Leveraging Google's New Customer Acquisition Setting for E-commerce Success

In the shifting landscape of digital marketing, Google continues to innovate with tools that help advertisers stay ahead, especially as we edge closer to a cookie-less world. While the choice to optimise towards New Customer Acquisition has been available for some time in Google Ads, without this opted into across your accounts, gathering data on New vs. Returning Customers in a post-cookie environment is not possible. This feature allows advertisers to prioritise bids for new customers over returning ones, providing valuable insights and an edge in capturing first-time buyers.

Understanding the New Setting

The New Customer Acquisition setting is designed to help advertisers distinguish between new and returning customers in their Google Ads campaigns. By enabling this feature, businesses can strategically allocate their budget towards acquiring new customers while simultaneously gathering critical data on customer behaviour. This is particularly beneficial for e-commerce clients looking to expand their customer base.

How It Works

To activate this setting, head to the conversion section in Google Ads and look for 'Customer Acquisition'. After clicking on 'edit goal', you'll be prompted with a pop-up where Google suggests a value for a new customer based on historical data (take this with a pinch of salt). The trick here is setting this value to just £0.01 higher than the value of a returning customer. This approach doesn't significantly alter your current CPC, yet allows you to start collecting valuable new versus returning customer data. (Note: it will alter the value of every new customer conversion by £0.01)

Why It Matters

This strategic tweak doesn't just provide an automatic bidding advantage for acquiring new buyers but is also a proactive step towards a more privacy-centric advertising future. By gathering segmented data now, e-commerce businesses can better prepare for the inevitable changes that will come with reduced cookie tracking.

In Summary

The New Customer Acquisition setting offered by Google Ads presents a simple yet effective strategy for e-commerce clients to gain deeper insights into their customer demographics. By valuing £0.01 more for new customers, businesses can start building a more comprehensive understanding of their audience without impacting their ad spend or bids. As competition for online attention grows fiercer, these insights will prove essential for making informed marketing decisions and staying competitive.

Activate this setting today with the below steps and start unlocking the potential of targeted new customer acquisition! (Note: Unfortunately, this setting does not backdate, it will only collect data from creation date)

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Access Customer Acquisition: Navigate to the 'Customer Acquisition' section in the conversion settings backend and open the edit goal menu.

2. Set the Value: In the pop-up, set the new customer value to £0.01 higher than a returning customer. This slight increase is strategic—it won’t impact your budget or bids dramatically but begins the process of data segmentation.

3. Apply Across Campaigns: To ensure consistency and data collection across the board, select all campaigns, click 'Edit', and choose 'Update Customer Acquisition'. This allows the setting to take effect across all your campaigns.

4. Monitor Customer Insights: After implementation, use the 'Segment' option to filter by 'Conversion' and then 'New vs. Returning Customers.' This setup enables a detailed view of your customer data which previously displayed 'Unknown' data due to a lack of prior tracking.

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