Google has an amazing range of tools and features on its Ads platform that allow you to track user interactions. One of the most effective metrics you can look at on Google Ads is your conversions – what are your customers actually doing after they interact with one of your ads and land on your website?
There is Google’s standard tracking, but for those of you that want better quality data, you can use enhanced conversion tracking on Google Ads. This is a feature that allows for refined data collection and improved tracking accuracy while still complying with GDRP regulations and protecting your customer’s privacy.
In the below guide, I explain enhanced conversion tracking, how it differs from standard conversions, and why you should start using it in your Google Ads campaigns.
Google Ads Enhanced Conversions – An Introduction
Enhanced conversions in Google Ads is all about measuring your conversions more accurately. The idea is that you gain more information from your customers so that you can improve bidding and personalisation all in a secure and compliant way. The end goal is to then improve the ROI of your Google Ads.
Standard vs Enhanced Conversions
There are two types of conversions for Google Ads – standard and enhanced, each offer a different set of tracking metrics:
- Standard: Actions completed on your website such as purchases, downloads, and sign-ups.
- Enhanced: Actions completed after a user has clicked on your ad supplemented with first-party data such as name, email, and address.
Google recommends that you start with standard conversions, and then setup enhanced conversions afterwards for maximum optimisation.
Working Example – Enhanced Conversions in Action
It can be a little tricky if you’re a tracking novice, so let’s look at a theoretical example to demonstrate what enhanced conversion tracking on Google Ads can do. Let’s say that you have a gardening tools store and the following scenario plays out:
- David is logged in to his Google account and searches for gardening tools.
- He notices your ad for gardening tools on the SERP and clicks it.
- At this point, your enhanced conversion will capture David’s email and send it securely to Google Ads.
- David then browses several product on your landing page, visits your online store, signs up to your email newsletter, but doesn’t make a purchase yet because he needs a little thinking time.
- The next day, David visits your site again and makes a purchase.
- When he completes the checkout, the email he enters is captured again and securely sent to Google Ads.
- Google Ads can now use that email to link back David’s subsequent purchase and browsing to the original ad he clicked on.
Here we can see that the enhanced conversion has been able to give you useful information about David’s entire experience – from the initial search term he used, the ad he clicked on, and the two stages of his post-ad adventure that ultimately led to a purchase.
This information is incredibly useful in refining your Google Ads strategies and optimising your campaigns.
The Two Types of Enhanced Conversions – Web and Leads
It’s also important to understand that there are two types of enhanced conversions – for web, and for leads:
- Enhanced conversions for web: Used to measure online conversions and better suited for those who want to track events that happen on their website. Based on hashed first-party data when a user makes a conversion on your website.
- Enhanced conversions for leads: Use to measure offline conversions and better suited for those who want to track events that happen off a website such as a phone call or email. Based on hashed first-party user data from your website lead forms.
Both have their benefits and are useful in particular scenarios and it’s important to think about which conversion tracking method is appropriate for what you want to achieve and measure.
Why Enhanced Conversions are Essential for Your Ad Campaigns
You should now have a clearer understanding on enhanced conversion tracking on Google Ads. But how does this actually benefit you and what does it mean for your PPC campaigns?
To Make Sure Your Compliant with Data Privacy Regulations
In the last few years, we have seen an increased importance placed on data privacy and the protection of customers. This is seen with regulations like CCPA and GDRP. This swing towards security and privacy means that enhanced conversion tracking for Google Ads is all but essential.
The data collected from your website and the customer’s actions is hashed using a powerful one-way SHA256 hashing algorithm. I won’t get technical here, but this essentially means that sensitive customer data such as their email address is turned into an unreadable form before being sent to Google Ads.
As a result, if it were to be intercepted by hackers, they wouldn’t be able to do anything with the data – all they would see is a random string of characters. Only the Google Ads platform can then enter the relevant hash key to decrypt the data and then turn it back into a readable form.
This procedure ensures that enhanced conversion tracking protects the customer’s privacy throughout the process, which is essential for data privacy compliance, and to build trust with your customers.
To Improve Your Ad Relevance and Personalisation
The more information you have about your customers and what they do after clicking your ads, the better personalisation and relevance you can implement.
With our gardening tools example, with standard conversion tracking you might only capture info about David’s final purchase. However, with enhanced conversions, you can see what route he took to make that purchase including the products he browsed, and what he clicked on.
Combine that with the final purchase information and you can build a picture of David’s journey. When you have that journey multiplied hundreds of times from other enhanced conversion tracking, you can start to tailor your ads to direct new customers down that same route.
For example, you could place emphasis on products that you know people viewed the most or make links to certain pages that people who made a purchase clicked on the most more visible.
To Eliminate Gaps in Your Conversion Tracking
The ultimate aim with conversion tracking is to have a clear picture of what drove your customers to make a purchase. Using standard conversion tracking alone might not give you that clear picture.
This is where enhanced conversion tracking comes in. It fills in the gaps and makes sure that every interaction your customers take – from the moment they click on your ad, to the point they end their interaction with your website, is tracked.
To Improve Ad Bidding
If you want your bidding strategies to be successful you have to have a wealth of data to work with – enhanced conversions provides that data and allows you to optimise bidding.
For example, enhanced conversion tracking allows you to see which keywords or products are performing the best for your ads. You can then adjust your bidding accordingly and allocate more funds to those higher-performers.
If you only use standard conversion data, you aren’t getting the complete picture and thus your bidding strategies could be misinformed.
To Make an Improved ROI
All of this data eventually means an improved return on investment, this is because you can optimise your ads to improve their personalisation and relevance. Your PPC marketing campaigns will become more cost effective and you should see improved conversion rates.
We have created a handy ROI Calculator to help you work this out!
How to Enable Enhanced Conversion Tracking for Your Google Ads
Enabling enhanced conversion tracking is a little beyond the scope of this article and it can get a little complex. Currently, there are four ways you can do this for enhanced conversions for web:
- Automatic setup via your Google Ads account.
- Manual setup via Google Tag Manager.
- Setup using Google Ads API.
- Manual setup with Google Tag.
Google provides a helpful guide for each of these methods and I recommend giving them a read first. We can assist with this process too if you feel it is too complex or you don’t want to adversely affect your Google Ads campaigns.
Optimise Your PPC with Enhanced Conversion Tracking in Google Ads
Enhanced conversion tracking is often overlooked but I find that it can work wonders for your PPC campaigns. Ultimately, you benefit from improved conversion tracking accuracy, more data to work with, and a clearer understanding of your customer’s actions.
This is all done securely and within GDPR regulations. You can then use that data to improve your bidding strategies, ad personalisation, and ultimately boost your bottom line and ROI.
If you want any assistance setting up enhanced conversions or need to give your Google Ads campaign a jump start, please contact us and we will use our years of experience to help.
