Maximise your customer journey from discovery to decisions with Google and YouTube

Today’s shopping journey is predictably unpredictable. Customers are navigating a complex non-linear journey from initial curiosity to final purchase. With Google and YouTube you can guide your customers from their very first moment of discovery all the way to the decisions to becoming loyal customers. Deliver hyper-relevant results, achieve superior ROI, and ultimately run a smarter business.

Drive discovery: Find new customers while building your brand.

• Acquire New Customers: Expand your reach with Google and YouTube.
• Build Your Brand: Optimise your creative and messaging strategies.
• Measure Success: Understand the right metrics for your demand campaigns.

Scale demand capture: Adopt best practises across Performance Max and AI-Powered Search Max

Optimise for growth: Use Insights and Google AI to drive peak performance.

Drive discovery: Find new customers while building your brand.

Our reach allows you to connect with a massive consumer base, given that 83% of global consumers use Google or YouTube daily. This means you’re tapping into over a billion people shopping on Google every day, a reach that significantly surpasses that of other social media platforms. ¹

Identify untapped audiences, create engaging brand experiences, and proactively convert future customers before they even start their search with Google and YouTube. No matter what your business goal is, Google and Youtube have tools to help you reach the right audience across Google Ads inventory.

If your goal is to: Expand your reach with your audience on Google & YouTube, start by setting up the right campaign to acquire new customers.

Demand Gen campaigns offer an efficient way to reach new customers at scale, reaching up to 3 billion users monthly across Google and YouTube. ² These campaigns focus on nurturing new audiences, inspiring action, and prospecting through immersive visual and video experiences. To get most out of Demand Gen:

• Establish your new customer acquisition strategy:

  • Determine a CAC goal, i.e the amount you’re willing to pay to acquire a new customer.
  • Use up-to-date 1P lists in your Google Ads campaigns, which is crucial for focusing on new customer acquisition.
    

• Meet your acquisition goals with multiple audience-based approaches:

  • Create lookalike segments to identify net new customers who are similar to your existing customers.
  • Apply customer match audience exclusions to reach a broad audience of entirely new customers.
  • Utilise pre-built In-market audiences, in addition to Custom segments and Youtube user lists to re-engage with users who have already searched in your category or seen your ad.

If your goal is to: Build your brand where customers are engaged, start by optimising your creative strategy and messaging.

Building a strong brand and truly engaging your customers starts with a thoughtful creative strategy. By optimising your approach to video content and messaging, especially with YouTube Shorts and YouTube Video View Campaign, you can effectively capture attention, drive new customer acquisition, and highlight what makes your brand unique.

• Define your YouTube creative strategy for better audience engagement.

  • Use a variety of formats, like vertical video ads for YouTube Shorts, to maximise your reach and impact.
  • Capture and sustain attention with ABCDs of effective video ads
    

• Optimise your creative messaging to drive new customers

  • Offer new customers incentives & promotions to encourage trial and create urgency among prospective customers
  • Highlight your brand’s value, personality and unique selling point to create connections with prospective shoppers.
  • Anticipate and address new customer needs by tailoring creatives to their needs and pain points using custom segments.
    
• Enable product feeds in your Demand Gen campaigns to dynamically showcase the most relevant products to each user in the right moment.

If your goal is to: Accurately measure the success of your demand generation campaigns. Start by understanding the right metrics to use.

When targeting the upper funnel, it’s best to optimise for softer conversion actions, like website visits, video views, or engagement (think newsletter sign-ups or resource downloads), rather than direct sales. This means your measurement should reflect these goals. For website traffic, monitor unique visitors and session duration. For videos, focus on view count and watch time. For engagement, track list growth and completion rates. Don’t solely rely on ROAS here; it can misrepresent the value of these brand-building efforts.

Drive results by choosing the right goal, bidding strategy and KPIs based on your campaign objective.

To accurately measure brand awareness, page visits and site traffics:

• Track CPA/CPC and click volume as your key metric while keeping an eye on CTR, Impressions and clicks as your secondary KPI
• Remember to utilise max clicks or target CPA in your bidding strategy
  

To accurately measure increase in new customer consideration and actions such as add-to-cart, newsletter sign ups or email subscriptions:

• Measure CPA and conversion volume as your key metric while keeping an eye on Brand Lift/Search Lift (BL/SL), for deeper insights.
• Create separate campaigns with relaxed bid strategies (or lower performance targets) compared to your non-new customer focused campaigns.
• Implement target CPA (tCPA) or maximise conversions in your bidding strategy.

Scale demand capture: Adopt best practises across Performance Max and AI-Powered Search Max

Google AI optimises bids in real-time to connect you with the right people who are most likely to drive more revenue for your business.

Performance Max is a goal-based, all in one campaign designed to capture existing demand and find new audiences across all Google channels. It optimises for your specific goals and customers, leveraging advanced AI to achieve on average over 18% more valuable conversions at a similar cost per action, compared to traditional campaigns or single-channel approaches. (source) To get the most out of Performance Max:

• Leverage integrated creative tools: Utilise the built-in video creation tools and automated asset assembly to ensure your creatives are always high-quality and optimised for performance.
  
• Structure campaigns for optimal ROAS: For best Target ROAS performance, aim for fewer, larger campaigns that generate at least 15 conversions per month
  
• Set data-driven ROAS Targets: Ensure your campaigns meet performance objectives by setting clear, achievable ROAS targets. For optimal results with value-based bidding, always base your targets on at least 30 days of campaign-level data or 3 conversion cycles, whichever is longer, across all relevant campaigns.
  

Learn more about Performance Max best practises here

AI Max for Search Campaigns is designed to enhance your core Search campaigns, ensuring you capture every relevant query and expand your reach within the dynamic landscape of Google Search. Search drives an incremental ROAS of $5.04 for every dollar US advertisers spend on their paid campaigns, 36% higher than Meta’s $3.71 (source) Leverage these 3 key AI powered settings to help you find, reassure and direct your potential customers:

• AI Search Term Matching: Intelligently expands reach beyond keywords to match diverse queries.
• Automated Asset Creation: Delivers tailored, relevant ad messages at scale using your existing copy.
• Dynamic URL Optimisation: Ensures users land on the most relevant page for their specific query.

Together, these settings allow you to reach more customers, connect effectively, and deliver the individualised journey they demand. This means more qualified traffic and greater efficiency from your search efforts.

When combined with Broad Match, your keywords gain the flexibility to match a wider range of relevant searches, driven by AI signals and user intent. To further unlock the power of Broad Match and scale your impact, integrate it with these best practises:

• Pair with Smart Bidding: Always combine Broad Match with Smart Bidding strategies like Maximise Conversions, Target CPA, or Target ROAS. This allows Google AI to intelligently bid for optimal results across your expanded reach.
• Utilise automation tools: Leverage scripts and other automation features to efficiently manage search terms and negative keywords, keeping your targeting precise at scale.

Optimise for growth: Use Insights and Google AI to drive peak performance.

Leverage the Insights page to understand new performance trends and run experiments on fresh ideas. This approach ensures that your brand consistently puts its best foot forward across both evergreen and seasonal campaigns.

To put these insights into action and keep your campaigns performing at their peak, here’s how to optimise your strategy:

• Strategically use seasonality adjustments: For major, predictable shifts in conversion rates (like promotions or sales), use seasonality adjustments to inform Smart Bidding. Additionally, stay competitive by adjusting bids during peak periods like sales or seasonal changes. For example, consider a slight reduction in your Target ROAS to allow bids to increase, driving higher volume when demand is strongest.
• Act on Recommendations (and AAR): The recommendations tab in Google Ads provides customised, performance-boosting suggestions to improve bidding, keywords, ads, and overall campaign efficiency. For continuous, hands-off optimisation, explore Automatically Applied Recommendations (AAR).