first-party data, such as past customers and website visitors, along with custom segments based on interests and behaviors.​

Q6: How do budget and bidding strategies affect store goal outcomes in Performance Max? 

Budget and bidding strategies guide how Performance Max campaigns achieve store goals. If you choose “Maximize Conversions” with a Target CPA, the campaign tries to meet your cost per action target. If you select “Maximize Conversion Value” with a Target ROAS, it focuses on meeting your return on ad spend target. 

Choosing the right strategy based on whether you want more store visits or higher-value actions helps Google AI optimize bids at each auction.

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