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Customer lifecycle goals in Google Ads help you increase value from both new and existing customers by revitalizing customer acquisition efforts, seeking new high-value customers, or re-engaging lapsed customers. These goals are powered by Smart Bidding and go beyond simple revenue generation.
In this article, you’ll learn more about customer lifecycle goals, the different settings available, and the various customer segments these settings are built to reach.
On this page
- What are customer lifecycle goals
- Types of customer lifecycle goals
- About customer acquisition settings
- About customer retention settings
Understanding customer lifecycle goals
Customer lifecycle goals in Google Ads are a set of performance optimization features that help you prioritize your advertising campaigns for specific customer lifecycle stages. There are 2 categories of customer lifecycle goals:
- Customer acquisition: This setting helps you to prioritize bidding that can reach and acquire new customers.
- Customer retention: This setting is designed to help you keep existing customers engaged and to re-engage lapsed customers.
Types of customer lifecycle goals
Below are the different types of customer lifecycle goals available in Google Ads for Performance Max, Search, Shopping, and Demand Gen campaigns.
| Category | Setting | Eligible Campaign Types | Bidding Strategies | Conversion Goal Configuration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Acquisition |
New Customer Value Bid higher for new customers than existing ones |
|
Value-based bidding: |
At least one Purchase conversion goal is required. |
|
High Value New Customer Bid higher for high value new customers than regular new customers and existing |
|
Value-based bidding: |
At least one Purchase conversion goal is required. | |
|
New Customer Only Only bid for new customers |
|
All bid strategies |
A Purchase conversion goal isn't required, but recommended for accurate reporting of new vs returning conversions. | |
| Customer Retention |
Re-engagement Bid higher for lapsed customers than existing ones |
Performance Max |
Value-based bidding: |
At least one Purchase conversion goal is required. |
|
High Value Re-engagement Bid higher for high-value lapsed customers than for regular lapsed customers |
Performance Max |
Value-based bidding: |
At least one Purchase conversion goal is required. | |
|
Loyalty Program Members Retain customers who are members of your loyalty program by optimizing your campaigns to reach and re-engage. |
|
Value-based bidding: |
At least one Purchase conversion goal is required. |
Customer acquisition
Learn more about how to implement customer acquisition in the activation instructions article.
New Customer Value Setting
- We recommend New Customer Value for all advertisers with purchase conversion goals. It prioritizes bidding towards new customers while maintaining your engagement with potential returning customers.
High Value New Customer Setting
- If you already use New Customer Value Setting to bid higher for new customers, try to attract high value new customers similar to your most valuable existing customers. This setting enables you to set different bidding priorities for high value new prospects, regular new customers and existing ones. Use your own observations to differentiate high value customers from regular customers. For example, high value customers could be customers who purchase twice as much product compared to others.
New Customer Only Setting
- This strategy is recommended only if you have strict budgets for customer acquisition, or have non-purchase conversion goals like lead generation. With New Customer Only, your campaigns are optimized to bid exclusively for new customers. You should set up a separate campaign to reach existing customers when using this mode.
- You can pair Performance Max and Standard Shopping New Customer Acquisition campaigns with Promotions in Google Merchant Center to enable showing 1st Order Promotions to new users. This is available only in the US. Reach out to your account manager for more information.
Here's how it works for all settings
- Create a 1st order promotion in your Merchant Center.
- Understand and adhere to promotions policies.
- Define your existing customers through first-party data when enabling ;Customer Acquisition in Google Ads: Use your first-party data through a customer list and website tag to boost your performance.
Customer retention
Customer retention is designed to help you keep existing customers engaged and to entice lapsed customers back to your business. The 3 settings currently available in the retention goal are Re-engagement, High Value Re-engagement (designed to optimize for lapsed customers), and Loyalty Program Members.
Re-engagement
- Re-engagement helps you reconnect with lapsed customers – those who haven’t engaged with your brand for a certain period of time as defined by your business. This setting can complement other settings such as New Customer Only and New Customer Value to provide a comprehensive approach to customer acquisition and retention.
- You define what constitutes a "lapsed customer" based on your unique business criteria, whether it's a period of inactivity or a specific lack of engagement. You can upload lists of these lapsed customers and assign a higher bid value for them using Customer Match. These lists make it possible for Google to optimize bidding for lapsed customers. This increases your likelihood of winning back customers and growing revenue for your business.
High Value Re-engagement
- If you already use Re-engagement to bid higher for lapsed customers, you can optimize for a specific group of high-value lapsed customers. High Value Re-engagement allows you to re-engage with customers who previously drove high value to your business, from a high frequency of purchases, large basket size, or high value orders, but have since stopped engaging with your business.
Loyalty Program Members
- Loyalty Program Members helps you retain your most valuable customers by optimizing your campaigns to reach and re-engage members of your loyalty program. It leverages your first-party data to enhance ads with exclusive offers, gain deeper performance insights, and improve your campaign’s performance. You can use the Loyalty Program Members and Customer Match to target loyal shoppers with specific promotions and messaging. Learn more About customer retention for loyalty program members.
