# The Google rep says switch to Performance Max > What Performance Max for store goals actually does with a small salon budget, what it counts as a conversion, and what to ask before you click. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/blog/the-google-rep-says-switch-to-performance-max/ Author: The Salon Ads Studio Published: 2026-09-01 --- A Google rep ringing to recommend Performance Max is not a scam call, and Performance Max is not a con. It is a real campaign type and plenty of businesses do well out of it. It is also built for a different problem than yours. Google's own page says Performance Max is the option to choose when you want the most from a campaign without restricting where your ads appear. Read that again as someone with three hundred pounds a month. Restricting where your ads appear is the whole job. You want that money in front of the woman typing "balayage near me" at nine on a Tuesday night, and nowhere else. So: not as a replacement, not on a small budget, and not before you know what it is going to put in your conversions column. Here is what to check before you click anything. ## What the rep is actually offering The version pitched to salons is Performance Max for store goals. Google describes the setup plainly enough: you point it at your locations by linking your Google Business Profile, you hand over a budget, some lines of text and some pictures, and Google's AI decides the bids, the placements and which pieces of your ad go together. The part worth slowing down on is where it can spend. ![Where one Performance Max budget can go: seven Google places, with the Search Network only one of them](/images/blog/google-rep-says-switch-to-performance-max-places.svg "The pitch is one simple campaign. The spend is seven doors, and you are not the one choosing which it goes through.") None of that is hidden. It is Google's own list, and the same page adds that you cannot currently serve ads only in Google Maps. A campaign like this is meant to roam. On a national brand's budget, roaming is the point: the money finds the cheap corners. On yours, roaming means a chunk of your three hundred pounds turns into a picture of your salon on somebody's Gmail promotions tab in Leeds. ![A stylist mixing colour at the back of the salon, the kind of small salon budget Performance Max has to stretch across](/images/blog/google-rep-says-switch-to-performance-max-hero-03.jpg) ## Why that is a bigger ask on £300 a month Look at the controls Google lists for it: keywordless targeting, search themes, negative keywords, brand exclusions, and final URL expansion. Read that list for its shape rather than its detail. You can hint at what you want and block what you do not want, but you are not handing it the list of searches you are willing to pay for. It picks. That matters more in this trade than in most, because the searches that look like yours and are not are endless. Hairdressing courses. Salon jobs. Apprenticeships. Free models. Cheap. We block 536 of those before a client's first click, and that is only possible because a search campaign lets you say which searches you want in the first place. There is a second setting worth knowing about. Performance Max for store goals uses a radius around your location, and if you do not set one, Google works it out for you, based on how far people tend to travel to places like yours, plus your trade, the local population density and who else is nearby. That may well be sensible. It is still a decision about how far your money goes, made by somebody who has never stood in your street. ## What lands in the conversions column This is the bit that gets missed on the call, and it is the one that will shape how you feel in three months. ![How Performance Max for store goals counts conversions: store visits, sales, call clicks and direction clicks in one total](/images/blog/google-rep-says-switch-to-performance-max-conversions.svg "Four different things arrive as one number, which is how a conversions column can climb without a single extra name in the diary.") Google says the campaign aims to maximise in-store value and conversions using store visits, store sales, and local actions such as call clicks or direction clicks. So somebody tapping "directions" on their phone and somebody ringing you to book a full head of highlights both land in the same total. The number goes up. Whether the diary does is a separate question, and the column will not answer it. We count calls, form enquiries and booking click-outs, and we say which is which. We also say the thing most people selling you advertising will not: nobody can tell you which client came from which search, because the booking systems do not share that back. Anyone promising otherwise is guessing in front of you. ![Two chairs busy and one empty in a small British salon, the midweek gap Performance Max is being pitched to fill](/images/blog/google-rep-says-switch-to-performance-max-hero-05.jpg) ## The part the rep is right about Performance Max is not the enemy of a search campaign. Google's own line is that it complements keyword-based Search campaigns, and the account rules back that up: when someone's search hits an exact match keyword in your Search campaign, that campaign is prioritised over Performance Max. Search themes only carry the same weight as phrase and broad keywords. Then comes the sentence nobody reads out on a call. If your Search campaign is limited by its budget, Performance Max may occasionally serve on those exact match terms anyway. Sit with that for a second. The protection only holds while your search campaign has money in it. A small salon budget runs out most days by definition, which is exactly when the roaming campaign starts picking up the searches you were paying to own. So if you do try it, try it as an addition with its own money, not as a replacement for the campaign that is already catching people who are actively looking for you. ## What to say when they ring back Four questions, and you can ask them in a gap between clients: 1. Is this instead of my search campaign, or as well as it? If the answer is instead, stop there. 2. What will be counted as a conversion, and can you show me the split between calls and direction taps? 3. Is the radius set by me or worked out automatically? 4. After a month, can you show me what went to Search and what went to YouTube, Gmail and Display? A rep who answers those four straight is worth listening to. One who moves you along to the upgrade button is telling you something else. And if you would rather not have this conversation at all: that is roughly the job we do. One campaign, split by service, built around the searches you actually want, with your Google listing fixed before you pay anything. Fifteen to a hundred and forty-nine pounds a month depending on your ad spend, no commission on bookings, fourteen days free and one click to cancel. ## Frequently asked questions ### Do I need to film a video to run Performance Max? No. You supply text, images and videos, and auto-generated videos is a campaign-level setting that makes extra video assets for you. Worth knowing before you agree to it: something will run on YouTube with your salon's name on it, and it may be a video you did not make. ### Can Google change my ad wording or send people to a different page? Two settings do exactly that. Text customisation writes extra headlines and descriptions from your landing page, your domain and your current ads. Final URL expansion lets Google swap your landing page for one it thinks fits the search better. Google's page says you stay responsible for what those pages and assets say. ### What budget will it suggest when I set it up? Google shows up to three daily suggestions, low, medium and high, based on your settings and account history, with a forecast beside each. The low one is the minimum it recommends, not a safe starting point it has checked against your takings. Nobody at Google knows what a colour client is worth to you. ### Can I see how much went to YouTube rather than Search? Yes, and ask for it. Performance Max has a channel performance report, alongside asset group reporting, placement reports and asset-level figures. If someone is running this for you and cannot show you the channel split after a month, that is the thing to push on.