If you’re using Google ads to promote your business and encourage conversions, you’ve probably wondered at some point how the actions users take offline can be attributed to your online campaign. What happens if they make a phone call, for example? Or a sale is made long after the ad has stopped running?
While Google Ads is getting you in front of and engaging with your ideal audience, tracking is essential for understanding where to attribute those leads. If you can’t tell whether they are coming organically or through your ads, it’s hard to know where to invest your marketing spend moving forward.
This is where the Google Import Conversions feature comes in. Previously known as Offline Import Conversion, this feature allows you to import offline conversions via Google Ads.
Learning how to use Google Ads offline conversion tracking, you can accurately attribute ad success, which in turn empowers your lead generation strategies and gets you higher-quality leads. The ideal for every business owner.
How Google Import Conversions feature works
Google’s Import Conversions feature offers a way to track and measure important conversions that are made through other systems so that they can be attributed to your ad campaign (after first determining if they resulted from your ad campaign).
If you use a CRM, for example, your conversion performance connects to Google Ads. Google Import Conversions has an auto-tagging feature that attributes a Google ClickID (GCLID) for each ad click. This information is stored in your CRM. It then recognises that users, thanks to their GCLID, and any offline interactions are stored in the CRM and can be attributed back to the ad campaign.
Why offline conversion measurement matters
Say, for example, you run several advertising campaigns at once to drive leads via a signup form. These campaigns will generate a variety of clicks and impressions and may result in sales many weeks down the track. Those sales could come over the phone.
At this point, it becomes tricky for Google Ads online functions to track those offline conversions. But the Google Import Conversions features allows you to connect with your internal CRM, upload your conversion data, and attribute those conversions back to your Google Ads campaigns.
Google Import Conversions gives you a complete picture of your ad success, letting you iterate and improve your performance.
When you’re getting sales, it’s easy to determine that your ads are successful, but measurement helps you to harness the formula that leads to those conversions. With Google Import Conversions, you can:
- Better determine which keywords generate sales
- Calculate your lead value for specific campaigns
- Improve your return on advertising spend by focussing on keywords that bring in the most revenue
- Evaluate targeting criteria such as your customer’s location or the time of day they engage with you offline.
Setting up Google Import Conversions
From your Google Ads account, you need to enable the auto-tagging feature. This will set you up to import offline conversions in Google Ads.
With the auto-tag in place, every click gets a unique Google ClickID, which connects with the URL of your ad to link that person directly to that campaign.
When the Google ClickID is created (when someone new clicks on your ad), this can be stored on your CRM.
Conversion performance and the importance of Google Ads
By uploading your CRM data back to Google Ads, you can use the Google Ads conversion performance measurements and attribution features to unpack that data. Google Ads is the most advanced ad platform on the market. Its tracking and measurement capabilities are unparalleled in other platforms. Hence it plays an important role not only in advertising but also in analysing the success of the campaigns.
Conversions can be uploaded as Excel, CSV or Google sheet. Google support on how to do this is extensive. See how to set up offline conversion imports.
What can be tracked with Google offline conversion tracking
Google Import Conversions tracking lets you track everything, including calls from your ads, conversions from ad clicks, and even store visit conversions. This is thanks to the Google ClickID (GCLID).
Conversions from calls can be tracked by importing your in-house call conversion data into Google Ads. Because of the unique codes in your ads, any click to call from your ad — whether it’s clicking the phone number on your website or a click-to-call action on the ad –, can all be tracked.
Once those clicks are linked to a prospect in your CRM, the offline engagement with this person is tracked through the CRM and can then be uploaded back into Google Ads to measure how the lead converted.
Conversions from clicks are probably the easiest to track and understand. Every online action is tracked, and every person to engage with your ad will get their GCLID so that all the activity from that one person can be linked back to that unique ID. Whether they click to buy, fill in a form, subscribe to your email newsletter, or take any other actions, that ID tracks it all and stores it in your CRM.
Store visit conversions, off the back of Google Ads, are tricky to track. There is no way to put codes into the people walking through the doors to confirm that they are those that interacted with your ads, but you are still able to track clicks online and reference them with in-store visits and behaviour to build a picture of how your ads impacted your in-store visits and sales.
Store visit conversions are done through local campaigns and are limited to businesses with multiple locations and Google My Business accounts.
Online + offline = high-quality leads
Whether you run your ads yourself or work with an Australian Adwords Agency, Google Import Conversions is an invaluable tool to help you build lead generation strategies that generate the best return on your ad spend. It’s only through tracking and understanding both online and offline conversions that insights can be gleaned to supercharge your Google Ads campaigns.
AdVisible works with clients across Australia to generate leads and increase conversions through Google Ads. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.
