Google Ads Customer Lifecycle Goals: What You Need To Know

By: Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach

Are you trying to decide whether to optimize your Google Ads campaigns to bid equally for all customers, specifically target new ones, or re-engage existing ones? Google offers customer lifecycle goals to refine your bidding strategy based on whether a user is a new or existing customer. Think of it as giving your bid strategy a targeted boost for different stages of the customer journey.

What are the Customer Lifecycle Goals in Google Ads?

These lifecycle goals are available for Performance Max, Search, and Shopping campaigns. The two main choices are:

• New Customer Acquisition: Focuses on acquiring new customers.
• Customer Retention: Focuses on engaging and driving conversions from your existing customers.

Within New Customer Acquisition, you'll find two modes:

• New Customer Value mode: Bid on both new and existing customers, but bid higher for new ones.
• New Customer Only mode: Exclusively target new customers.

Within Customer Retention, you also have two options:

• Optimize for all existing customers: Bid to maximize conversions from your entire customer list.
• Optimize for high-value customers: Identify and bid more for customers you've designated as high value.

What do you need to use Customer Lifecycle Goals in Google Ads?

In order to use customer lifecycle goals, there are two key feautres you must be using:

1. Ensure you have a Customer Match list uploaded in your account
2. Ensure you're using value-based Smart Bidding in your campaign: that means Maximize Conversion Value or Target ROAS.

Should you use Customer Lifecycle Goals?

So, with these options laid out, when should you actually use them? Larger businesses with large Google Ads budgets.

New Customer Acquisition is generally most relevant for businesses looking to grow their customer base and are willing to invest more to acquire new customers.

Customer Retention becomes valuable when you have a significant base of existing customers and want to focus on driving repeat purchases, increasing customer loyalty, or maximizing the value from your most valuable customers. This is particularly useful for businesses with subscription models, loyalty programs, or those that see a significant portion of revenue from repeat business.

My 1% Rule of Thumb for Google Ads New Customer Acquisition

For New Customer Acquisition, here’s my rule of thumb: Unless at least 1% of your target market population is already on your customer list, you probably don't need to be using new customer acquisition goals.

Let's look at a couple of examples:

• Targeting the United States: With a population of roughly 340 million, you'd need at least 3.4 million customers on your list for this to start being useful
• Targeting women in the UK: With a target market size of about 34 million, you'd need at least 340,000 customers on your list for this to start being useful

Unless your customer list reaches this 1% threshold of your total addressable market, focusing specifically on new customer acquisition goals might be an overly granular focus for your campaigns.

How to Leverage Customer Retention Goals

For Customer Retention, the 1% rule doesn't directly apply. Instead, consider using these goals if:

• You have a substantial list of existing customers. The larger and more engaged your customer base, the more effective retention-focused bidding can be.
• Repeat purchases or long-term value are significant for your business. If retaining customers and encouraging repeat business is a key driver of revenue, then optimizing for retention makes sense.
• You can identify and value your high-value customers. If you have data that allows you to segment and identify your most valuable customers, the "optimize for high-value customers" option can be particularly powerful.

Ultimately, the best approach depends on your specific business goals and the size and engagement of your customer base. Consider whether acquiring new customers is your primary focus, or if nurturing and maximizing the value of your existing customers is a more immediate priority.