Recently, I’ve encountered several clients who have been using Performance Max (Pmax) campaigns in their Google Ads for lead generation. Initially, these campaigns seemed to be performing exceptionally well, boasting a low cost per conversion. However, these clients were puzzled as to why they were only receiving low-quality or spam leads.

This issue isn't unique to one client; it has been a recurring theme across multiple accounts using Pmax campaigns for lead generation.

The primary reason for this discrepancy is that, unlike e-commerce campaigns where sales are tracked as conversions, most lead generation campaigns track form submissions and calls as conversions.

For Pmax to function effectively, it needs to be fed with sales conversion data. When you’re only tracking form submissions and calls, the Pmax bidding algorithm tends to generate a lot of low-quality or spam leads.

In my experience, Pmax campaigns perform exceptionally well for e-commerce businesses because the algorithm is fed with actual sales conversion data, making it easier to optimize for sales.

You may be able to achieve similar results with lead generation campaigns if you have offline sales conversion tracking set up. The most straightforward way to do this is by using a tool like WhatConverts. While you don't necessarily need specialized software to track offline conversions, tools like these make it significantly easier to track leads from calls and form submissions.

You'd want to make sure the Primary Conversion for your lead gen Pmax campaign is offline sales conversion or maybe marketing qualified lead. This way overtime it'll learn the type of leads that are high value for your business and it should start to generate more of these high quality leads. In the first several weeks you may experience a lot of low quality leads, either from real humans or bots. To combat this, consider using software like ClickGuard and hCaptcha. So long as you are generating real leads and sales, overtime the Pmax campaign should start to perform better since you're feeding it higher quality conversion data as the primary signal.