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Grow omnichannel sales

To maximize high-value omnichannel customers, top advertisers use the Google Ads Growth Formula's four-step, best-in-class strategy.

Meet the formula that will maximize your omnichannel sales

There are many paths to success with Google Ads. The Growth Formula was designed to help you follow the most direct path to driving valuable in-store sales at scale.

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 and expand

Max growth

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

Know your business objective

Align your marketing objective

Set your media objectives

Pick your campaign objectives

Lay the foundation for growth with privacy-safe measurement, an automation strategy and powerful creative.

Understand your customers

Google tag

Enhanced conversions for web

Data-driven attribution

See what each visit is worth

Store visit conversion value

Omni ROAS goal set

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

Capture existing demand

Search campaigns

Performance Max for store goals

Generate new demand

Video action and discovery

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

Maximize growth of omnichannel sales

1

Set objectives

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

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-safe measurement, an automation strategy and powerful creative.

Understand your customers

Google tag

Enhanced conversions for web

Data-driven attribution

See what each visit is worth

Store visit conversion value

Omni ROAS goal set

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 for store goals

Generate new demand

Video action and discovery

4

Evaluate and 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

Maximize growth of omnichannel sales

Set objectives

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

01

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 sales 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 the overall objective of your business in the goal template.

02

Align your marketing objectives

The marketing objective should be informed by the bottom-line business objective and signed off by the CFO or CMO. In this case, we'll focus on growing omnichannel sales as the primary marketing objective.

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

Action

Draft your primary marketing objective in the goal template.

03

Set your media objectives

Media objectives help you meet the marketing objective—which, in this case, is increasing high-value omnichannel sales. 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 transactions and form submissions.

Brand objectives focus on the mid-upper 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 strategywith brand goals that drive lower-funnel outcomes.

Action

Add your media objectives to the goal template.

04

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 lifetime customer value.

Action

Add your campaign KPIs to the goal template.

EXPLORE HOW KIRA DOES IT

See how Kira sets objectives for Bellevue Bookstore

Read less Read more

See how Kira sets objectives for Bellevue Bookstore See how Kira sets objectives for Bellevue Bookstore

Kira is the marketing manager for a retail chain, Bellevue Bookstore. They sell books and magazines online, and have brick-and-mortar stores in a few cities.

Know your business objective

Kira's CEO's business objective is to increase overall revenue by 30% by the end of Q4—from $2M to $2.6M. Knowing this, Kira can work backwards to develop an effective digital strategy after she checks in with the CMO.

Align on your marketing objective

Kira's CMO generates the majority of revenue from online sales, but is looking to grow in-store sales by 20% by the end of Q4. Coupled with potential online sales growth, the CMO is confident the business can reach the 30% overall business growth goal.
Kira sets her sights on growing high-value omnichannel sales as her primary objective, and creates media objectives that align.

Set your media objectives

Kira creates two media objectives:
Her performance objective is to drive approximately 13K in-store purchases from Performance Max for store visits campaigns.

Her brand objective is to demonstrate 30% ad recall with a YouTube for reach campaign with location extensions.

Together, that combo should help her CMO meet their growth goals for in-store sales.

Pick your campaign objectives

Since Kira has two media objectives, she sets a campaign objective for each of them:

To meet her performance objective (13K in-store purchases), she sets a goal of driving 26K store visits from Performance Max campaigns since she knows around one in every two visits results in a purchase.

To meet her brand objective (30% ad recall), she sets a goal of 22M impressions on YouTube at a $4 CPM.

Get ready

Success is built on solid foundations. Make sure you have the big three in place: privacy-safe measurement, an automation strategy and powerful creative.

01

Understand your customers better with privacy-safe measurement

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.

Make first-party data your best friend

Use cookies that live on the same domain as your site, known as first-party cookies, to track conversions. This will help prevent potential conversion loss from browser cookie restrictions. It's best to avoid using third-party cookies, which are restricted by some browsers.

2x

Marketers who effectively use their first-party data can generate twice the incremental revenue from a single ad placement.1

Action

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

Pro tip

Advanced users can use server-side tagging, available through Google Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360, to place third-party tags in a cloud server.

Measure the full customer journey

Once you've set up the foundation, improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement in a privacy-safe way to mitigate conversion loss. From there, invest in attribution across the entire conversion path.

+17.1%

Advertisers who use enhanced conversions for web see an average increase of 17.1% in YouTube conversions.2

Compare apples to apples

Consolidate platforms to bring all sources of customer data into one place. As your data scales and your process becomes more automated, this will be even more important.

Action

Get Google Analytics 4 up and running to unify and simplify data processing, reporting, audiences and analysis of all customer interactions.

1 BCG, Responsible Marketing with First-Party Data, 2020

2 Google internal data, March 2021–September 2021

02

See what each visit is worth

Connect your digital presence to your store

The best way to understand and measure the ROI of your Google Ads is with store visits, which track the number of users who visited your store up to 30 days after they clicked on or engaged with your ad.

If you don't meet the criteria for store visits, you can also track local actions to value phone calls and driving directions to your store.

Action

Confirm store visit eligibility.

Pro tip

For the best performance and evaluation with Smart Bidding, use a seven-day store visit conversion window (businesses with longer purchase cycles might require a longer window).

Calculate your conversion value

Now that you're measuring store visits, let's understand the purchasing power of your visitors. We'll do this by finding the value of each store visit. This will help reveal insights like your omnichannel ROAS and the overall value for your store visits conversions. Here's a formula to help.

Customer visits are multiplied by the average amount spent per visit to calculate a store's visit conversion value.
Action

Add your store visit conversion value to your account.

Combine your online and in-store goals

Since Google Ads campaigns will drive both online and in-store conversions, make sure to measure your success with an omnichannel ROAS that combines the two.

Action

Set an omnichannel ROAS goal.

Pro tip

Set up store sales measurement to use your own data in a privacy-safe way to understand the value Google Ads are truly driving in-store, and integrate sales data into your bidding strategy.

Online sales are multiplied by in-store sales to calculate total sales for omnichannel ROAS.

03

Stand out with powerful creative

Combine automation with strong creative. Research backs up what we know to be true: the creative aspects of an ad (like headlines) are still the most important element in driving sales and getting leads.

+7%

Advertisers who switch from Expanded Text Ads to responsive search ads, using the same assets, see an average of 7% more conversions at a similar cost per conversion.3

Write more effective display ads

With responsive display ads (RDA), you upload your assets, and Google will automatically generate ad combinations.

+90%

By adding RDA to an existing ad group, on average we see 90% more conversions at a similar CPA.4

Action

Implement responsive search ads.

Create more effective YouTube ads

After lots of testing, we boiled down the essential rules for effective creative on YouTube. Make sure to share them with your creative team before they start on their next video ad.

Pro tip

Use the YouTube Creative Directory to find companies that can help you make a video, or use the Video Builder to make one yourself.

3 Google internal data, June 2022

4 Google internal data, Q3 2020

EXPLORE HOW KIRA DOES IT

Learn how Kira gets Bellevue Bookstore ready

Read less Read more

Learn how Kira gets Bellevue Bookstore ready Learn how Kira gets Bellevue Bookstore ready

Understand your customers better with privacy-safe measurement

In an effort to improve her conversion measurement and better understand her customers in a privacy-centric way, Kira decides to implement enhanced conversions for web. After a few weeks, Kira starts to see a conversion uplift across her video campaigns and is excited that she can better measure the impact of her YouTube investment.

As a result, she decides to build on her current YouTube strategy, while keeping in mind omnichannel best practices and enabling location extensions across her campaigns.

COMPARING ATTRIBUTION MODELS FOR BELLEVUE BOOKSTORE

A chart compares attribution models for Bellevue Bookstore. The data-driven model results are highlighted. A chart compares attribution models for Bellevue Bookstore. The data-driven model results are highlighted.

A data-driven model distributes credit differently for each interaction along the consumer journey.

Take action

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

01

Capture existing demand

SHOW UP WHEN CUSTOMERS ARE SEARCHING FOR YOU

The key to driving store traffic from the web is letting potential customers nearby know your storefront is close by and you have what they need. Performance Max for store goals is our latest solution to drive more traffic to your store. To set yourself up, there are a few housekeeping items to take care of.

Action

Link your Google My Business account to your Google Ads account. This will also automatically enable your location extensions.

Confirm you qualify for Google store visits.

Performance Max combines several campaigns into one, simplifying campaign management and allowing you to reach customers across more of Google's channelsYouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Mapsfrom a single campaign.

Performance Max for store visits campaigns not only drives more people to your business, but also gives you flexibility to provide customers the information they need to decide how and when to visit your stores. You can:

  • Highlight your open stores, reopened locations and in-store recovered availability, and update this info as a store's status changes.
  • Communicate your current offerings and inform customers about your safety measures: rising demand for pickup, drive-thru, delivery services and contactless payments.
  • Promote your in-store products, availability, specific holiday offers and destocking campaigns to increase profitability this holiday.
Action

Implement Performance Max alongside existing campaigns by following these steps.

Pro tip

Migrate your local campaigns to Performance Max.

If you're an omnichannel retailer, add Performance Max with a Google Merchant Center feed to further expand reach with new inventory.

02

Generate new demand—expand to new platforms

Once you've captured shoppers who are already looking to buy your products, it's time to generate more demand at the top of the funnel and acquire new customers. Then you can continue to nurture them as they continue along the journey to purchase.

Before you get started, make sure you have clearly defined brand objectives to qualify the impact of your top-of-funnel marketing (these will look different from the performance objectives you use for things like Search).

Launch video ads

When it comes to driving store visits and sales, TrueView for reach is a great way to reach an even larger audience across YouTube using location extensions. You can even make your video interactive by displaying information from a Google Business Profile feed or an affiliate location feed. And show business information alongside the video to boost store visits and transactions.

83%

Studies show 83% of TrueView for reach auction campaigns drove a significant lift in ad recall. 5

Action

Launch a TrueView for reach campaign.

Pro tip

First time advertising on YouTube? Use Find My Audience to find the people who matter more to your business. Also, don't forget to enable local extensions across YouTube, which will help drive customers to your store.

5 Google Brand Lift Meta Analysis, Global, 2017

EXPLORE HOW KIRA DOES IT

See how Kira takes action for the bookstore

Read less Read more

See how Kira takes action for the bookstore See how Kira takes action for the bookstore

Capture existing demand

After confirming that Bellevue Bookstore qualifies for store visits, Kira creates a Performance Max campaign to automatically target customers who are actively searching across Google Search, Maps, YouTube and more.

Since her business qualifies for store visits, Google's machine learning automatically optimizes for the combinations that drive the most customers to her door.

Generate new demand

To generate demand with customers who weren't already looking for a bookstore, Kira runs a TrueView for reach campaign, with location extensions, on YouTube to efficiently catch the attention of a wide range of book lovers using the simplicity of CPM.

Evaluate and 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 find the opportunities

When you're running hundreds of campaigns, saving time is critical. Your optimization score helps you do this by estimating how well your Google Ads account is performing, and gives you personalized recommendations that will help it perform even better.

Keep an eye out in your account for these top optimization score recommendations for growing your offline sales.

80%

Optimization score lets you work differently. As it stands, 80% of digital marketers' time is spent on manual tasks like bidding, and only 20% is spent on strategy. 6

Action

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

Pro tip

Auto-apply recommendations allows you to continuously apply a certain subset of optimization score suggestions to improve your account performance.

Expand consumer options with omnichannel

Shoppers who plan to make their purchases online may want to pick up in store when given the option. Pre-COVID, this was a nice-to-have option; now it's a critical differentiator that enables you to turn your store into a distribution channel and decrease issues with last-mile delivery.

In fact, click + collect searches are up 600% YoY.7 And 47% of shoppers use store pickup to counter shipping fees. This also benefits you by saving on shipping to homes, improving profit margin.8

Local inventory ads allow you to showcase in-store product availability and fulfillment options, like buy online, pick up in store or ship to store.

Action

Launch local inventory ads.

6 Google data, Global English, April 15, 2020–June 13, 2020 vs. April 15, 2019–June 13, 2019

7 Forbes, March 2019

8 Forbes, March 2019

02

Test, learn, and refine

Unsure how many times a customer has to interact with an ad before purchase? We've got you. Go to "Tools and settings" in your Google Ads account and select "Attribution."

1. Dashboard UI shows "Attribution" being selected under Measurement settings. 2. Dashboard UI shows "Customer value" being selected under Measurement settings.
Action

Explore your attribution journey in Google Ads.

Meet your superfans

Now let's see what else we can learn about your top customers. Head to "Tools and 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 targetsbut maxing out its budgetthere's probably more room to grow. Check your impression share in your Google Ads accountit'll tell you how many impressions were gifted to competitors due to insufficient budgets.

Action

Use your impression share to re-evaluate budgets.

Re-evaluate 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.

A ROAS gauge 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 customer lifetime 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 KIRA DOES IT

See how Kira optimized their marketing investments

Read less Read more

See how Kira optimized their marketing investments See how Kira optimized their marketing investments

Kira is glad to see that local campaigns helped Bellevue Bookstore's in-store sales increase by 20% during the first half of the year. However, she knows she can do more.

So, she continues to optimize her campaigns for her top-performing stores and creative assets. Then, she invests in more upper-funnel strategies leading up to the holidays (like YouTube for reach), to make more people aware of the Bellevue Bookstore brand.

Together, these efforts help her pass her 20% goal of growing in-store sales and help her CEO exceed the 30% revenue growth goal for the year. Business objective? Check. Marketing objective? Check. Promotion? We think that should get a check, too.

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 and expand
  • Restart

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