Performance Max: Good or Bad for Multifamily?

Are you looking for ways to simplify your marketing efforts but don’t want to give up using Google ads? Performance Max could be an ideal choice with tons of potential to advertise your multifamily properties.

This relatively new goal-based campaign tool from Google Ads helps automate the process to simplify your marketing journey. You can:

Define a goal
Provide your assets
Let Google auto-generate your ads toward success

But does it really really live up to the hype?

Before you make the switch, learn more about the pros and cons of Performance Max to make the best choice for marketing your multifamily properties.

Pro: Seamless Marketing Campaigns in One Place

Performance Max thrives at making your marketing campaigns and goals as seamless as possible. It essentially combines responsive ads and smart campaigns to create powerful ads in one place. 🙌

Instead of trying to set up and manage multiple ads across a variety of channels, you can advertise across all of Google, including:

Search
Display
Maps
Gmail
YouTube
Discovery

Performance Max’s one-stop-shop aspect is ideal if you run multiple multifamily properties and campaigns. Beyond ease, you’ll also see which campaigns work and which don’t to make adjustments as needed.

Pro: Leverages Audience Signaling

When it comes to making the most of Performance Max, it’s all about leveraging your audience signals.

Your ads should perform well when experimenting with finding the right signals for your multifamily communities. Here are a few to consider:

Non-converting website visitors
Potential residents who reached out or moved forward with a lease
Demographic
Interests
Specific keywords
Your own customized segments

Tip 💡: You can also gain inspiration from your Performance Max audience gains to incorporate into your CRM. For example, you may realize a specific demographic is more interested in your community than others.

Pro: Powerful AI-Driven Optimizations

With so many of Google’s resources readily available, Performance Max outshines its competitors with powerful AI-driven optimizations.

You can optimize your campaigns without much manual adjustment required, making it ideal for new marketers or anyone with limited time.

Set up Performance Max and watch as it adjusts your ads in real time across various channels to appeal to a particular audience.

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Pro: Intuitive

It’s true that Google hasn’t always made its tools user-friendly; just ask anyone dealing with the new GA4 interface. But Performance Max is easy for new users with an intuitive layout.

If you want to build high-performing Google Ad campaigns, Performance Max is a good way to get started without the learning curve associated with most ad tools.

Performance Max Cons:

Despite all the pros of Performance Max, there are a few cons to consider that may not be a good fit for your marketing resources. 👎

Cons: Limited Control

There’s no way around it–Performance Max simply doesn’t offer as much control as you may from your ad tools.

If you’re a pro marketer with years of experience and love digging into data, Performance Max could prove frustrating. There’s less flexibility with automated bidding, which can impact the level of control over display ads.

Cons: Limited Transparency

If you love having tons of transparency with your online ads, Performance Max probably isn’t for you. It doesn’t allow for as much of a deep dive into the performance of your campaigns as with similar tools.

For example, Performance Max makes it difficult to get individual insights on each campaign or asset combination you’re looking for. Ultimately, you can’t customize and refine your results.

Cons: Lacks Good Targeting

Marketers who want to maximize their reach and spending know that without good targeting, you’re serving ads to the whole world.

Performance Max makes it challenging to figure out how to target the right audience, which could waste your ad dollars.

Tip 💡: There are some ways around the target problem. Use your own data combined with Google audiences.

Con: Unrealistic Expectations

Performance Max can perform very well when you set it up correctly, but you still need the right data to get there. Without good conversion details, up-to-date data streams, and audience signals or you’ll get sub-par results.

The idea of not having the right data ties into the true downside here–unrealistic expectation for success.

Sure, Performance Max is intuitive and powerful, but machine learning comes with its share of limitations.

Far from a set-it-and-forget-it approach, you need to stay on top of your user signals, data and A/B test your results. Otherwise, you could end up wasting time and money expecting Google to be able to figure it out for you.

Is Performance Max Right for You?

Performance Max is a solid choice if you’re new to online ads and need a seamless process with intuitive user interface.

But if you want more control over your ads and targeting, you need to do some finessing to turn it into a high-converting tool for your multifamily community.

What was your biggest takeaway from this article? Let us know in the comments!

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