Google Ads Performance Planner: How to Win with PPC Forecasting

Perhaps you’re new to Google Ads, or maybe you are feeling overwhelmed with a large account in your hands, unsure of how you are going to manage it all. With Google Ads Performance Planner, you can stop worrying.

In this article, we’ll show you what this fantastic tool from Google Ads can do, and give you the tips you need to use it to make more from paid advertising.

What is Google Ads Performance Planner?

Google Ads Performance Planner is a tool that enables you to create detailed spending plans, and financial forecasts for your advertising spend. This tool automatically identifies critical opportunities and optimal spend amounts depending on your budget and campaign goals.

Imagine you are managing campaigns and you have a monthly budget of $10,000 to distribute across 100 search campaigns. Google Ads Performance Planner will give you recommendations and how best to use that budget so you can maximize your conversion rates and generate a better return on investment (ROI) across the board.

Benefits of using Performance Planner

You can use Google Ads Performance Planner to:

• Create a plan to see financial forecasts for your campaigns.
• Assess your campaigns’ projected monthly and quarterly performance.
• Quickly implement changes prescribed by your plan.
• Get suggestions that can help your campaigns perform better for the same amount of spend.
• Explore your forecast by adjusting different campaign settings to gauge how these changes will impact future performance.

Requirements of Performance Planner

Not every campaign is eligible to use Google Ads Performance Planner. Take a look at the table below to assess the requirements, and determine whether your campaign is suitable:

How Does Google Ads Performance Planner Work?

Google Ads Performance Planner analyzes billions of user search queries from Google, and the data is usually updated every 24 hours. With all this data, the tool can simulate relevant ad auctions in aggregate, including variables like seasonality, competitor activity, landing page experience, etc.

Then, Google Ads Performance Planner forecasts conversion rates based on the conversion types in the “Conversions” column of your Google Ads performance reports.

After it collects data and runs simulations, Performance Planner employs machine learning to fine-tune your financial forecasts. Furthermore, to maintain a high level of data integrity, the tool continuously measures the accuracy of its forecasts across 1-, 7-, 30-, and 90-day periods.

How to Create A New Plan In Google Ads Performance Planner

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Select the tools icon in the top-right corner, and then select Performance Planner.
  
• Navigate to Create a plan > Continue.
  
• Select the campaigns you want to include in your plan.
• Google recommends advertisers choose campaigns that focus on the same goal. As Performance Planner shifts budgets between multiple campaigns, it is best when you use it to optimize campaigns that have a higher expected ROI.
• Click Next.
• Enter the date range and the key metric you want to assess. (e.g., clicks, conversions, conversion value, etc.)
• Optional: Enter a target, such as a spend, conversions, or cost per acquisition. Entering a target lets Performance Planner move around your potential spend to help you achieve it.
• Select Continue to be taken to your plan forecast page.

After creating your plan, you’ll be directed to the draft plan page, where you’ll see an overview of your plan.

What Is Included in A Draft Plan Page?

The draft plan page of Google Ads Performance Planner has several key elements, each of which provides you with valuable information about your account.

Let’s take a more in-depth look.

Forecast Graph

The forecast graph helps you see how changes to your spending will affect campaign performance.  You can click areas of the graph to edit proposed spending, and the forecast will adjust to give you an indication of expected performance at that spend level.

Individual campaign forecast table

Under the forecast graph, there is a table with a statistical breakdown by individual campaign. Each row includes forecasts for key metrics – spend, conversions, and average CPA (cost per acquisition).

Under each metric, you’ll see the following columns:

1. “Planned” – The selected campaign’s potential performance if you implement the suggested settings of your plan.
2. “Existing” – The selected campaign’s potential performance if you continue with your existing campaign settings.
3. “Diff.” – The difference between the “Planned” and “Existing” metrics.

Campaign Side Panel

You can adjust the parameters of individual campaigns by selecting the specific campaign you want to change. Doing this reveals a side panel of results, including a forecast graph and some performance and budget metrics.

You can edit some of the planned campaign settings here, depending on your campaign’s bidding strategy, network, and other settings. For example, you could adjust the spend, add some keywords, site links, or search partners. Then, after making the changes, you can gauge the projected impact on performance.

Compare

The Compare feature allows you to view past performance alongside your existing and planned settings. This setting is especially useful whenever you need approval from someone that isn’t familiar with the current campaign performance. For example, some C-suite members may want to increase conversion volume without spending much more than the current budget.

Plan according to the periods you care about

The forecast is flexible, enabling you to customize the dates. So, if your business operates monthly, quarterly, or annually, you can adjust the plan to fit your needs.

Know what seasonality can mean in terms of performance

Seasonality is always a significant factor in advertising plans, as your traffic may increase (or decrease) during specific periods of the year. You can take that into consideration, and manually update projections during holiday periods, like Christmas and Black Friday.

Budget based on data

Google Ads Performance Planner helps you pinpoint the best areas to invest your budget in, and always the areas in which to reduce spending. This tool considers proposed bidding and budget settings and then shows you the expected performance results at each point.

Estimate how new keywords will affect existing campaigns

Lastly, don’t forget about keywords! Good advertising requires you to keep an eye out for valuable new terms, and you should see how adding these to the mix will affect your budget and results. The planner tool allows you to do that and make projections based on your updated keywords lists.

Review and implement your plan

You can plan your monthly and quarterly budgets to make sure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns. Before you start, make sure you’ve created a plan using the steps above.

To review and implement your plan using Google Ads Editor:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Click the tools icon in the top-right corner, and then select Performance Planner.
3. Click a plan that you want to review and implement.
4. In the top-right corner, click the download icon
5. Choose Ads Editor file (.csv).
6. Import a CSV file into Google Ads Editor to review and implement your plan.

Key Factors for Creating a Successful Plan

So, now that you know what Google Ads Performance Planner is all about, how can you create a solid plan? Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Plan across accounts. A more flexible account structure paves the way for a more flexible plan. With multiple accounts, you can add campaigns from each one into your plan.
2. The campaigns and accounts in the plan should have similar goals. If some of your campaigns have a CPA goal, and others have a brand awareness goal, then the plan may not make a lot of sense.
3. Not all campaigns are eligible to be planned. Performance Planner works with search campaigns using certain bid strategies, including manual CPC (cost per click), maximize clicks, enhanced CPC, or Target CPA. In any case, the campaigns need to have enough data history to be eligible.
4. Timing affects accuracy. Your plan will be more accurate, the closer you are to your forecast period. On the other hand, if you’re forecasting into the distant future, some variables will inevitably change between now and then, which can lead to inaccuracies in the forecast.
5. Forecasts are directional, not guarantees. Remember that these forecasts are based on auction data, seasonality, and recent history from your campaigns.
6. You can manually set a conversion rate. Doing this is an option, and it works well if you don’t have enough conversion history. However, if you do manually set these rates, be realistic. If you’re too aggressive, you may fall short on your ambitious goal, but if you’re too conservative, you might lose out on a lot of profitable traffic.

Wrap Up

Google Ads Performance Planner is just one of many incredible tools on the world’s most popular advertising platform. You can use it to create a detailed plan that will guide your decision-making, ultimately enabling you to manage your budget and account in a more efficient, effective way that delivers the results you want.

If you want to know more about making more with less in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, check out our post, How to Maximize Your PPC Budget.