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Generate leads

To generate high-quality leads at scale, top advertisers are using the Google Ads Growth Formula’s four step, best-in-class strategy.

Meet the formula that will maximize quality leads for your business

There are many paths to success with Google Ads. The Growth Formula was designed to help you follow the most direct path to generating leads.

To help marketers drive results amid economic uncertainty and build resilience for the future, download our condensed best practices guide.

1

Set objectives

2

Get ready

3

Take action

4

Evaluate & expand

Max growth

This is the most important step – ensure all your objectives ladder up to your company’s business objective.

Map your lead-to-sale journey

Know your business objective

Align your marketing objective

Set your media objectives

Pick your campaign objectives

Lay the foundation for growth with privacy-centric measurement and a view of the whole customer journey.

Measure what matters

Google tag

Customer Match

Conversion values

Consider the full customer journey

Google Analytics 4

Enhanced conversions

Data-driven attribution

Maximize the full funnel – capture existing demand using automation, and generate new demand through diversification.

Capture existing demand

Search campaigns

Performance Max

Generate new demand

Video action & Discovery

Video reach

Find opportunities to take your growth further. It’s a continuous cycle that ensures you get the most out of every ad dollar.

Spend your time where it counts

Optimization score

Test, learn, and refine

Don't leave opportunity on the table

Drive high-quality leads at scale with the Growth Formula.

1

Set objectives

This is the most important step – ensure all your objectives ladder up to your company’s business objective.

Map your lead-to-sale journey

Know your business objective

Align your marketing objective

Set your media objectives

Pick your campaign objectives

2

Get ready

Lay the foundation for growth with privacy-centric measurement and a view of the whole customer journey.

Measure what matters

Google tag

Customer Match

Conversion values

Consider the full customer journey

Google Analytics 4

Enhanced conversions

Data-driven attribution

3

Take action

Maximize the full funnel – capture existing demand using automation, and generate new demand through diversification.

Capture existing demand

Search campaigns

Performance Max

Generate new demand

Video action & Discovery

Video reach

4

Evaluate & expand

Find opportunities to take your growth further. It’s a continuous cycle that ensures you get the most out of every ad dollar.

Spend your time where it counts

Optimization score

Test, learn, and refine

Don't leave opportunity on the table

Max growth

Drive high-quality leads at scale with the Growth Formula.

Set objectives

Pinpoint and align your business objectives with your team. Then you can make sure your marketing, media, and campaign objectives and KPIs are working together to achieve that goal.

But first, we’ll help you outline your company’s lead-to-sale journey – which is the first step in understanding how to improve lead quality and drive more growth for your business.

01

Map your lead-to-sale journey

Some conversions are worth more to your business than others. Mapping out your lead-to-sale journey can help you identify the key stages in your funnel and determine the average values of your conversion actions, so you can effectively use a value-based bidding strategy.

Action

Use the conversion calculator below to map your lead-to-sale journey. See examples by vertical.

First, consider:

  • What are the highest-priority stages in your sales cycle? (typically 3-6 actions)
  • Do you have conversion tracking set up?

Then, get your numbers handy:

  • What is the average revenue you receive from the last stage in your lead-to-sale journey? (e.g. sale, policy signed, subscription)
  • What is the conversion rate between each stage in your lead-to-sale journey?

CALCULATE THE VALUE OF YOUR CONVERSION ACTION

Use this conversion value calculator to identify the events that you should bid towards. Enter the key stages in your lead-to-sale journey that takes your customer from a lead to a sale. We’ll do the math at each step to show you the most valuable conversion actions to bid on in Google Ads.

To view the full experience, please go to desktop.

02

Know your business objective

Align with executives like the CEO to make sure you fully understand their main business objectives. This usually falls into one of three categories: market sharerevenue, or profit.

To create long-term sustainable growth, shift your focus from driving lead volume or revenue to profit.

And keep in mind –  great business objectives are measurable, time-bound, and raise the bar above what you’re already achieving.

Action

Craft your business’ overall objective in the goal template.

03

Align your marketing objectives

The marketing objective should be informed by the bottom-line business objective and signed off by the CFO and/or CMO. In this case, we’ll focus on generating high-quality leads as the primary marketing objective.

This positions marketing as a profit center, rather than a cost center.

Action

Draft your primary marketing objective in the goal template.

04

Set your media objectives

Media objectives help you meet the marketing objective  which, in this case, is driving high-quality leads at scale. They’re usually set by the digital marketing team, and break down into two parts:

Performance objectives focus on the bottom of the funnel, measured by KPIs like phone calls and form submissions.

Brand objectives focus on the mid-top of the funnel and drive factors like ad recall, brand awareness, and brand interest.

Best-in-class advertisers look beyond lower-funnel performance marketing, and focus on a full-funnel strategy  with brand goals that drive lower funnel outcomes.

Action

Add your media objectives to the goal template.

05

Pick your campaign objectives

Campaign objectives are the KPIs used to gauge the success of a specific marketing campaign. We recommend you keep a close eye on return on ad spend (ROAS).

If you’re measuring proxies like CPA or CPL, it’s imperative to shift focus to actual business outcomes, with KPIs like return on ad spend (ROAS) or customer lifetime value (CLV).

Action

Add your campaign KPIs to the goal template.

EXPLORE HOW MIKE DOES IT

See how Mike sets objectives for Best Insurance

Read less Read more

See how Mike sets objectives for Best Insurance See how Mike sets objectives for Best Insurance

Meet Mike. He’s the Marketing Manager for Best Insurance, a national home and auto insurance provider.

Map the lead-to-sale journey

Mike maps each touchpoint in their sales cycle: from lead to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) to closed sale.

BEST INSURANCE LEAD-TO-SALE JOURNEY

A lead-to-sale journey map for an insurance plan purchasse. A lead-to-sale journey map for an insurance plan purchasse.

Knowing the average value of a closed sale is $5,000, Mike works backward to figure out that if 4% of SQLs convert into closed sales, then an SQL is worth/valued at $200. He does the same thing from MQL to SQL to calculate the value of each step along the journey.

Now Mike uses that to optimize the entire lead-to-sale journey for the highest-value leads.

Know your business objective

Mike’s CEO’s business objective is to increase revenue by 20% by the end of Q4  from $20M to $24M. Now Mike also needs to check in with his CMO.

Align on your marketing objective

Mike’s CMO’s marketing objective is to increase sales-qualified leads to $5M (a 25% boost) by the end of Q4.

Now knowing both goals, Mike can clearly see how that will help their CEO hit her goal.

Set your media objectives

Mike sets two media objectives for Best Insurance:
His performance objective is to get 50K sales-qualified leads through Google Search by the end of Q4.
His brand objective is to use YouTube to drive a 25% increase in branded search demand.

Together, those should help his CMO get that 25% boost she’s looking for.

Pick your campaign objectives

Since Mike has two media objectives, he sets a campaign objective for each of them:

For his performance objective (50K sales-qualified leads), Mike wants to drive 200K conversions at a 120% target ROAS in Q1, with bookings from new customers.

For his brand objective (25% increase in branded search demand), Mike wants to capture 59M unique impressions at an $8 CPM over the same period.

Get ready

Success is built on solid foundations. Make sure you have privacy-centric measurement in place, and a view of the complete user journey.

01

Measure what matters

Over the past few years, users' concerns over the usage of their data and increased industry privacy regulations have made the long-term future of digital measurement more challenging. That’s why Google is charting a course towards a more privacy-first web.

COLLECT YOUR ONLINE FIRST-PARTY DATA

A strong measurement foundation starts with your most valuable data: your company’s first-party data, both online and offline. Why? It’s high-quality, hyper relevant to your customer set, and privacy-safe.

The Google tag lets you use data from your website to help you measure the effectiveness of your website and ads. Google Ads uses this first-party data with machine learning to support a successful digital marketing strategy.

Ensure that you're providing users with clear and comprehensive information about the data that you collect on your websites, and getting consent for that collection where legally required.

9/10

Nine out of ten companies say that first-party data is important to their digital marketing programs.1

Action

Set up sitewide tagging with the Google tag to build a first-party database from web interactions.

CONNECT YOUR OFFLINE FIRST-PARTY DATA

From there, connect your first-party data (e.g. data in your CRM) with Google Ads to create a complete picture of the customer journey. This will help you to identify your highest-value prospects, and optimize your ads to deliver better experiences and drive more leads.

Action

Use Customer Match to reach and re-engage with your customers across the web.

Use offline conversion imports to understand what drives real business outcomes.

Pro tip

Offline conversions can be used to record a conversion when a lead becomes sales-qualified, or converts into a paying customer, so you can optimize for higher-quality conversions

FILL IN THE BLANKS TO FIND THE HIGHEST QUALITY LEADS

Now that you’re collecting and connecting your first-party data, help Google fill in the blanks by indicating your most valuable customer actions (from the lead-to-sale journey value calculator in step 1) and their associated values. These can be imported as unique conversion actions.

Action

Add conversion values to your offline actions.

1 Google and BCG, "The Keys to Scaling Digital Value", n=545 "digital leaders" (i.e. businesses with above average digital maturity), Aug - Nov 2021

02

Consider the full customer journey

Once you’ve set up the foundation, ensure you have the tools to understand and optimize the customer experience.

COMPARE APPLES TO APPLES

Google Analytics gives you a deeper understanding of user behavior across devices and platforms, with tools to understand the customer journey and improve your marketing ROI.

Leveraging Google AI through Analytics you can surface valuable campaign insights about your customers, and take action by exporting these insights to Google Ads in the form of new audiences.

Action

Set up Google Analytics 4 and power your advertising by connecting with Google Ads.

Pro tip

Use a funnel exploration if your lead submission process is intended to guide users through several specific, pre-identified steps.

OPTIMIZE FOR WHAT WORKS

With measurement and analytics in place, improve the accuracy of your conversion tracking in a privacy-preserving way, using enhanced conversions to mitigate conversion loss.

If you track your sales funnel in a CRM system, you can start with enhanced conversions for web, and then add enhanced conversions for leads.

Enhanced conversions for web Enhanced conversions for leads
Relevant for advertisers who want to track sales and events that happen on a website. Relevant for advertisers who also want to track sales that happen off a website (for example, phone or email) from website leads.
Improves measurement of online conversions. Improves measurement of offline transactions that came from a website lead or visitor.
Allows you to send hashed first-party, user-provided data from your website when a user converts. The data is then used to match your customers to Google accounts, which were signed-in to when they engaged with one of your ads. Allows you to use hashed, first-party user-provided data from your website lead forms for offline lead measurement. When you upload your leads, the provided hashed information is used to attribute back to the Google Ad campaign.

From there, invest in attribution across the entire conversion path with data-driven attribution. It’s enabled by default for new conversion actions, but you may need to check your existing conversions in case they use an outdated model.

Together, these will provide Google AI with better data about what works, and enable deeper alignment between your campaigns and your business goals.

6%

Advertisers who switch to data-driven attribution from another attribution model typically see a 6% average increase in conversions.2

Pro tip

Check the conversion paths report in Google Analytics 4 for a visualization of how customers interact with your ads on the path to conversion.

2 Google Data, Global, Ads, Jul 11th 2022-Aug 25th 2022.

EXPLORE HOW MIKE DOES IT

See how Mike gets measurement and analytics in place for Best Insurance

Read less Read more

See how Mike gets measurement and analytics in place for Best Insurance See how Mike gets measurement and analytics in place for Best Insurance

Measure what matters

After placing the Google tag on his website, Mike sets up conversion tracking in Google Ads to measure when a site visitor fills out a contact form. He enters different conversion values for phone calls, general contact forms, and forms from each of his specific product landing pages. Then, he activates enhanced conversions.

Mike realizes that he has valuable first-party data that could be useful for optimizing his ads, so he uses Customer Match to build two audiences: sales-qualified leads and high-value customers.

He also connects his CRM system to Google Ads, to import offline conversions for leads that turned into sales-qualified leads.

Consider the full customer journey

To get a better idea of how users discover and then engage with the website, Mike sets up Google Analytics 4 and follows five key steps to power his advertising:

  1. Links Google Analytics to Google Ads
  2. Enables personalized advertising
  3. Imports additional conversion actions to Google Ads
  4. Creates audiences, like “closed sales”
  5. Enables those audiences in Google Ads

With these steps complete, Mike has provided powerful data for Google AI to optimize bidding, audiences and creative optimization in his ads.

After looking at conversion paths in Google Analytics, he notices that Video and Display ads are often contributing to conversions that end up with Search ads. He confirms that all of his campaigns use data-driven attribution, and plans to invest in Performance Max and Video campaigns.

A chart compares attribution models for Best Insurance. The data-driven model results are highlighted. A chart compares attribution models for Best Insurance. The data-driven model results are highlighted.

Take action

Now that you’ve got best-in-class measurement in place, let’s take a look at different types of campaigns that can supercharge your marketing efforts.

01

Capture existing demand

FIND YOUR HIGHEST-VALUE CUSTOMERS

For performance advertising with the goal of generating qualified leads, begin by identifying your highest-value conversions. Some customers bring more value than others, and your strategy should reflect that.

Traditional bid strategies like Target CPA control for ad spend and treat all conversions equally, but value-based bid strategies like Target ROAS and Maximize conversion value control for both ad spend and customer value.

Across all Google strategies, these are our best-in-class solutions to get the most value out of every dollar. Combined with broad match keywords or Google audiences, value-based bidding enables you to bid to the value of each customer – not just how much it’ll cost to acquire them.

A chart compares budgets for value-based and conversion-only automated bid strategies.

Good - If you don't have a cost-per-lead target (the amount you’d ideally pay for a conversion), start with a Maximize Conversions strategy.

Better - If you do have a cost-per-lead target, set up a Target Cost Per Acquisition bid strategy.

Best - To optimize for your return on every dollar, use Target ROAS or Maximize conversion value.

START WITH SEARCH ADS

People are constantly turning to Google Search for answers─what to do, where to go, what to buy, how to do things.

Search ads are a proven way to drive qualified leads as people search on Google and its search partners, because you can show your ads to people actively searching for the products you offer.

Use our power pairing of Broad match, Smart Bidding, and responsive search ads to show your ad to your most valuable customers with personalized creative to break through and get impactful results.

Action

Choose keywords with Keyword Planner.

Use broad match with a value-based Smart Bidding strategy.

Create responsive search ads to automatically show customized ads.

Run a branded search campaign to capture customers who are searching.

Use call extensions and call ads to encourage action, gain insights, and easily assign values to qualified leads.

Use lead form extensions to give users pre-filled forms with action boxes like “Get a quote” (they help prevent drop-off, too.)

Pro tip

Use automatically-created assets to improve ad relevance and reduce the manual work when getting started.

Find new geographies to target where customers are already searching for your products with Market Finder.

MULTIPLY YOUR RESULTS WITH PERFORMANCE MAX

Use Performance Max, our AI-powered solution, to drive better results across all of Google’s advertising channels and inventory, all from a single campaign.

With Performance Max you can reach customers across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps with images, video and text ads.

18%

Advertisers who use Performance Max achieve on average over 18% more conversions.3

Performance Max makes scaling creative across the web easy, building ads from your images, videos, headlines, descriptions, and logos. These assets are automatically mixed and matched to find the top-performing combinations.

You can even generate leads by letting people submit their information in a form directly in your ad.

20%

Advertisers that included at least 1 video of each orientation (horizontal, vertical, and square) to their Performance Max Campaigns delivered 20% more conversions in YouTube compared to horizontal videos alone.4

Action

Implement Performance Max alongside existing campaigns by following these steps.

Use a value-based Smart Bidding strategy.

3  Google Data, Global, Ads, November - December 2022.

4 Google data, Global, November 2022

02

Generate new demand

FEED THE FUNNEL

It’s critical to generate more mid and top of the funnel demand. When done well, the mid-upper funnel is the engine for a brand’s growth and profit.

The funnel starts with attention—96% of feed users spend time on Google feeds5, and 86% of feed users have discovered new products or brands on a feed6.

91%

Research shows that 91% of consumers took action immediately after discovering new products or brands on Google feeds, like Discover or Gmail.7

To engage these people as they “window shop” and discover new products to purchase, implement Discovery and YouTube campaigns.

Illustrated phones show bike shop ad examples in Youtube Videos, Youtube Home feed, Android Discover feed, and Gmail app.

COMING SOON: Demand Gen campaigns build on the strengths of Discovery and Video action campaigns, helping you drive action with over 3 billion monthly users as they stream, scroll and connect.

Action

Launch a Discovery campaign to automatically introduce your brand to new customers scrolling through feeds in Gmail, YouTube, and Discover.

Run a Video action campaign to capture potential customers who are using YouTube to decide what to buy.

When available: Create Demand Gen campaigns.

BUILD AWARENESS WITH VIDEO REACH CAMPAIGNS

Video reach campaigns are the next generation of buying reach in Google Ads, making it easier to buy skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads for your campaigns. With Video reach campaigns, you can choose to reach more unique users or reach users with your entire message.

Action

Set up a Video reach campaign.

Pro tip

Short-form video is booming. Upload a 60-second (or shorter) vertical video to your assets to appear next to YouTube Shorts.

5 Google/Ipsos, Consumer Feed Behavior Research, August 2022, Online survey, US consumers aged 18+ who browse feeds (feeds defined as: Google, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest) monthly or more often. Base: Consumers n=2,000

6 Google/Ipsos, Consumer Feed Behavior Research, August 2022, Online survey, US consumers aged 18+ who browse feeds (feeds defined as: Google, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest) monthly or more often. Base: Consumers n=2,000

7 Google/Ipsos, Consumer Feed Behavior Research, August 2022, Online survey, US consumers aged 18+ who browse Google feeds (Google feeds defined as: Google, Chrome, YouTube and Gmail) at least once a month and discovered new products or brands on Google feeds. Base: Consumers n=1,263

EXPLORE HOW MIKE DOES IT

See how Mike takes action for Best Insurance

Read less Read more

See how Mike takes action for Best Insurance See how Mike takes action for Best Insurance

Capture existing demand

Mike uses Keyword Planner to see what customers search for when researching insurance, and then creates a Search campaign targeting the most relevant terms. He deploys a Broad match keyword strategy to capture potential new searches he can’t anticipate.

Next, Mike uses responsive search ads to provide relevant and personalized ad copy, following the on-screen tips to reach an “excellent” Ad Strength score.

Mike wanted to make $1M in revenue for $250,000 in ad spend so he set a target ROAS of 400% -- meaning Best Insurance would earn $4 for every $1 he spent on advertising. Google Ads automatically adjusts his bids to maximize his conversion value while reaching his target ROAS.

Finally, Mike sets up a Performance Max campaign. He had previously experimented with Display, Gmail and YouTube campaigns, and decides to consolidate these efforts.

The setup process is similar to Search — Mike uses the same conversion actions and a Target ROAS of 400%. For creative assets, he starts with similar headlines and descriptions, adding images, logos and videos.

Generate new demand

To raise awareness with customers who weren’t already seeking insurance, Mike creates a Discovery campaign. Starting with the creative assets used in his Performance Max campaign, he makes small tweaks and plans to keep optimizing for this new audience.

Seeing promising results, Mike also runs a Video action campaign on YouTube to broaden his userbase, with prominent calls-to-action and headline text overlays. He saves time by adding vertical video assets from a recent social media campaign.

Evaluate & expand

As time passes, you’ll better understand how your ads are performing. Use this information to optimize your performance, test new strategies, and find more opportunities for growth.

01

Spend your time where it counts

Let Google do the work for you. When you’re running hundreds of campaigns, surfacing opportunities can become more difficult. Your optimization score helps you by estimating how well your Google Ads account is performing, and gives you personalized recommendations that will improve performance.

78%

78% of marketers say they feel relieved that giving a larger role to digital tools (e.g., automation, machine learning) will free up time to focus on other priorities.8

Action

Check your optimization score to see how well your Google Ads account is performing.

Pro tip

You can now opt in to apply a certain subset of recommendations automatically, which can improve your account performance and save time.

Google/Kantar, Org of the Future Study, US, 2021 N=500 senior B2B and B2C marketers

02

Test, learn, and refine

UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS’ PATH TO PURCHASE

Unsure how many times a customer has to interact with an ad before purchase? We’ve got you. Go to “Tools & Settings” in your Google Ads account and select “Attribution.

Dashboard UI shows "Attribution" being selected under Measurement settings.
Action

Explore your attribution journey in Google Ads.

Pro tip

Explore the conversion paths report in Google Analytics 4.

MEET YOUR SUPERFANS

Now let’s see what else we can learn about your top customers. Head to “Tools & Settings” in your Google Ads account and select “Customer value. This will give you anonymous, aggregated consumer data showing what characteristics your top customers share.

Action

Understand your best customers.

USE PENCIL BEFORE PEN

Before trying out new strategies, give them a test drive using drafts and experiments in your Ads Account. Then stop by the Performance Planner to see the impact different budgets could make.

Action

Use drafts and experiments to test new strategies, and Performance Planner to test different budgets.

03

Don't leave opportunity on the table

If your campaign is hitting its targets but maxing out its budget there’s probably more room to grow. Check your impression share in your Google Ads account it’ll tell you how many impressions were gifted to competitors due to insufficient budgets.

Action

Use your impression share to re-evaluate budgets.

REEVALUATE YOUR CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES

Now that you have more data, evaluate your performance goals. For instance, consider adjusting your ROAS. If it’s too high, you could be missing out on additional sales. If it’s too low, you could be sacrificing profits for volume.

An ROA guage measures the balance of ad volume to ad efficiency for maximum profit.

Try to find the inflection point that allows you to maximize your overall profit.

OPTIMIZE FOR LIFETIME VALUE

Evaluate customer lifetime value when planning your next steps, take lifetime customer value into account.

Figuring out the value of each of your customers isn’t easy. You’ll need to evaluate data from paid sources, organic sources, and your other marketing efforts. Figuring out lifetime value will allow you to bid to the full value each customer provides your business.

To get started, find out how much you’re earning from each customer, go into Google Analytics, open reports, and select “Audience > Lifetime Value.

Action

Understand customer lifetime value.

EXPLORE HOW MIKE DOES IT

See how Mike optimized his marketing investments

Read less Read more

See how Mike optimized his marketing investments See how Mike optimized his marketing investments

Mike increases Best Insurance’s online sales by 30% in Q1, but he thinks he can do more. He reevaluates his campaign objectives for Q2-Q4, adjusting his target ROAS and increasing his demand-generation upper-funnel tactics. He's able to help his CMO pass her $5M goal by the end of the year.

Congratulations on completing the Growth Formula

Since it’s not a linear journey, you’ll want to revisit steps as time passes. We recommend bookmarking this website. We'll keep this guide up to date with the latest Google product announcements and launches to position you for continued growth.

  • Get started
  • 1 Set objectives
  • 2 Get ready
  • 3 Take action
  • 4 Evaluate & expand
  • Restart

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