How to Set Up Google Ads Conversions with Enhanced Conversion Tracking (Step-by-Step Guide)

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How to Set Up Google Ads Conversions with Enhanced Conversion Tracking (Step-by-Step Guide)

Posted By: Johan Hedin

This easy to understand, step-by-step guide, contains everything you need to know to be able to set up Google ads conversions with the enhanced conversion tracking feature. The benefit of the enhanced conversion tracking is better accuracy of the conversions.

Setting up Google ads conversion tracking consist of three parts. First, we will show you how to set up Google ads conversion tracking inside Google Console. The second part is to set up the tags and triggers in Google Tag Manager. The last step of this article covers how to set up the “Enhanced Conversion Tracking” inside Google Console.

Due to all the privacy law regulations and restrictions over the years in regard to cookies, the enhanced conversion tracking has been developed by Google to enable more accurate conversion measurements. When fewer cookies are available, Google has developed other signals to report the conversions more accurately. According to Google’s tests, search has seen a median conversion rate uplift of 5% and 17% uplift on YouTube when using enhanced conversion tracking.

To take advantage of this feature in the Google ads conversion tracking set up process, you need to create the conversions from Google Ads Console itself (instead of uploading the goals from Google Analytics).

Does it sound complicated? Don’t worry, we have set this up so even beginners can understand and implement it successfully.

1. First, click on “Tools and Conversions” inside your Google Ads Account.

2. Then click the blue button “New Conversion Action”.

3. Next, click on “Website”

4. Enter the website and click on “scan”. It’s important to enter on the website the exact same way as it renders in the browser. If your website is rendered as “www.abc.com” with the www. you need to enter in the www before.

5. Now, click on “add conversion action manually”.

6. It will take you to the screen below. Fill out all the details.

a) For the ‘Goals and action optimization”, enter in the goal category. For example, if you have a lead generation-based website you should select the “Submit Lead Form” option in the drop-down menu.

b) Enter a conversion name. We recommend using a name that is closely related to the conversion. For example, if you are a lead generation-based website, you could simply name it “Submit Lead Form”.

c) Enter in the value of this lead depending on how much it’s worth to you. For us, each lead is worth THB 300, but you can leave this empty if you don’t know.

d) The recommended action for lead generation-based websites is to select the conversion count to “one” only to avoid duplicate lead submissions from the same user.

e) Set up the number of days for the click-through conversion window, engaged-view conversion window, view-through conversion window as you can see in the screenshot. For the attribution model, the “data-driven” model should be selected.

f) Click on the blue button “Done”.

7. It will take you to this screen below. Click on the blue button “Save and continue”.

8. It will take you to this screen. Click on “Use Google Tag Manager”.

9. It will then show you the screen below. Important: Copy the “Conversion ID” and also the “Conversion Label” in notepad, as you will need them later on. Important: DO NOT click the blue button “Done” yet or close it because you first need to set up the tags, triggers, and conversion linker in Google Tag Manager (see instructions below). Then once that is completed come back to this page and click on the blue button “Done”.

10. Now, login to your Google Tag Manager account to add in the Google Ads conversion tracking. Click on “New Tag”. Please note, to see the “New Tag”, make sure that you are in the “Workspace” tab.

11. Click on “Tag Configuration”

12. It will bring up the option below. Click on “Google Ads Conversion Tracking”.

13. On the next screen, you will need to enter in the “Conversion ID” and “Conversion Label”. To get these values, refer back to the screenshot in step 9 in the previous step. Simply add in these values here.

14. Click on “triggering”.

15. Next, you need to decide where you want these conversion tags to fire. In our case, we want to add in the conversion tracking once someone reaches a confirmation page after the form submission (thank you page). So, we DO NOT want to click “all pages”. To add in the specific pages where we want the conversion to fire, click on the “plus” sign on the top right corner.

16. Now click the “trigger type” in the red rectangle below.

17. Next click on “Page View”.

18. Click on “Some pages”. Then select “Page URL” in the drop-down menu. Select “contains” and then enter in the “thank you page url”. In our case it’s thank-you-contact-me. Lastly, click on the blue “Save” button on the top right.

Example: This is how our thank you page looks like.

19. Next, name the trigger and click “Save”.

20. Click on the blue button “Save” again.

21. Name the tag before creation. You can leave it to the suggested one. Click on “Save”.

22. Now you should see the tag and trigger that you just created. Click on the blue “Submit” button (for the tag and trigger that you just created).

23. Lastly, click the blue “Publish” button on the top right. Make sure that you can see the tag and trigger that you created (see red rectangle below).

24. Then click on “Continue”.

25. You should now see this screen (Version Summary). Simply click the “X” on the top left.

26. Click on Workspace.

27. It will take you back to the Workspace screen. Click on “Tags” on the left side of the screen.

28. You should now see your published tag. Also make sure it says “Workspace Changes: 0”.

29. The next thing is to create a “Conversion Linker Tag”. Please refer to the screenshot in step 9 in the previous steps. Obviously first check that it hasn’t already been set this up in the “Workspace” section in your Google Tag Manager Account (Tags section). If it’s not there, proceed with the following steps.

30. Click on “New Tag”.

31. Then click on “Tag Configuration” and click on “Conversion Linker”.

32. Then click on “Triggering”.

33. Click on “All Pages”.

34. Then click the blue “Save” button on the top right.

35. Click “Save” again.

36. Next click the blue “Submit” button.

37. Click on the blue “Publish” button.

38. Click on “Continue”.

39. You should now see that it has been added. Click on the “X” in the top left corner.

40. It will take you to the versions screen. Click on “Workspace”.

41. You should now see the “Conversion Linker” implemented in the “Workspace” section. Make sure “Workspace Changes is zero and that the conversion linker has been set to trigger on “all pages”.

42. The final step is to test to see if the conversion tracking works in Google Ads. Now go back to step 9 and click on the blue button “Done”. Here is the screenshot again.

43. Click on Click on “Tools and Settings” inside your Google Ads account and the click on “Conversions”.

44. You should now see the “Conversion Action” that you created in step 6. Click on Troubleshoot beside the conversion action that you created.

45. You should now see this screen. Click the blue button “Continue”.

46. Enter in the thank you page for this conversion. In our case the conversion URL is https://www.marketingignite.com/thank-you-contact-me/ and click the blue “Connect button”.

47. We can see from the test that the thank you page is sending data. Click Finish.

48. In the next screen, it confirms that the conversion is working. You can close the Tag Assistant

49. You can move to step 50 if the conversion tracking is working properly. If not, please refer to the troubleshooting below.

50. The last step is to enable “enhanced conversion tracking”. Login to your Google Ads account and click on “Tools and settings”. Then click on “Conversions”.

51. Click on the conversion action that you set up before (to add the enhanced conversion tracking). In our case it’s called “Submit Lead Form”

52. Click on “Enhanced Conversions”.

53. Next, click on “Turn on enhanced conversions”. Then there will be a pop - up message that you need to agree to.

54. Next, select the first option “Google Tag or Google Tag Manager” and click on “Next”.

55. Enter in your URL and click on “Save”.

56. You should now see this screen which confirms that the “Enhanced Conversion Tracking” has been turned on (see the text inside the red rectangle).

Please note: In the website backend once the user filled out the form, you need to pass the user name and email id in datalayer in order for the enhanced conversion tracking to work properly. At least one of the following fields must be provided:

1. Email

2. Address – First name, last name, postal code, and country are required (Optional:Street address, city, and region as additional match keys).

3. A phone number can also be provided as a standalone match key but is recommended to be sent along with an email.

57. Click on “Diagnostics” to see the status of the “Enhanced conversions”. It can take up to 48 hours after receiving data to start processing it. It also recommends checking the diagnostics regularly to make sure that the enhanced conversions are working properly.

58. Click on “Webpages” to see where the page where the conversion triggers

59. Lastly, make sure that the action optimization is set as “primary”. See screenshot below.

60. If it’s not set as “primary”, simply click on the edit goal

61. Make sure to select the “ account - default goal ” (the first radio button should be selected). This makes sure that all of your valuable conversions are being conside red across all of your campaigns for your Smart Bidding strategies. This gives machine learning more data to learn from to power your bid strategies and deliver better performance. N ext, make sure that the “conversion action optimization” is set as “primary” in the dropdown . Then click on “Save changes”. Please note, if you have several lead forms on your website that are of equal importance, you should set them all as “prim ary”.

Troubleshooting:

If the conversion tracking is not working properly, you need to check if the Google Ads “Conversion ID” and the “Conversion Label” in Google Ads are matching the same values as Google Tag Manager. To check if they are matching correctly, click on “tools and settings” in your Google Ad Account. Then click on “Conversions”.

Then click on your conversion action that you set up . In our case it’s “Submit Lead Form”.

Then click on “Tag for Submit Lead Form”.

Here, click on “Use Google Tag Manager”. On this screen you can see the “Conversion ID” and the “Conversion Label”.

Now, login to your Google Tag Manager to see if you are using the same values . Click on the “Google Ads Conversion Tracking” that you set up before in Google Tag Manager .

Now compare the “Conversion ID” and “Conversion Label” in Google Tag Manager with Google Ads.

If they are different, simply click the “pencil” button to the top right corner and amend the values to the correct ones and click on “Save” on the top right corner.

Another reason why the conversions are not working properly is because the “Conversion Linker” is not set up properly. Login to your Google Tag Manager Account. Then click on the “Conversion Linker”.

Make sure that the “Conversion Linker” triggers on all pages.

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