Performance Max Built on Offline Conversion Data

Performance Max spends against whatever conversion action is left switched on. In a residential sales account where roughly four enquiries in a hundred reach a signed contract, and in an edtech account where the course start sits 60 to 180 days behind the click, optimising to form submissions teaches the campaign to buy the cheapest enquiry on the market. That is almost never the enquiry that closes. So this build starts with conversion data and reaches the asset groups last. Conversion data first: Before anything is created in the ad account, the click identifier has to survive into your CRM. GCLID and wbraid are captured on the enquiry form, stored on the lead record, and returned to Google Ads as an offline conversion import when the lead reaches a stage that means something: viewing attended, application submitted, deposit paid, contract signed. Uploads run inside the 90-day window Google allows between the click and the imported conversion, which is itself a constraint on which stages can be used for bidding. Anything that habitually takes five months to happen cannot be the bidding target and gets a modelled value instead. Enhanced conversions for leads, using a SHA-256 hashed email from the same form, covers the sessions where consent state breaks the identifier. Values, not counts: Each imported stage carries a euro value derived from your own stage-to-close rates and average contract value, so the campaign bids toward pipeline rather than volume. This is the part clients argue with and the part that changes the media mix. Where the history is not there yet, the campaign runs on a single mid-funnel stage until it is. Asset groups: Split by the thing that changes the objection, not the thing that changes the picture. For property that is usually scheme and price band. For education it is funding route, because a self-funded career changer, an employer-sponsored manager and a state-funded applicant ask different questions and need different proof. Search themes constrain a group that is already defined; they are not a discovery mechanism. The account carries a brand exclusion list and account-level negatives from day one, so brand traffic is not resold to you as performance. What you receive: A built campaign with asset groups, signals and negatives in place. The conversion architecture documented field by field so your engineers can maintain it without me. A placement and channel export scheduled in the account. And a written note on what should be true in eight weeks and what to do if it is not. Not included: Creative production. Assets are assembled from what you already own, and where a group has nothing usable I will tell you rather than fill the slot. No landing page builds. No CRM implementation: I specify the fields and the upload job, your team or your integrator writes them. No management after handover unless a retainer is agreed separately. Who this is not for: Accounts with no route to outcome data and no intention of building one. If the CRM cannot say which enquiries closed, Performance Max gets optimised against a proxy, and there are cheaper people than me to do that. Not for anyone who needs the campaign live next week either, since the conversion work runs three to four weeks before a euro is spent. And not for advertisers who want the campaign explained as a black box beyond their control. The point of the engagement is that it stops being one.