Microsoft Launches Performance Marketing Campaigns

Microsoft has just announced the introduction of performance max (PMax) campaigns for paid advertising customers.

Microsoft has just announced the introduction of performance max (PMax) campaigns for paid advertising customers. The search engine follows in Google Ads footsteps, who has offered PMax campaigns to its eCommerce clients for the past year.

Here at Zelst, we’re excited to see that Microsoft is getting onboard the PMax campaign train – we’re huge fans of Google’s equivalent and have seen impressive results for our own paid media clients. With over ten years of experience as a Microsoft partner, we’re ready to introduce our clients to Microsoft PMax and help them to achieve an even more impressive Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

According to Microsoft themselves: “Performance Max is an asset-focused campaign type that allows you to easily create and manage your campaigns, optimize ads to reach the right audience at the right time, and drive performance to meet advertising goals—across the entire Microsoft Advertising Network. Rather than manually creating ads one by one, you can save time by adding assets, such as text and images, to your asset groups and let us take care of the rest.

Microsoft AI will determine which assets and audiences are best for your ads based on your campaign and asset group settings. We’ll ensure that your ads have optimal asset combinations, capturing the attention of customers who are ready to buy your product or service.”

Whilst we haven’t had a chance to experiment with Microsoft PMax yet, from the sounds of it it will be very similar to Google’s equivalent. Here is a summary of what we can expect from Microsoft PMax:

• PMax campaigns are an improvement on standard shopping thanks to the introduction of asset groups based on individual products or a whole product range.
• Allows you to optimise individual products or product groups.
• Enables you to develop ranges and individual personalities and show the best of what your business has to offer.
• Leverages data to improve your overall eCommerce marketing strategy.
• Allows you to refresh and make the most of new creatives and old assets you haven’t been able to utilise in PPC campaigns previously.
• Follows across multiple platforms and allows a more personalised shopping experience with higher conversion rates and higher average order value.

We certainly recommend trying Microsoft PMax campaigns, even if you are new to Microsoft Ads. In fact, Microsoft Ads may be an untapped PPC platform for your business with huge potential! Nonetheless, there are foundations that your campaigns and accounts must have in place for the best results.

• Follow Microsoft’s best practices: Although there is overlap, Google and Microsoft are two different beasts, so don’t just ‘copy and paste’ your Google PMax campaigns over to Microsoft. Read Microsoft’s guides and follow their best practices to ensure your campaigns are set up correctly.

• Be confident in your tracking: PMax campaigns rely on knowing what strategies work and lead to conversions (or whichever goal you have selected). This is fundamental when it comes to Target Cost-Per-Action (CPA) or ROAS as this has a significant impact on the level of bidding that takes place. A fully developed tracking system also needs to focus on offline conversions and enhanced conversions.

• Optimise your asset groups: Provide high-quality images and plenty of them. Avoid using stock images and remember that engaging video content will go a long way when it comes to your PMax performance.

• Audience segments: If you have a large number of products which appeal to different customers, it’s a no-brainer that you should be creating individual audience groups for each type of product. For example, if you sell food-related products, a vegan audience is likely to be very different to a non-vegan audience.

Our biddable media team experimented with Google’s PMax campaigns whilst the service was in its beta phase, giving us more insights and experience than most. We loved it so much that PMax is now an integral part of our eCommerce client strategies.

We first tested PMax campaigns in 2022 with one of our long-standing health and beauty clients. Since launching their first PMax campaign July 2022, we’ve seen an 8.49% ROAS!

Another one of our paid media clients was challenged with uncompetitive prices and outdated assets – unfortunately, this led to a low low-performing shopping campaign with a low click-through rate. However, we transitioned their campaign to PMax which quadrupled the conversion rate and doubled the click-through rate!

A more recent client of ours in the sports and nutrition field engaged us for paid marketing in January 2023. In the past two months, their Shopping Campaign has achieved a 3.94% conversion rate compared with their PMax Campaign that has achieved a 5.34% conversion rate. Their PMax Campaign has also yielded four times the revenue compared with their standard Shopping Campaign.

As you can see, with the right foundations, a PMax campaign can help your paid marketing efforts to thrive! We’re looking forward to bringing this knowledge and experience to Microsoft PMax campaigns in the near future.

If you are interested in refining your paid media campaigns, please get in touch with our PMax specialists. Our biddable media team is confident and highly-experienced in delivering outstanding ROAS on Microsoft and via PMax campaigns. We’d love to help your campaigns to thrive, so drop us a line today.