If you own or manage a Google Ads account that is tracking multiple primary conversion actions, surely you have probably felt the need to optimize towards a specific action at the campaign level rather than including all primary conversions at once. By focusing on a specific action or actions that make sense for that campaign’s specific goals, you can instruct Google to block out the noise (other conversions) and optimize towards the conversions that align with that campaign’s goal. There’s an obvious way to set this up, but that’s not actually the best way. We’ll walk you through the Dos and Donts of goal setting at the campaign level.
By default, Google includes all primary conversion actions (from form fills and purchases to calls from ads and website phone calls, and so on) when you create a new campaign. Let’s say you own a single-location brick-and-mortar shoe store in Poughkeepsie (because Poughkeepsie is a fun town name), but you’re also enabled for e-commerce and able to capture sales nationwide. You are tracking website phone calls as a primary conversion because calls are important to your local business goals. Additionally, you are tracking online sales as another primary conversion so you can maximize your revenue and drive nationwide sales.
Let’s say you want to create a new Performance Max campaign where you don’t care about driving phone calls – for this new campaign, all you care about are online sales.
Don’t Do It This Way
Right in the campaign creation flow, there is an option to remove specific actions from the campaign that you are creating. Click those three dots, and voila – you can remove all “Phone call leads” so your new campaign can focus solely on Sales.
Done, right? Blog over? Not so fast. Executing this directly in the creation flow will isolate the data from this campaign into its own little silo rather than allowing Google to pull from all campaigns to factor into its bidding algorithm.
Dos: Make a Custom Goal Instead
Rather than removing irrelevant conversion categories at the campaign level, creating “Custom Goals” in the Conversions section of Google will allow for data to be shared across multiple campaigns using that goal at the account level. The bigger the bucket of data Google can pull from, the more effective its bidding strategy will be.
- Go to Goals > Conversions > Summary
- Scroll to the bottom of the page. Find the “Custom Goals” section, and then click on the “Add Custom Goal” link.
- Select the primary conversion action or actions you want to specifically focus on.
- Save your new custom goal.
- When creating your next campaign, you can now add your Custom Goal rather than manually removing the other conversion category.
While removing irrelevant conversion actions directly during campaign setup might seem easier, this approach can limit the effectiveness of your bidding strategy by isolating valuable data. By taking the time to create Custom Goals in Google Ads, you ensure that your campaigns are optimized with a more comprehensive data set, leading to better decision-making and improved performance.
Custom Goals allow Google to use a broader pool of information across all your campaigns, enhancing the accuracy of its algorithms and ultimately driving better results for your specific business objectives. So, for a smarter, more strategic approach to campaign optimization, setting up Custom Goals is the way to go.
