Enhanced Conversion For Leads Explained In Google Ads

The last couple of weeks I have suffered through enhanced conversions for leads in Google Ads.

There is a lot of confusion regarding the name, regarding the technical details, so I will try and update this blog post when I get new information. Here are the first key findings.

So first, enhanced conversions and enhanced conversions for leads are two totally different things and I kind of wish they wouldn't be named the way they are.

Enhanced conversions for web conversions, online conversions, are basically a thing where in addition to cookie based tracking, we share first party data from the conversion like a contact form email address with Google. So Google Ads is able to match logged in users of YouTube, Gmail, etc. with the ad click. So enhanced conversions is to match logged in users in case cookie based tracking fails.

Enhanced conversions for leads, however, is an offline conversion tracking setup where when someone converts on your website, let's say they submit a lead form and later convert in the real physical world like coming to your showroom, taking out their physical credit card and purchasing, you can let Google Ads know about the purchase that happened in the real world.

However, enhanced conversions for leads do not match logged-in users to improve conversion accuracy. Instead, it's a workaround to kind of connect the Google Ads click ID with an email in your website so you can let Google Ads know about a conversion just by email without storing the Google click ID in your CRM. time.

Conversion time

Important key idea number one: the conversion time for “enhanced conversions for leads” is not the time when someone made the purchase in the real world.

Instead, you should somehow be able to remember exactly what was the date and time when they became a lead on your website – when they submitted a contact form or made an Acuity Scheduling booking or whatever.

This is pretty tricky, especially because different tools have different date, time formats, different time zones, etc. But that's what Google wants. I didn't find much documentation on this and I kind of had to figure it out on my own.

But the conversions for the offline conversions always seem to show up on the date of the original web conversion — like contact form submission or other online conversion.

Enhanced Conversion For Leads Goals must be created in advance!

Alright, so this was just a misunderstanding on my part. But man did it cost me a lot of sleepless nights figuring out what the hell is going on. Every conversion goal which you create in your Google Ads dashboard, like an offline conversion, apparently must be created before you start gathering the user provided data like email addresses in your website using Google Tag Manager for example.

So you must do this step inside Google Ads

Before (or at the same time) you do this step in Google Tag Manager

A/B Testing

I always preferred to A/B test different conversion tracking methods because you never really know what works best before trying it out. So I was and still kind of am interested in testing the old offline conversion tracking Google Click ID method and compare it against the new enhanced conversions for leads. However, I'm not sure if this is a good idea because the setting for which offline conversion tracking system you use is picked on an account wide level in Google Ads. So if you want to try the enhanced conversions for leads, Google Ads will kind of assume that all the previous Google Click ID based offline conversion goals would also be using these first party hashed data, which they may not. So even if you do everything correctly, you will get errors and warnings, which don't seem to make any sense.

Like the old gclid conversions complaining about missing enhanced conversion data:

Which is confusing because again enhanced conversions for leads is totally different than enhanced conversions, but the error message looks the same. And when using the Google click ID offline conversion tracking method, we cannot add enhanced conversion data. So the error message is complaining about something we are not able to do.

Does Enhanced conversions for leads match Logged-in user data?

So I've tried to find the ultimate conclusion if the enhanced conversions for leads does in fact match logged in users like normal enhanced conversions do. And from what I've been able to find, it looks that it does not, which is kind of weird because it could do that. It would have the necessary information. So this is one of those things where maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. If it does match logged in users, then it's way superior method. But if it doesn't, then it may be more of a preference.

Uploading Enhanced Conversions For Leads?

My current understanding is that Google Ads does not provide a way for us to manually import or upload enhanced conversions for leads, offline conversion data. For example, there is no Google Sheet template that I was able to find. So apparently we are supposed to always use the API.

Delay & Debugging

The delay from when you send a conversion until you hopefully see it varies. Unfortunately Google Ads (unlike Microsoft Bing Ads), doesn't provide a way for us to debug in real time to see what events it is receiving and how it works.

We just get these kind of generic error messages that come up after a few days and stay even after the issue has been fixed, which makes the debugging really challenging, especially with the details missing in the documentation.

So my experience is that you try to send a conversion, then you wait a while, it may show up or it may not, and then you try to figure out why that is and then just run these tests like a doctor would test a new medicine and then check the lab results after a few weeks.

It's pretty slow and quite annoying, but as far as I know, there is no better way to do it.

I tried asking the Google Ads conversions API if I could get a list of all the conversions, but I wasn't able to do that. I only found conversions per campaign level or clicks with their Google Click IDs. But I was not able to get a list of uploaded offline conversions with their conversion value, conversion time, hashed first-party data, conversion date, etc. Which makes debugging really difficult.

So it kind of seems that you get to set it up, then use it for maybe a month, checking if the conversions show up by matching the dates in your CRM or type form or Acuity Scheduling or Jot form, wherever, and the Google Ads Conversions dashboard. And then just see how it goes. It would be really pleasant if Google Ads would have a real-time debugging tool like Google Analytics has, Facebook has, and Microsoft Ads has.

Mixing gclid and enhanced conversions for leads in one conversions goal?

This is something I'm now testing. I'm curious if we can keep using the same conversion goal, but then just switch the method from uploading Google click IDs into uploading the first-party data like an email.

However, the thing I've noticed is that these systems are surprisingly buggy and fragile and unpredictable.

So because of that, my approach will be to keep things as simple and as clear as possible. So while it may work and it seems like it could work, I have gotten some errors like enhanced conversions for leads, conversion where the value does not show up, even though the conversion for the correct time shows up.

So I'm just trying to avoid any methods that are not the simplest, most reliable thing with as little room for errors as possible.