Today I am here to share the story of one of my clients who reached out to me saying,

Client: “I have been running Google ads for the last 3 months but not getting appropriate results, until now I have spent more than 500 USD and now I am getting short of money to spend. Please help!”.

I heard him and replied,

Me: “Sir, are you measuring your ads?” He said, “How to do that? What is it all about? Please elaborate.” I continued: “See Measuring an ad is a very important thing; in our words, it is called conversion tracking. It helps you to see how your ad is performing, where you should spend your money, and how you can manage it.”

Let me tell you everything in detail about what is conversion tracking in Google Ads, why you need it, and how will you implement it on your website seamlessly:

What is Conversion Tracking in Google Ads?

The Google ads conversion monitoring tracks the activities that users take after viewing your advertising. This free, built-in Google Ads tool is critical for understanding and optimizing the value your campaigns produce.

However, it is vital to understand that Google cannot anticipate which results you wish to track. Unless you utilize Shopify, you must determine and set up the conversions that are most useful to your business in your Google Ads account. If you’ve set up Shopify’s Google channel, the plugin will instantly add and track e-commerce conversions to Google Ads.

Why you should track Google Ads conversions?

If you want to create effective Google ad campaigns, you must track conversions. Let’s look at some of the most significant advantages this technology provides.

Improve reporting.

Users do not always click on an ad and convert right away—or on the same device. This tracking tool allows you to view conversions across devices and browsers for more detailed reporting.

Simplify optimization.

Conversion tracking shows you which campaigns, ad groups, and advertising get the desired results. Using this performance data, you may optimize your Google advertising and increase their value.

Access smart bidding.

You may have more control over your campaigns using Google Ads’ advanced smart bidding tactics. To use settings such as Maximize Conversions and Target CPA (Cost Per Action), you must first activate conversion tracking.

How to setup Google Ads Conversion Tracking?

So as of now, we have learned what Google Ads Conversion tracking is and why you should track it. So now, we shall move forward to the setup process. I will elaborate one by one, first on setting up the conversion in Google Ads and assigning the tags in GTM. Then assign Google Ads conversion to the campaign.

Setup Tracking through Google Tag Manager

A. First, Let’s Create Conversion in Google Ads

Let’s say I have a newsletter subscription form on my website. I want to send data back to Google Ads once it is correctly submitted.
First, let us build a conversion in Google Ads. Log in to your ads account at ads.google.com and select Goals > Conversions > Summary (from the left sidebar). Then select the New conversion action button.

The window will prompt you to select the conversions you wish to track. Because I am working with a website, I select Website.

The Google Ads screen will now prompt you to input your website’s URL to see how it is configured for ads.

Enter your domain and click Scan. Once completed, you will see a variety of settings.
First, it will automatically import conversions based on the website events that you’ve defined. If you completed this in GA4, you can import it directly here as a conversion.

 

The second approach (which I prefer) is to specify the conversion operations manually.

Let us track the newsletter subscription manually. A new window will pop up when you click the “+Add a conversion action manually” button. Please enter the following settings:

• Goal and Action Optimization: Choose the Subscribe option from the dropdown menu. If you’re tracking something other than a newsletter subscription, select another activity.
• Conversion Name: Subscribe form (you can call it whatever you wish).
• The value of each conversion is: This can change based on the website’s purpose. You might set a preset value for each reader who subscribes to your newsletter. However, for an e-commerce website, the value of each purchase can differ. Since we’re tracking mail signups, I’ll set a fixed value of €5. Simply follow the screenshot below.

 

• Count: This is an important parameter to consider. Google Ads employs the count to determine the right number of conversions on the website following a user’s arrival via the ad.

For e-commerce purchases, every purchase should have a different count, even if they are of the same product. However, if the same subscriber subscribes to your newsletter twice, data will be duplicated. Counting this as two conversions would be erroneous. So now, let’s select the count as one.

Click Save and Continue. You will now be taken to a page that displays the many ways to add conversion tracking to your website. To no one’s surprise, here at Analytics Mania, I chose to use Google Tag Manager.

Then you will notice two values: Conversion ID and Conversion Label. Google Tag Manager requires both of these.

B. Creating a tag

Let’s get to Google Tag Manager. Select Tags > New. Now select Google Ads Conversion Tracking in the Tag Configuration window. Then enter the Conversion ID and Conversion label in the appropriate fields.

Did you see the warning “Conversion Linker tag missing in container“? The conversion linker tag is necessary for storing ad click information when a conversion occurs on your website.

Click the Create button next to the caution symbol to open the template for the conversion linker. There is no need to make any further modifications except to ensure that it is set for all page views.
If you only have one domain to manage, no additional configuration is required. Save the tag.
If you’re dealing with numerous domains and wish to track visitors across them, click Enable linking across domains and input the domains of all websites involved in the same user journey. Separate them with commas.

Now, return to the Google Ads Conversion Tag. We need to specify when the tag will fire. This depends on the type of interaction you want to monitor. There is no simple, universal norm.
In my case, there is a Subscribe form, for that, I will ask a developer to add an emailSubscriber event to the data layer after the form is successfully submitted.

Since emailSubscriber is sent via datalayer.push, the Custom Event trigger is the best option for this conversion.
In the Triggering section, click the Plus button and select Custom Event as the trigger type. Please enter the following settings:

I’ll type emailSubscriber (with an uppercase S) or copy-paste the name because that’s the event that a developer included in the data layer. Save the trigger. It will be automatically added to the tag. Save the Google Ads tag.
The final setup of your Google Ads conversion tag should look something like this:

C. Testing

In this stage, we will test the setup using two tools: GTM’s Preview & Debug mode and a Chrome extension called Google Tag Assistant (Legacy). If you haven’t done so before, install the extension.
To enable Google Tag Manager Debug mode, click the Preview button in the top right corner of the GTM interface (next to the Submit button).

A new browser tab will open in tagassistant.google.com.
A box will appear, prompting you to input the URL you want to test and debug. It could be the URL of a specific page or the location of the homepage. Then select Start.

A new browser window should appear, displaying the URL you provided in the previous popup. At the bottom of that page or tab, you must click on the following badge:

And when you return to the tagassistant.google.com tab, you should see this success message.

In Preview mode, click the Continue button. Return to the page, click the Google Tag Assistant (Legacy) icon, and then enable.

Now, let’s submit the form on your website. After that, the emailSubscriber event should appear on the left side of the preview and debug modes. Once I click it, the tag should fire.

Now it’s time to confirm that the tag is working correctly using the Google Tag Assistant (Legacy) extension. Go to the website, then click the Google Tag Assistant Legacy symbol to see if the extension has identified the Google Ads Conversion Tag. If so, then click it.
P.S. Ignore the two identical GTM containers shown in the extension. The GTM preview mode causes the extension to record two containers.

You will then see the conversion ID and label that Google Ads received.

 

D. Publishing

Is everything good? You can now publish Google Tag Manager container updates, and now the tags will be firing for every event that you have setup in the Google Ads Conversion Tag. To publish the container, first click the Submit button in the top-right corner of the GTM interface, then select Publish.

E. Assigning a Campaign:

Follow the steps outlined below to simply set up campaign-level conversion tracking:

• From your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon and select the campaign you want to set conversion goals to.
  
• In the Settings menu, click the Goals drop-down menu.
• Click on Campaign-specific objective settings.
  
• Select the required conversion. Goal and save.

Facing an issue with setting up Google Ads Conversion Tracking on your website?

Let’s start with us.

Conclusion

The main point of the whole blog is that conversion tracking is a crucial tool in Google Ads that allows users to track and optimize the performance of their ad campaigns. It helps improve reporting, simplify optimization, and access smart bidding. I have also provided a step-by-step guide on how to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads.

Me: “Sir I hope you got my point. Did my explanation satisfy your query?”

Client: “Oh, yes now I get it, so can you please setup Google Ads Conversion Tracking for my website today?”.

Me: “Sure Sir”

So, If you have any questions you can reach us and our experts will help you with understanding and setup of conversion tracking on your website. Thank You for your valuable time and see you soon!