The Google Ads Strategy That's Printing MILLIONS right now

We have talked to hundreds of companies just this year alone about their Google Ads accounts and I am seeing a common theme of an issue that many companies are having that is Austin, we are seeing an increase in our Google Ads conversions or maybe they aren't, maybe they're actually seeing a decrease. But our back end sales are either down or, or our new customer acquisition is down. What is going on? Google's telling me one thing. I'm feeling something differently on the back end or every time we're trying to scale, costs just go up. I don't believe Google's numbers because I'm not seeing an actual increase on my backend. We don't see an increase in sales. Right. So we're spending more but we're not seeing an increase in sales. I'm telling you, there are companies that have found their way around this issue and they're printing money and increasing new customers daily. Then there's a group of companies, and I would say it's the majority right now that are absolutely stuck. They don't know what to do and they need further clarity which thankfully for me, they come to us for that clarity. I need help. And the biggest thing I see a lot of these companies doing is over investing in performance max campaigns. And don't get me wrong, I'm not pooing on performance max campaigns completely. I think it's a great campaign type, especially when you're in the early stages, you know, especially if you're under like 10, $15,000 per month in advertising spend, then it's, it's great, gets you going. It's not bad. You can kind of work off roas with it. However, eventually. And everyone who's done performance max campaigns knows you will plateau your growth with it. Well, what do you do when you plateau? And unfortunately most people either a jack up the budget even further or get more aggressive on their bidding because those are about the only two options you can do, right? Well, what happens, you end up just paying more for the same amount of sales that you're already still getting on the back end. Or at least that's what's happening if you know your back end numbers and you're seeing what's going on with Google Ads metrics. Now I want to show you an example. So I've got this beautiful customer journey attribution problem map up because this will all relate to what I'm about to tell you on the strategy that's actually minting millions and new customers for companies every single day that don't have found their way around this issue. So let me just bear with me real quick with this visual. Someone sees a meta ad, right? Hey, wow, this product pops up. Wow, I'm really interested in that product. Let me go check it out. So they click it, they browse for two minutes, then they leave, right? Day three. So this is three days later they start searching. That product that I saw was kind of cool. Or maybe they're now interested in that topic, right? So maybe it was like a spill proof tumbler, which I just recently bought one, right? To get away from water bottles. I was drinking a ton of water bottles, so I moved to a Tumblr, right? So they see an ad on meta, doesn't have to be meta. Could even be just a Google shopping ad. Could be a text ad, could be TikTok, could be whatever. Something at the top of the funnel gathered your interest and I wasn't aware of this company. This is an oalla. I'm not, this is no sponsorship or affiliation. This is oalla. I didn't know anything about Oala like two weeks ago, okay. This was more of a word of mouth thing though, not really advertising. But now, so they see this meta ad for this tumbler, a spill proof tumbler. Okay, this is kind of cool actually. You know what I've heard about microplastics, how bad they are. I need to get away from that. Let's, let's move maybe to a Tumblr. So, so they see this, this meta ad day one. Then couple days later it's, it's on their mind and it's like, you know what, I'm gonna start searching some Tumblr. So they start searching around, right? Then they remember that ad or if they have their Google Ads running, especially a performance max campaign, it might start remarketing to you through that. So you're, you're searching Tumblrs, but you're gonna start seeing an ad from them now because they, Google knows that you were on the website just a couple days ago, right? And so you're going to get into the audience pools of remarketing. Even if you're just running like search or shopping ads or even performance max, especially performance max. And it's, you're kind of a warm audience target. Then day four, you're kind of ready to buy, right? So you again, day one, you had no idea about this brand. You, you, you just saw an ad that disrupted you, but it was intriguing to you, so you were interested. You went, checked it out, but you didn't buy. Day three, you were thinking about it. So you started searching about it, you went back, you started browsing more on the website, you still weren't ready to buy. Day four, you're ready to purchase. Performance Max picks you up, whether it's through search, ad, brand search, if you're running brand and Performance Max, which you should not be remarketing, ad whatever, obviously pmax will scoop you up throughout the entire ecosystem of the Google advertising channels and inventory. Right? Okay. When you're looking at this with an in app standpoint, so you're looking at Google Ads, right. I'm telling you, 98% of people right now are making decisions based off of this last click that went to Performance Max. And they're like, wow, Performance Max is doing absolutely amazing for us. We should spend more there. And there's a certain point. Yes, you should. Again, I'm not saying this is not a Performance max is evil. You shouldn't use it at all. There's a, there's a play. I'm going to show you this play. That's what this video is about. But what I'm saying is most people are making incorrect decisions based off of how they're looking at the metrics inside of Google Ads. And I want to simplify this for you and how you should think. So if I'm this business and we'll just say it is a Tumblr company, right. And I want to continue to acquire more new customers because that's how I grow my business. How would I acquire more new customers in this three touch point journey of this customer? I'm telling you, if it's not continuing to pour into Performance Max, Performance Max literally was bottom of the funnel on this. Did it play a role? Sure. But this is not what acquired a new customer. How would I acquire more new customers? I would probably spend more. Not probably. I would spend more on the meta ad that generated the top of funnel first click traffic to my website of an interested customer that I later scooped up through middle of funnel, bottom of the funnel. Right. Technically from a first click attribution, which is what I generally like looking at. If possible, that meta ad is what acquired my new customers. So if I want more new customers, I actually want to spend more money on that meta ad and let Google then scoop them up as they come back through that research phase or these other customer journey touch points. Right. I want to show you another example of how important this is. Right. So wicked reports, a lot of this is going to be blurred out. This is wicked reports though. All right. And this Again, a lot of this will be blurred out. I do not want to share most of this because this is pretty confidential to this client. But this is a Performance Max campaign. The naming, so everything else probably will be blurred out below. I'm going to allow this, this campaign name not to be blurred, right? 14,000 in spend on it. And if we look at total revenue, 22,000. So within their goals there. So most of you are like, wow, that's still pretty bad for them. It's actually not bad. Right. As an aggregate. And you're like, all right, we spent 14, we did 22. This company feels pretty good about that with, with their numbers and how they operate. However, we got them hooked up with Wicked Reports. And I have a full video with the owner of Wicked Reports discussing what Wicked Reports is, if you're interested in that. But just it's a third party attribution tool. There's many out there. I just think Wicked Reports is the best. I was showing this company because they kept pouring money into this Performance Max campaign and not seeing any lift on the back end. I was showing this company, hey, let's look at what Wicked Reports is showing. Your new visits from Performance max is only 56%. So total revenues, $22,000. Cool. You know how much you did on actual new customer revenue? First time new customers, you did $9,000. So you spent 14 to generate $9,000. And in New customer revenue, is that worth it to them? It is not. They didn't know that. They had no idea. They were looking at the aggregate they were seeing. Cool. 14 and 22. If you go inside their ad account, it shows a very similar number in regards to total revenue. Right. They don't see how much of that revenue is actually repeat customers. So I'm going to show you something. I'm going to hop right in here and show you what these sales show. So again, this is a Wicked Reports thing. I'm in that PMAX campaign. Look how many repeat customers. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, new repeat. Now let me click into one of these repeat customers. Again, a lot of this will be blurred to get like the confidential stuff out of here. But this customer first ordered and unfortunately, again, a lot of this is going to be blurred out. This customer is first ordered from them back in January of 2025. Right. Then eventually they came back and PMAX somehow scooped them up through all of that and now they're back to order again and they ordered here in July. That's not new customer acquisition. You've already acquired that new customer If I in fact if I acquire a new customer, if I never have to spend ad money on them again to get them to come back and buy, that's what I want. Because every time they purchase that is value gains that I'm getting from that customer that LTV continues to climb. Right? So now I am middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. You still need that. It still plays a role in the customer journey, especially when it comes to marketing. But I cannot grow my business by just continuing to spend more on repeat customers. Which P Max is prone to do at a certain level when you have plateaued the growth of performance Max. What we have found, and this is consulting with a bunch of companies, testing a lot of things ourselves internally with our 100 plus clients here at Grow My Ads. What we have found is eventually all you're doing is spending more for the same traffic. And in fact in some cases like this, 50% of that traffic is actually repeat customers. How would you ever grow a company that way? You can't. So you have to understand where is first click where's that top of funnel that we're getting actual new customers from? For some, from for some companies it's actually not even Google. It's like TikTok, it's meta and yet they keep trying to spend all this money on performance Max campaigns. I'm like literally you're getting everything new customer wise from TikTok or Meta. You just didn't even know that you should actually be pouring more money there and and then dial in Google Ads as a middle funnel, bottom of the funnel for you. Okay, so I just showed you, you know the issue with performance Max campaigns especially at a certain level when you've plateaued them and how they heavily invest in repeat customers, warm audiences, not a lot of new customer acquisition at a certain point. So you end up pouring more money into just the same traffic you are already getting. The easiest thing companies could do today is simply and I'm going to have a lot of this blurred out because again this is data that I'm not going to share. So most of this will be blurred out. But this is a simple sheet that just is tracking all the back in sales from all, all orders to what new customer orders are, to what new customer amounts are revenue, AOV margin of new customers and ad spend, all of the good stuff. Right. From an advertising standpoint what I'm the most interest. So all of this will be blurred out except these two columns I'm about to show you and that's, that's that's P, and that's Q. At least within the sheet. That's new customers and that's in cac. So I want to share an example with you. This goes all the way back to January. And do you notice how there's almost very little variation here of. Of an increase in new customers? This is on a weekly BAS basis. Right. But look at this in CAC, okay, so starting about here, this would be row 21 in CAC starts really increasing. So NCAC before was. Before row 21 was an average of 27. All right? Then after that, we're at an average of $48. It's a pretty big jump. Now, before that increase, look at new customers. Right? So we go to row 20, on average, 325 new customer orders per week. This is true. Back in data. Then we come here and we see an average of 365 a jump, but at the cost of a $27 in CAC. Sorry, over here. A $27 average in CAC to now $47. All right, so like doubling the NCAC for not doubling the new customers. Now, mathematically, does that make sense? Well, that actually depends on the company. So you consult with them on that. Here's what happened. Ad spend doubled. Lots of that got pushed into performance Max campaigns. And. And on the back end, they had no clarity before we started consulting with them on these numbers. Right. So what I'm showing them is, hey, you doubled your ad spend for, like, almost no gain of new customers. You know, you did go from, I guess, like, well, I forget what it was like 320 to. So it was like 325 to 360. Okay, so let's just say a gain of 30 new customers per week. Is that 30 new customers per week worth spending double the advertising spend on? Probably not. That's a very little gain for that much more in ad spend that has gone up. And that is absolutely evident in what we see from in cac, what it was to in CAC to what it is now. And again, they poured a lot of that ad spend into performance Max. Well, what happened? Performance Max just spent more money on. On the warm audience traffic that it was already getting. Okay. And so you spent more on the same, essentially, and this is why you didn't end up with a net new increase of new customers. What's the framework here? The framework is, I'm not saying get rid of performance Max campaigns. What we have found that's working really, really well. Now, you have to have the data architecture on the back end completely dialed in like I just shared with you. It can literally be a Google sheet with your back end numbers. You can be using software, it doesn't really matter. You just need to have clarity of your back end numbers. What we're finding, and this is working incredibly well for a lot of companies, is we are actually turning Performance Max more into just a remarketing campaign. It's there to scoop up more middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. Right now it's not built that way, so this is a bit hacky. Obviously you can't just force Performance Max to only remarket, so it still will kind of do what it wants. But here's the setup. We're running more what we call feeder campaigns. Feeder is kind of a name coined by a guy named John Moran. He's a wizard within the Google Ad space. Shout out to John. I'm not taking claim for this feeder name. So if any nerds attack me in the comments, just know Feeder's not. I didn't come up with this name. Right, but we use these feeder campaigns, right? That's going to be standard shopping non brand search for the most part. Now in some cases that could even be further up top of the funnel using YouTube demand gen. But a lot of times we're pushing further more of that into the meta side of things because I just think you get more bang for your buck on Meta for top of funnel or TikTok. So standard shopping non brand search, right? These are our primary acquisition engines for cold traffic and we're bidding aggressively here then this traffic. You know, I just showed you the customer journey up here. So instead of this being a meta ad, we'll just say this is a shopping ad or a non brand search ad. This is the first time they see us. So instead of a meta ad, they, they search on Google Tumblers or you know, spill proof tumblers, whatever, right? They're, they somehow were interested in Tumblrs, they started searching, they click an ad, then they go through the same journey. So get the meta ad out of here and just substitute it with search ad or shopping ad, all right? Then they're not ready to buy yet. They're just still they're cold, right? They're interested but they're cold. So they're not buying today. However, they follow this sort of customer journey and sometimes this could be 20 touch points, whatever it is. Eventually though Performance Max starts playing a role because it is prone. And again, I'm not claiming I understand the algorithm of Performance Max. I'm not a Google engineer, I didn't engineer it. But this is how we've been able to start building this out and controlling new customer acquisition and controlling Google Ads growth again. Where a lot of companies are stuck and plateaued this is how we're taking some control back. Performance Max is taking this traffic that we're generating and it starts rabbit holing on them. It's warm traffic and that's why it's called the feeder strategy that John Moran again sort of coined. But how we're doing that is we're running the Performance Max campaign at a higher roas goal than what we would be within standard shopping and non brand. So we're very aggressive on our bidding with standard shopping and non brand search. We have brand excluded from Performance Max. We have brand excluded from standard shopping and non brand search. We have that built out in brand protection campaign. So we have a brand search campaign, brand shopping. We do not let that get mixed into our non brands shopping campaigns or non brand search and and Performance Max is this back channel remarketing campaign for all of this. So we feed all this cold traffic data to the Performance Max campaign to go rabbit hole and follow the highest intent traffic that we have sent. So it's like oh hey, this guy clicked the shopping ad, he has the intent signals of a converter for us. Pmax is going to go rabbit hole them aggressively. That is the idea behind it. This is working tremendously well in taking back growth controls for many, many companies who are have been plateaued. They don't have any clarity and they feel lost. Like we don't know where to actually move the dials anymore in our Google Ads account. And I look at it and they're running just a bunch of performance Max campaigns. Very little standard search or shopping today that is a major issue again over the last couple of years you might have been able to get away with that and actually grow there. But you, you will plateau, you will get stuck. This is the strategy that has been helping these companies take back control of new customer acquisition. Cross referencing with the data on the back end and allowing them to push harder than on cold new traffic. And again to summarize, think of the customer journey. How do I get more new customers? It's not here, it's here. It's the first click. How do I get in front of more new people who are not aware of me? And yes, I have ad campaigns that are built for middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel performance Max campaigns. Right. But that is not where I'm going to acquire a lot more new from I need to go back to where am I acquiring new and am I acquiring new customers at a cost per acquisition that mathematically makes sense for my business? That is how companies today are getting away from the plateaued black box of pmax. They're taking back control of new customer acquisition and and they're printing millions. If you're a business owner or CMO or director of marketing, whatever, and this resonates with you and your guys current state with your Google Ads account and how you feel about it, I encourage you to go get a free audit from my team here at Grow My Ads. A link will be in the description below. To go get that audit. It's practical. We give you recommendations on what to do within your account. We get, you know, under the hood of everything. You can take that advice and recommendations, implement it yourself, with your team, yourself, your agency. We don't care what you do with it. Obviously a lot of people will hire us because of that and like hey, we want you guys to take care of it because we think you're smart and you do good work. So can you guys just do it? So it's a great sales tool for us. But go get, go get the audit and go let my team get under the hood and give you some practical recommendations on how to improve your current Google Ads performance. And especially if you're feeling stuck like many businesses that we've been talking to this year. Again, that link will be in the description below. If not, no worries. We'll see you on the next video.