Hey there, Benjamin from Loves Data here. Welcome back! In this video,
I'm going to show you how to set up the new customer acquisition goal in Google Ads.
I will also run through what it does and what you'll need to set it up.
If you've logged into Google Ads over the last few weeks and looked at the conversions
configured in your account, then you might have noticed something new pop up. Let's head
to my demo account to take a look... We're looking at the conversions in the account,
and there's a new goal (or conversion action) called 'Customer Acquisition' at the top... If
you've been running smart shopping campaigns in Google Ads, then you might already be assigning
additional value to new customers. But if you haven't been running smart shopping campaigns,
this is a new feature you can use in your account. I'm going to walk you through the steps to set
this up in a moment, but before I do, I'm going to run through why you should use it, who should
set it up, key benefits, and what you'll need to have ready before you start setting it up.
Since we're going to cover these common questions first, feel free to skip ahead using the links
I've included in the description below. Okay, so why should you use the new customer acquisition
goal? The customer acquisition goal lets you automatically bid more for new customers
compared to existing customers. Imagine there are two people searching for your product or service.
One of them has previously purchased from you, so they're an existing customer,
while the other has never made a purchase. Once you've set up a customer acquisition goal,
Google Ads can understand the difference between these two people and adjust your bids accordingly.
For example, if the average conversion value of a customer who makes a purchase is $100 and the
average lifetime conversion value of a customer is $150, then Google Ads will be able to factor this
into your bids. The customer acquisition goal also allows you to only bid for new customers.
This means that if someone is already a customer, then they won't see your ads.
Google currently recommends you only use this option if you have a dedicated budget
for acquisition. Or in other words, you have a separate campaign that is just designed to
acquire new customers. And they also suggest this option can be used if your campaign
isn't designed to drive purchases, for example, if you're trying to generate
leads or email subscribers. Who should use the new customer acquisition goal? Currently,
the new customer acquisition goal can only be used with Performance Max campaigns.
So if you're running a Performance Max campaign or you're going to run a Performance Max campaign
you should set it up. If you're not running any Performance Max campaigns in your account, then
at the movement, there is no advantage in setting up the customer acquisition goal. Google might let
us use the goal with other types of campaigns in the future, but currently, it's limited to
Performance Max campaigns. What are the benefits of using the new customer acquisition goal?
Using the customer acquisition goal is designed to improve the performance of your campaign.
Google says that it can result in a "higher share of new customer conversions" and can
lead to lower acquisition costs. As we will see in a moment it's easy to set up. And if you have
a way to dynamically identify new and returning customers on your website you can also configure
additional reporting. I do want to highlight that since this will impact bids, I recommend setting
benchmarks for your current performance and then checking back to review the results. Automation
in Google Ads does rely on data, so having enough data to feed Google's machine learning is
something to consider. Okay, what do you need to set it up? To set up the customer acquisition goal
you will need to have appropriate audience lists available in your account.
This means you will need existing audience lists for your existing customers.
For example, if you're selling online and you've linked Google Analytics to Google Ads,
then you will probably already have an audience list (or segment) for people who've purchased. You
can then use this audience list with your customer acquisition goal. Google also highly recommends
that you use a customer list when setting up your customer acquisition goal. A customer list is one
where you've uploaded details for your existing customers into Google Ads. For example, you can
upload a CSV that includes the email address of your customers into Google Ads. Or you can
connect Zapier to Google Ads to automatically send details to your audience list when people make
a purchase. So the most important thing you will need to check is that you have audience lists that
include your existing customers. The next step is to configure the customer acquisition goal.
Then apply the goal to your Performance Max campaign. Let's head to Google Ads to configure
the goal... We start by navigating to 'Tools and Settings'... And then 'Conversions'...
At the top, we can see the new custom acquisition goal is available in our account. We can see
that it tells us to start by setting up audience lists before creating the goal.
I already have audiences configured, but if you're not sure, then you can click 'Go To Audience
Manager' to view the current lists in the account. Now let's click 'Set Up'... The first step is to
select the audience list (or lists) that include your customers. So let's select 'Search'...
You can then search for the name of the list you want to add. Or you can click 'Browse' to view all
of the lists. I'm going to click 'Browse'... And then I'm going to select my website-based lists...
And I'm going to select my customer match list...
You can add up to five lists, and we can see the lists are added at the top... Now let's scroll
down... Here we need to enter the additional value that a new customer is worth to our business.
The idea is to assign a value that considers the lifetime value of your customers. For example,
if you sell a product for $100 and half of your customers make a repeat purchase for
the same value, then the average lifetime value of your customers would be $150. This means the
additional value created by a new customer, beyond their initial purchase is an average of $50.
So we would enter $50 for this example. We can see that Google Ads automatically provides a
suggestion for the value we could assign. Hovering over 'Why this suggestion?' tells
us that it's based on our existing average order value and a typical purchase frequency.
So if you're not sure what to enter, you can go with Google's suggestion.
I'm going to leave the suggested amount. And I'm going to click 'Apply'...
We've now set up our customer acquisition goal. The next step is to apply this to our
Performance Max campaigns. So let's navigate back... Select our Performance Max campaign...
And then choose 'Settings'... Now we select 'Customer Acquisition'...
And we can enable the option that says 'Optimize Campaign For Acquiring New Customers'...
This now let's choose 'bid higher for new customers'... Or 'Only bid for new customers'...
We can see the value we assigned for our new customers will be used,
but you can adjust this for the campaign if needed. On the right, we can also see
a chart that shows the average value of an existing customer and the additional value
we've assigned for a new customer based on the additional value they will add in the future.
We can see there's an alert telling us we need to adjust our bidding strategy to use the customer
acquisition goal. So let's click 'Save'... And scrolling down, let's select 'Bidding'... And
then 'Change Bid Strategy'... We can then change the bidding strategy to 'Conversion Value'...
And click 'Save'... Our Performance Max campaign will now use the customer acquisition goal to
automatically increase our bids for new customers. So setting up the new customer acquisition goal
lets you bid higher for new customers or only bid for new customers. Currently,
the feature is only available for Performance Max campaigns, but we might see this change
in the future. Are you running a Performance Max campaign? Are you going to set up the new customer
acquisition goal? I'd love to know! Let me know in the comments below. And if you enjoyed this video,
please consider subscribing to see more views about getting the most out of Google Ads,
Google Analytics, and more. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.