Why Should Your Business Use Performance Planner

Being able to forecast a PPC campaigns’ performance is necessary for any digital advertiser. Doing so can tell you how to adjust your business plan. It can also show you growth opportunities. Unfortunately, forecasting can be difficult. Fortunately, Google Ads has made forecasting easy with the Performance Planner.

Gone are the days when you have to build a model to analyze your campaign data to predict future performance. The Performance Planner from Google Ads forecasts, suggests settings changes, and optimizes your budget. This article will give you a clear answer to “why should your business use Performance Planner?”

What Is the Performance Planner?

To understand why your business should use Performance Planner, it will help to know a little bit about the tool. You can use it to make forecast models for one campaign or multiple campaigns at a time. One of its best uses is optimizing budgets for various campaigns with the same marketing objective.

Performance Planner builds its models using your data and user data from all over the Search and Display networks. Using data from billions of search queries daily, the Performance Planner can simulate relevant ad auctions. It also factors in competitor data, seasonal changes, and updates to landing pages.

Performance Planner also uses machine learning to learn how to improve forecasting. It will compare its predictions to what happens and learn from its mistakes.

You can use the Performance Planner to see forecasts for your campaign and compare forecasts to past performance. It will also give you suggestions to optimize your budget and give you suggestions for tweaking settings in individual campaigns.

The Performance Planner is a versatile tool that is constantly learning how to better suit your campaigns. You should understand some of the answers to “why should your business use Performance Planner?” It takes all the guesswork out of budgeting and planning.

If you want to know more in detail about the Performance Planner before deciding to use it, you can find the detail here, otherwise you can read on for quick understanding. The rest of this article will deal with setting up the Performance Planner and interpreting the results.

Setting Up a Plan

Setting up a Performance Plan is simple. It is a free offering from Google Ads for improving your campaigns. Add those reasons to why should your business use Performance Planner.

Follow these steps to set up a plan:

1. Log into Google Ads and click the tools and settings icon in the upper-right corner (it looks like a wrench).
2. Click “Performance Planner,” then click “Create a plan” or “+.”
3. Pick the campaigns you want in your plan.

You can pick one or multiple campaigns. If you select multiple campaigns, pick ones with similar marketing objectives. You will optimize your budget for specific goals this way, which can be useful.

4. Enter the date range and key performance indicators (clickthrough rate, conversion rate, conversion value, etc.) you want to forecast.
5. If you would like, you can enter a target metric. Targets include spend, conversions, cost per acquisition (CPA), or other metrics. The Performance Planner will tailor its suggestions to meeting this target metric.
6. Click continue. You should now see the draft plan page.

The draft plan page displays graphics and tables about your campaigns. The forecast graph, individual campaign forecast table, campaign side table, and compare button are all useful and part of why should your business use Performance Planner.

Forecast Graph

The forecast graph lets you control overall spend and will show your overall performance for all your campaigns. By clicking on the graph, you can adjust the overall spend and see its effects.

Individual Campaign Forecast Table

Underneath the forecast graph lies the individual campaign forecast table. This tool lets you look at how adjustments and suggestions affect individual campaigns.

Each table row represents individual campaigns and shows three metrics for each campaign. The table forecasts spend, average CPA, and the number of conversions for each campaign.

The table actually breaks down each metric into three categories for each campaign; thus, each row actually shows nine figures for each campaign.

For each metric on the table, you see the “planned” figure. The “planned” metric is what the Performance Planner thinks will happen if you use its suggestions.

You are also shown an “expected” figure for each metric. That figure is the forecast for each metric if you do not change anything about your campaigns.

Finally, each metric has a column labeled “Diff.” These are the difference between the “Planned” and “Expected” so you can easily see if implementing the plan is worthwhile.

Campaign Side Panel

You can also adjust individual campaign settings and see plans for individual campaigns by clicking them in the table. Clicking on an individual campaign brings up the Campaign Side Panel.

In the Campaign Side Panel, you will find a forecast graph for the individual campaign and a few adjustable metrics. You can adjust keywords, ad partners, and campaign spend.

Compare

The “Compare” button is at the top of the draft plan page. This button allows you to compare your forecast to past periods.

You input a period and the Performance Planner will give you charts for different metrics. The charts include “Overall spend,” “Total conversion value,” and “Conv. value/spend” (ROAS).

The charts will show you the predicted metrics for your existing settings and your plan’s suggestions. It will also show the actual metrics for the period you input. The “Compare” charts can be useful for seeing how your campaigns stack up to their past performance.

(FAQs)

Why Should Your Business Use Performance Planner

Answer: It makes recommendations that are validated using machine learning.

Wrap Up

Now you know a little more about the Performance Planner. Hopefully, you see the answers to “why should your business use Performance Planner?” It is a free tool designed to help you optimize your budget and ad spend over multiple campaigns. It can be especially helpful in managing multiple campaigns with the same objectives.

The Performance Planner is a great tool for keeping your head above water as you navigate the sometimes-challenging waters of digital advertising.