Supercharging your Google Ads with campaign specific goals

Getting results from your Google Ads campaign isn’t just about working with the right keywords and bidding strategy; it’s about intentionality. By aligning your next campaign with specific marketing goals, you are super-charging your route to success.

In plain, PPC-specific English, this is all about your goal setting, and how your goals relate to your campaign’s ultimate desired outcome across your marketing efforts. This is where campaign-specific goals come in. By learning what goals can steer your campaign closer to success, you’re preparing your next campaign for your best metrics yet.

Let’s explore how you can level-up your results, and sharpen the focus of your campaigns:

• What are campaign specific goals in Google Ads?
• Why one goal doesn't fit all campaign types
• How using campaign specific goals could improve optimisation
• When and where to apply campaign level goal segmentation

What are campaign specific goals in Google Ads

Campaign-specific goals let you choose which conversions to optimise for at the individual campaign level. This contrasts with account-level goals, which apply uniformly to all campaigns in an account. Think of it as the first step in making your campaign focused and streamlined. Here’s a speedy overview:

Account-level goals
These are aggregated across the account, and may include conversions that aren’t relevant to certain campaigns. Overall, it optimises bidding towards all tracked conversions.

Campaign-specific goals
Here, goals are selected and applied at the campaign level to allow for more granular optimisation. It ensures campaigns focus only on the most relevant actions and aren’t spread too thin, attempting to provide results for multiple goals at once.

Some examples 
You could use a brand awareness campaign, which is specifically optimised for page visits or video views. Meanwhile a separate retargeting campaign could focus on purchases or high-intent actions from engaged users.

Why one goal doesn't fit all campaign types

Every campaign type is as unique and diverse as the goals you can set for it. So it’s important to build campaigns out with campaign types that are aligned to your desired goal.

Audience-building 
If your goal is to bring in a wider audience, or a new demographic, your goals should focus on the following:

• Website engagement (time on site, page views etc)

• Video views

• Ad impressions or reach

Avoid optimising for low-volume conversions like purchases which are unlikely at this stage. By splitting the funnel, you’re already making your campaign type choice more specific and relevant.

Lead generation
Campaigns built for capturing user interest should focus on actionable campaigns that involve user interaction, such as:

• Form submissions

• Phone calls

• Downloads or sign-ups

By tailoring your campaign to include types that encourage user engagement, you’ve found the perfect pair.

E-commerce and direct sales
Performance-focused campaigns where you’re chasing sales and conversions specifically should optimise for:

• Completed purchases

• Revenue-based conversions

• ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

There are millions of users out there, and by matching this goal with campaign types that actively seek out users who are looking to buy, you’re prioritising where you spend your budget.

Other campaign goals
For app installs, choose campaign types that optimise for installs or in-app actions.

If your campaign is for a service-based business, consider optimising for bookings or enquiry forms.

In the modern world of digital marketing, multi-touch campaigns are the norm. Take the time to distinguish between first interaction and final conversion events and don't be afraid to split your goals into multiple campaigns to allow for every stage of the funnel to be catered to.

How using campaign specific goals could improve optimisation

Campaign-specific goals help Google's Smart Bidding engine optimise towards more relevant outcomes. It’s a shorthand that communicates to the algorithm exactly what matters most to you as a marketer.

Benefits include:

• Greater control over what success looks like per campaign - you set the stakes.

• Avoiding wasted spend by eliminating irrelevant conversions from bidding decisions. That way, you’re only spending money on what matters.

• It’s much easier to test campaign types against one another with clear performance benchmarks in mind.

• Helps campaigns avoid over-optimising for generic or low-quality conversions.

• Goal focused campaign settings are particularly valuable in large accounts, running multiple conversion actions across different services or products. It’s a speedy way to target each goal independently, with intention behind your marketing choices.

When and where to apply campaign level goal segmentation

Launching new products or services
Use unique goals for awareness or trial sign-ups, separate from core revenue metrics. This allows new campaigns to build traction without being held back by low conversion rates early on.

Upper vs lower funnel strategy
Top-of-funnel campaigns should focus on micro conversions like video views or site visits.

Bottom-of-funnel campaigns should optimise for high-value actions like purchases or bookings.

Differentiating business objectives
Sometimes your business model isn’t just looking for one goal type alone. For example, a business offering both consulting services and product sales should separate goals.

You can split your goals into multiple types with corresponding campaign types and settings.

Seasonality and promotions
Finally, it’s useful to change up your campaign type and goals during promotional periods like Black Friday. Here, a useful tactic is to adapt to a ROAS or conversion volume based goal and campaign type.

Similarly, if you’re currently off-season, it can be a good time to focus on lead gen or app engagement.

Summary

In a sea of ever shifting PPC trends, campaign specific goals can cut through the noise. Keep things simple, and zone in on what matters most to your campaign, your marketing overall, and your clients.

By aligning your campaign goals to your intent as a marketer, you’re able to split your marketing to cover different preferences, aims and styles of marketing. It’s time to get specific and intentional, and reap the rewards of smart marketing.