Best practices for new customer acquisition goals

Good marketing runs on good data, and with NCA that’s no different. A foundational component of Acquisition success is ensuring Google AI can accurately identify the status of a potential customer, which only happens if you tell it which customers you’ve already engaged by integrating your first-party data. Here’s how:

• Supply multiple match keys: to boost your matching footprint, include data like email addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes .
• Automate data refreshes: ensure Google AI has your freshest customer match list by updating it regularly, with automated CRM integrations, or API syncs like Data Manager.
• Apply audience customer types: label any uploaded customer segments using audience attributes (e.g., “Purchasers,” “Lapsed Customers”) to automatically link your customer lists directly to lifecycle campaigns.

Once Google AI is able to match your customers, it’s time to tell it how effectively it is delivering on your goals. Conversion tracking helps you close that critical loop: ensuring AI is learning over time, calibrating performance and reporting on your with accuracy.

• Implement the new customer acquisition parameter: Setup the new_customer parameter in your conversion tracking tag to identify if the customer converting is a new customer. This will allow Google’s reporting to match your own internal reporting and this helps you improve Google’s ability to optimize your performance. This parameter is supported by Google Tag, Google Tag Manager, Shopify, Firebase, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and Offline Conversion Import (OCI).
• Connect your commerce platforms: If you are a Shopify merchant, utilize the official Google & YouTube App to deploy the new customer acquisition parameter easily or add it to your custom set up.
• Check for exceptions: if you’re optimizing for new customers but seeing existing customers come through your doors, the best troubleshooting route is to return to step one: improve the quality of the data you’re providing Google AI. Try to include multiple match keys and implement new customer reporting for all available conversion sources beyond the One Google Tag.

No matter how different your businesses, products and campaigns goals are, you can meet all of them in Google Ads. We’ve built multiple modes to ensure that you can confidently express your business strategy to your campaigns. Here’s a quick guide to help you navigate.

Best practices for different modes:

• New Customer Value Mode (NC Value Mode): Recommended for most advertisers with purchase conversions and an online sales goal. Make sure to set the right value in NC Value Mode. Defining the value assigned to new and high value new customers is crucial for Smart Bidding to optimize towards your desired segment.
• New Customer Only Mode (NC Only Mode): Recommended for advertisers with rigid budgets or strict customer acquisition cost targets. If you use this mode for purchase conversions, you should have a separate companion campaign to capture returning customer demand, ensuring the secondary campaign settings complement the NCA campaign.
  

Bidding and budgets are the engines that power any Google Ads campaign, including new customer acquisition campaigns. Make sure to set the right bids and budget so you don’t miss out on any opportunities.

1. Choose the right bidding strategy: Some goals work best with a specific bidding strategy. We recommend the following:

2. Calibrate your targets correctly to reach your business goals: If you are unsure of specific customer values when setting up Value-Based Bidding, a recommended starting point is to use 2X Average Order Value (AOV) for the new customer value. Or use the new customer value calculator to calculate the new customer value.

3. Ensure your campaigns are funded to compete: Set a dedicated NCA budget that is separate from your retention budget.
   

4. Uncap your budgets so your budget cap doesn’t become a profit cap: Acquiring new customers can often be more expensive and competitive than retaining older customers. That’s why when it comes to NCA campaigns, we often recommend uncapping your budgets so that demand isn’t left on the table.

Evaluating your performance is a key part of any campaign. When it comes to new customer acquisition, you can use a variety of tools and reports to evaluate your campaigns’ success and find new ways to improve them.

• Use lifecycle goals reporting to assess your performance: In campaign-level reporting, you can add various segments to the reporting table to better understand the performance of both your new customer and returning customer segments.
  
  • Find your customer acquisition cost: You can add a column to your campaign-level reporting to see how many new customers you’re driving and what the cost of acquiring these new customers is.
  • Improve your results: Based on this information, you can find new ways to improve your results, such as by adjusting your bids or uncapping your budget to scale your volume.
• Experiment and scale: And if you’re just starting, you can test performance by using experiments in Performance Max and Shopping campaigns (beta). Experiments provide a more accurate performance comparison than pre/post analysis, as the test arms do not compete in the same auction and a 50/50 traffic split experiment structure is recommended. For campaigns where optimization experiments are not yet available, you can do a pre/post analysis.