The Feeder Strategy: Two Google Search Campaigns

Most advertisers run a single Google Search campaign and call it a day.

One campaign, one goal, one endless grind to squeeze out better performance.

That’s fine – until it isn’t.

Because if you’re seeing rising CPCs, messy conversion data, or inconsistent ROAS, chances are your strategy is doing just enough to survive, not scale.

We do things differently. We run two Search campaigns – and in our own accounts, the pairing has cut CPCs sharply while lifting conversions across the board. (More on why we won’t quote you a single headline percentage in a moment.)

We call it the Feeder Strategy.

Why Two Campaigns Are Better Than One

Think of it like a two-part engine. One fuels the other. Campaign One sets the stage, Campaign Two takes the spotlight.

Instead of overloading one campaign with too many goals and signals, you split intent, budget, and learning between two tightly controlled systems.

Here’s the breakdown.

Campaign 1: Maximise Clicks + Exact Match + Soft Goal

This is your Feeder Campaign – low-cost, high-control, and built to train the algorithm.

• Bidding Strategy: Maximise Clicks
• Match Type: Exact Match only
• Conversion Goal: A soft, low-cost conversion set as the campaign’s primary goal (think: newsletter sign-up, a “view key page” event, or an engaged session)

We call it a “fake” goal as shorthand, but there’s nothing fake about it in Google’s eyes – a newsletter sign-up is a perfectly legitimate conversion action. The point is that it’s cheap and easy to trigger. Because we set it as the feeder’s primary goal, Maximise Clicks has a clean, high-volume signal to work with rather than an expensive one. We don’t want Google chasing your most expensive conversions here – we want volume, consistency, and clean traffic, without inflated CPCs.

This campaign focuses on your highest-intent keywords, but without letting Google overthink it. You’re essentially telling the algorithm:

“Send me users who actually searched for what I sell – but don’t over-optimise just yet.”

You’re warming up the system with real searchers, cheap clicks, and reliable signals. And crucially, you’re building an audience pool of people who are actually interested.

Campaign 2: Broad Match + Target CPA or ROAS + Real Goal

Now we let the machine do what it does best – scale.

• Bidding Strategy: Target CPA or Target ROAS
• Match Type: Broad Match
• Conversion Goal: Your real goal (form fills, phone calls, purchases)

This campaign is fuelled by everything Campaign 1 learned. Because your account now has a steady flow of clean, high-intent traffic, Google has better signals to optimise with.

The result? Better conversion rates, lower CPCs, and stronger ROAS.

Budget split? Keep it simple:

• 20% goes to the Feeder
• 80% goes to the Broad campaign

Why It Works

The Feeder Strategy removes the noise. Most campaigns are chaotic – multiple match types, mixed intent, half-baked data. No wonder Google struggles to optimise.

By separating campaigns by intent and data quality, you take back control.

• Campaign 1: Feeds the algorithm smart signals, cheaply
• Campaign 2: Uses those signals to convert at scale

You’re essentially outsmarting the system by giving it better ingredients. Cleaner input equals cleaner output.

How One Campaign Actually Feeds the Other

This is the question everyone asks: if these are two separate campaigns, how does one “feed” the other? There’s no literal pipe passing data from Campaign 1 to Campaign 2. The connection is subtler, and it works on three levels.

1. Account-level learning. Smart Bidding doesn’t learn in a vacuum inside a single campaign. Google applies cross-campaign learning, so signals gathered in one campaign help inform bidding across the whole account. Your feeder’s steady stream of clean, high-intent clicks becomes part of the pool of behavioural data the algorithm draws on when it bids for Campaign 2.

2. Shared audiences and remarketing. Every real searcher your feeder brings in can be added to a remarketing or audience list. In 2026, those lists aren’t hard targeting filters – they’re audience signals that tell Google’s AI what a good customer looks like. Layered onto your broad match, Target CPA or Target ROAS campaign, they nudge Google to aim your spend at people who resemble the engaged searchers the feeder already found.

3. Cleaner conversion data. Because the feeder soaks up the cheap, high-intent exact-match traffic and optimises for a soft goal, Campaign 2 isn’t muddied by a mix of match types and half-relevant queries. Its conversion data stays purer, which is exactly what broad match plus Smart Bidding needs to perform.

So the feeder doesn’t hand data over – it enriches the environment Campaign 2 operates in. Same account, better ingredients.

How to Set It Up, Step by Step

1. Build the feeder first. Create Campaign 1 as a standard Search campaign. Set the bid strategy to Maximise Clicks and add only your highest-intent keywords on exact match. Keep it deliberately small and tight.
2. Choose the soft conversion. Pick a cheap, easy-to-trigger action – a newsletter sign-up, an engaged session, or a “viewed key page” event – and set it as this campaign’s primary conversion goal using campaign-specific conversion goals. Setting a campaign goal overrides your account defaults for that campaign, so the feeder optimises toward the soft action without touching the rest of the account. (Note: a secondary conversion is observation-only and won’t influence bidding, so the feeder goal has to be primary for the campaign.)
3. Add feeder audiences. Attach a remarketing list to the feeder so everyone it brings in starts building an audience pool you can reuse.
4. Let it gather data before you scale. Run the feeder on its own until it’s producing a consistent daily flow of clicks and soft conversions. There’s no magic number, but you want enough steady volume that the account has genuine signal to draw on rather than a trickle.
5. Launch Campaign 2. Build the broad match campaign, set the bid strategy to Target CPA or Target ROAS, and point it at your real goal (form fills, calls, purchases). Layer the feeder’s audience list on as an audience signal.
6. Split the budget and monitor. Start light on the feeder – our rule of thumb is roughly 15–20% of total spend – and give the broad campaign the rest. Watch search terms, negatives, and cost per conversion, then rebalance as the data comes in.

A quick note on search terms and negatives: broad match will still throw up irrelevant queries. Check the search terms report regularly and add negatives so the broad campaign keeps feeding on relevant traffic rather than drifting.

About That “50% Lower CPC” Number

You’ll see the feeder strategy sold with a “cut your CPC by 50%” headline all over the web, including in our own earlier write-ups. We’re not going to restate it as a guarantee, because we can’t point you to an independent, controlled study that proves a fixed number, and results vary enormously by account, vertical, budget, and competition.

What we can say honestly: separating intent and data quality across two campaigns consistently produces cheaper clicks in the feeder and cleaner optimisation in the conversion campaign. One publicly documented example of a comparable two-campaign setup (a home-improvement advertiser running a Maximise Clicks feeder alongside a lead-focused campaign) reported a roughly 19% drop in cost per conversion in the month the feeder was active. Treat any single percentage as an illustration, not a promise.

When NOT to Use the Feeder Strategy

The feeder strategy isn’t a universal upgrade. Smart Bidding, broad match, and target-based strategies all need data density to work, and splitting a campaign in two divides your data. Think twice if:

Situation	Why it’s a problem
Low daily budget	Splitting a small budget across two campaigns leaves neither with enough volume for Smart Bidding to learn. Consolidation usually wins here.
Thin conversion volume	Target CPA and Target ROAS need a steady flow of conversions. If your real goal barely fires, Campaign 2 won’t have the density to optimise.
Very small keyword set	If you only have a handful of high-intent keywords, there isn’t enough to meaningfully separate into a feeder and a scaler.
You need results this week	The feeder needs time to build signal before Campaign 2 benefits. For urgent, short-lived pushes, a single well-structured campaign is simpler.

If any of those describe your account, a single, cleanly structured campaign with strong audience signals is often the better call.

FAQ

What counts as a good “fake”/soft conversion goal? Something cheap and easy to trigger that still reflects genuine intent – a newsletter sign-up, an engaged session, or a “viewed key page” event work well. Avoid vanity actions with no real meaning; because Google may still read soft events as intent indicators, the signal should represent a real step towards buying. Set it as the feeder campaign’s primary goal so it actually drives bidding.

How long before I launch Campaign 2? Long enough for the feeder to produce a consistent daily flow of clicks and soft conversions rather than a trickle. There’s no fixed number of days – it depends on your budget and search volume. Launch the broad campaign once the feeder is delivering steady, reliable data.

Does this waste budget on the feeder? Feeder spend isn’t wasted – it buys cheap, high-intent clicks, builds a reusable audience pool, and enriches the account-level data your conversion campaign relies on. Keep it to roughly 15–20% of total spend so the majority of your budget still goes to the campaign optimising for real conversions.

What minimum budget do I need for the Feeder Strategy? There’s no official figure, but the strategy only makes sense if both campaigns can gather enough data to learn from. On a small daily budget, splitting spend usually starves both campaigns – you’re better off consolidating. If your account can’t comfortably support two campaigns each accumulating meaningful volume, hold off until it can.