How to Create a Marketing Funnel With Google Ads

Why Most Google Ads Accounts Waste Money

The default Google Ads approach targets bottom-of-funnel keywords with Search campaigns and hopes for direct conversions. This strategy works for a narrow slice of your market: people who already know what they want and are ready to buy. It ignores the 95% of your potential customers who are not at that stage yet.

Running only conversion-focused campaigns creates two expensive problems. First, you compete for the most expensive keywords because every competitor targets the same high-intent searches. Second, you have no system for warming up prospects before they reach the buying stage, which means your conversion ads work harder and cost more per acquisition.

A funnel approach solves both problems. By reaching prospects early in their journey with lower-cost awareness campaigns, you build recognition and trust before they enter the high-competition conversion stage. When those prospects finally search for your product category, they already know your brand and convert at higher rates. Our PPC management team builds these multi-stage funnels for clients across competitive industries.

The Three Funnel Stages Mapped to Google Ads Campaign Types

Every marketing funnel has three stages. Each stage requires a different Google Ads campaign type, different messaging and different success metrics. Understanding the distinction between a marketing funnel and a sales funnel helps you set the right expectations for each stage.

Top of Funnel: Awareness

The awareness stage introduces your brand to people who have a problem but may not be actively searching for a solution. These prospects do not know you exist. Your job is to interrupt their attention with relevant messaging that establishes your expertise.

Campaign types: Display Network campaigns, YouTube video campaigns and Discovery campaigns reach awareness audiences effectively. These formats appear while people browse content, watch videos or check their Gmail, creating impressions without requiring active search behavior.

Targeting: Use affinity audiences, custom audiences based on competitor URLs and topic targeting. Avoid categories that are too broad. A custom audience built from people who visited competing SaaS pricing pages is specific enough to deliver qualified impressions.

Messaging: Awareness ads educate rather than sell. Share a statistic that reframes the problem. Offer a perspective that challenges assumptions. Lead with value that makes the prospect want to learn more. Do not ask for a purchase or even a demo request at this stage.

Success metrics: Measure impression share, video view rate, view-through rate and cost per thousand impressions (CPM). Conversions are not the goal here. Audience building is the goal.

Middle of Funnel: Consideration

The consideration stage targets prospects who recognize their problem and actively research solutions. They compare options, read reviews, evaluate pricing and look for proof that a solution works. These people search Google with informational and comparison queries.

Campaign types: Search campaigns targeting research-intent keywords and remarketing Display campaigns for people who engaged with your awareness ads. Search captures active researchers. Remarketing keeps your brand visible as they evaluate alternatives.

Targeting: Build keyword lists around “how to,” “best,” “comparison,” “vs” and “review” queries in your category. These searches indicate active evaluation. Layer remarketing audiences from your awareness campaigns to re-engage people who watched your videos or visited your site.

Messaging: Consideration ads position your solution against alternatives. Case studies, comparison guides, free tools and webinar invitations work well. The goal is to capture contact information or drive deeper engagement with your content. Lead magnets (guides, templates, checklists) convert well at this stage because researchers want comprehensive information.

Success metrics: Track click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), landing page engagement (time on page, scroll depth) and micro-conversions (guide downloads, email signups, webinar registrations).

Bottom of Funnel: Conversion

The conversion stage targets prospects ready to buy. They search for specific product names, pricing queries, “near me” terms and direct comparison queries between finalists. These prospects need a clear reason to choose you over the remaining alternatives.

Campaign types: Search campaigns targeting high-intent keywords, remarketing campaigns targeting engaged prospects from your consideration stage and brand campaigns protecting your name from competitor bidding.

Targeting: High-intent keywords include “buy,” “pricing,” “quote,” “hire,” “near me” and your brand name. Remarketing audiences at this stage should be narrowly defined: people who visited your pricing page, started a signup process or downloaded a consideration-stage lead magnet.

Messaging: Conversion ads remove the last barriers to action. Social proof (client counts, review scores, case study results), urgency (limited availability, seasonal pricing), risk reversal (guarantees, free trials) and clear calls to action drive the final decision. Every ad should link to a dedicated landing page optimized for that specific conversion action.

Success metrics: Cost per acquisition (CPA), conversion rate, return on ad spend (ROAS) and revenue per conversion. These are the numbers that determine whether your funnel generates profit.

Building Your Awareness Campaign Step by Step

Create Custom Audiences

Navigate to Audience Manager in Google Ads and build custom segments. Enter competitor URLs, industry publications your prospects read and relevant YouTube channels they watch. Google uses these signals to find users with similar browsing behaviors. Create 3-5 custom audiences testing different signal combinations.

Design Display and Video Creative

Display ads at the awareness stage perform best with bold visuals and short text that communicates one idea. Focus on the problem your audience faces and hint at the solution. Video ads should deliver value in the first five seconds and keep total length under 30 seconds for skippable formats. Allocate 20-30% of your total budget to awareness campaigns with Target CPM bidding for Display and Maximize Views for YouTube.

Install Audience Pixels

Tag your awareness landing pages with remarketing pixels that build custom audiences for the consideration stage. Create audience segments based on engagement level: visited page, watched 50% of video, clicked through to a second page. These segments feed your middle-of-funnel campaigns with warm prospects.

Building Your Consideration Campaign

Research-Intent Keyword Strategy

Pull keyword data from Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console and competitor analysis tools. Filter for queries with informational intent: “how to,” “what is,” “best [category],” “[product A] vs [product B]” and “[category] for [use case].” Group these keywords into tightly themed ad groups with 5-15 keywords each.

Create Lead Magnet Landing Pages

Each consideration campaign needs a landing page that offers value in exchange for contact information. Guides, templates, calculators and assessment tools convert at 15-30% when they match the search intent precisely. The landing page should deliver the promised value immediately after form submission, not gate it behind email verification delays.

Layer Remarketing Audiences

Apply your awareness-stage remarketing audiences as observation layers on consideration Search campaigns. Increase bids by 20-40% for users who previously engaged with your awareness content. These prospects convert at higher rates because they recognize your brand, which justifies the higher CPC.

Configure Remarketing Display Campaigns

Run Display remarketing campaigns targeting people who visited your site through awareness campaigns but did not convert. Show these prospects ads for your consideration-stage content (guides, webinars, case studies). Frequency cap at 3-5 impressions per day to maintain visibility without causing ad fatigue. Explore Google Ads remarketing strategies for advanced segmentation techniques.

Building Your Conversion Campaign

High-Intent Keyword Selection

Conversion-stage keywords signal buying readiness. Target queries containing “pricing,” “cost,” “buy,” “hire,” “quote,” “services,” “near me” and your brand name. These keywords carry the highest CPCs in your account but also the highest conversion rates. Use exact match and phrase match to maintain tight relevance.

Conversion-Optimized Landing Pages

Conversion landing pages strip away distractions. One headline, one offer, one call to action. Include social proof above the fold (client logos, review scores, results statistics). Place the form or CTA button where it is visible without scrolling. Remove navigation menus that create exit paths. Every element on the page should move the visitor toward the conversion action.

Remarketing for Cart Abandonment and Form Drop-Off

Create remarketing audiences for people who started but did not complete the conversion action. Someone who reached your pricing page but did not submit a form needs a different message than someone who has never visited your site. Run specific ads addressing common objections: pricing concerns, implementation timeline, support availability and contract flexibility.

Brand Campaign Protection

Run brand campaigns bidding on your company name and variations. Competitors often bid on your brand terms to intercept prospects who are searching specifically for you. Brand campaigns carry CPCs under $1 and conversion rates above 30%. The cost of protecting your brand terms is minimal compared to the revenue lost when competitors capture your branded traffic.

Budget Allocation Across Funnel Stages

Budget distribution depends on your business maturity and market position. Use these frameworks as starting points and adjust based on performance data.

New Business or New Market

When your brand lacks market recognition, invest more heavily in awareness: 40% awareness, 30% consideration, 30% conversion. This front-loaded approach builds the audience pool that feeds your conversion campaigns over time. Expect the first 60 days to generate minimal direct ROI as you build remarketing audiences.

Established Business Seeking Growth

Businesses with existing brand recognition can weight toward consideration and conversion: 20% awareness, 35% consideration, 45% conversion. Your brand already generates some organic awareness through word of mouth and existing marketing, so paid awareness supplements rather than creates market presence. A three-stage funnel requires at least $2,000-$3,000/month. Below that threshold, focus on two stages (consideration and conversion) rather than diluting across three.

Tracking Across the Entire Funnel

Set Up Cross-Stage Conversion Tracking

Configure Google Ads conversion tracking for every stage: video views and page visits for awareness, lead magnet downloads and email signups for consideration, form submissions and purchases for conversion. Assign different conversion values to each action so your reports show the relative contribution of each funnel stage.

Optimize Weekly Based on Stage-Specific Metrics

Review each funnel stage against its own success metrics weekly. Awareness campaigns that deliver CPMs under $5 and view rates above 20% are performing well. Consideration campaigns should show CTRs above 3% and landing page conversion rates above 15%. Conversion campaigns need CPA below your target acquisition cost and ROAS above your profitability threshold. Pause or adjust any campaign that consistently underperforms its stage-specific benchmarks.

Request a free audit of your current Google Ads account to identify where a funnel strategy could improve your cost per acquisition and return on ad spend.

Frequently Asked Questions