Offline Conversion Tracking Implementation: CRM Admin | Google Ads

Key Takeaways

this video is designed for CRM administrators who are helping to implement the Google Ads conversion tracking solution offline conversion tracking is a solution that enables your company to measure which leads turn into sales and revenue so you can better manage your bids and budgets to increase your overall advertising ROI now before we get started please note that you can always find further details and instructions at this URL to start let's take a quick look at the bigger picture so you can better understand where your work fits in of course everything starts with the user as they click on your ad and arrive at your site after that they browse your site they read about your products and your services and after that they hopefully fill out a form and they become a lead for your business now that information will then get passed into your CRM database and ultimately they'll reach some conversion event like when they purchase a product offline and that's what we have to upload into Google Ads now that we've seen this from the users perspective let's talk about what's actually happening behind the scenes when the users click comes to your website it has a unique ID called the GCL ID that is central to this process once they're on your site you're going to need to capture this GCL ID and save it for later usage because when they fill out the form you're gonna have to pass that GCL ID value along with the lead information so that it ultimately makes it into your CRM database and later on when that conversion event happens it's this GCL ID that we need to extract to upload into Google Ads this is how it works as the CRM administrator you have two main goals first to partner with the web team so you can collect the GCL ID from the website lead forms and then to store it along with the lead information in the relevant CRM objects most often the lead and opportunity objects so you can later extract the GCL ID when each lead or opportunity reaches a specific conversion milestone the GCL ID is a very long alphanumeric string up to 120 characters long your web development team will capture the GCL ID when the ad click reaches the website and then they'll modify the lead form to pass this value along with the leads other information to your CRM system so you'll need to partner with them on this critical step so your system is ready to receive and store this value it's critical that each leads GCL ID be consistently captured by the CRM system and stored with the corresponding lead and opportunity objects your advertising team needs to understand which clicks lead to profitable outcomes so they're going to monitor your CRM data to see which ad clicks lead to successful outcomes like a lead being qualified or an opportunity being won and when a lead or opportunity reaches or passes one of these important stages you'll need to retrieve the GCL ID and the date/time it reached that stage so they can pass it back to Google in some cases they may ask you to produce this information and in other cases perhaps your IT organization can do it this is why it's critical that the GCL ID be cleanly stored with the proper CRM objects now let me give you a quick overview of what you'll need to do first you'll need to create a GCL ID custom filled in each of the relevant objects like again leader opportunity and you need to make sure that these fields are linked so the GCL ID value from the lead gets passed to the opportunity now we recommend that you enable change history next you'll want to capture the GCL ID from the lead form submission finally you'll extract conversion data for upload to Google Ads now let's deep dive into each of these steps first thing you need to do is determine which objects you need to store the GCL ID in the best way to do this is to ask your ads team which conversion events they want to import into Google Ads so for example if they say they want to capture conversions when a lead becomes qualified and then when the opportunity is one well then you know you need to add the new GCL ID fields to both the lead and the opportunity objects since the GCL ID is likely being passed into your system via the website lead form submissions it's usually safe to assume that you need to update your lead object next you need to create a custom GCL ID field in each object to store the GCL ID we recommend you simply call it GL ID this field needs to be able to hold an alphanumeric string of up to 120 characters long and we recommend that you do not show it in the CRM interface so your users don't accidentally alter it one important step that's often overlooked is the need to link your custom fields so that the GCL ID value is propagated from one object to the next for example if you need to track conversion events in the lead and opportunity objects you need to make sure that those objects are properly linked so that when a lead generates a new opportunity the GC LED value from the lead object is passed to the new opportunity object now that you've added the custom fields and linked everything it's time to integrate with the website the last step in your web developers process is to ensure that the website lead forms are ready to pass the GCL ID to your CRM system along with the rest of the lead information if they haven't reached out to you already please do reach out to them since this often requires a clear collaboration between the web and CRM teams now before we move on to the last step about data export let's first talk about how to test that your system is properly setup first open your favorite browser and navigate to a lead form on your company's website then you're gonna manually append a test parameter to the end of the pages URL we suggest GCL ID equals CRM test and hit enter to resubmit the URL then simply submit a test lead from that page if everything is working you should see the test lead along with the GCL ad value CRM test in your CRM system from there go ahead and inspect the other objects that you modified earlier to ensure that the GC LED value has been stored in all of them as well for example if you store GCL ID in the opportunity object then convert the lead to an opportunity and see if the values carried over now it's time to discuss the last step extracting conversion data from your CRM database when a lead or other object reaches some critical stage or milestone like when an opportunity reaches the deal one stage your advertising team will need to pass three critical pieces of information back to Google Ads the Google click ID the date and time that that conversion event was reached and the conversion action name something like CRM 1 and your advertising team can tell you what these names are in addition there are two optional fields they may also need to send the conversion value and the conversion currency now in some cases advertisers will ask their CRM team to help them extract this information on a daily basis in other cases their IT teams can handle this and in some other cases there are actually integrations with external tools that can automatically extract the data for them regardless it's important for you to understand the data that's required so you can ensure that it's ready for querying and one final pointer the basic way to gauge when an object reaches a conversion say when a lead becomes qualified is to regularly query those records to see which have reached that stage but in some cases these stages can change quickly and conversions can be missed therefore whenever possible we recommend you query your systems change history logs so you can see precisely which status changes were made and when this will ensure that you can capture 100% of conversions once more you can always find detailed instructions for implementing the solution at this URL we hope you found this video helpful and thank you for your time