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 on your site.
After that,
they browse your site to read about your products and you 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 we have to upload into Google Ads.
Now that we've seen this from the user perspective,
let's talk about what's actually happening behind the scenes.
When the users click come to your website
it has a unique ID, call the GCLID,
that is central to this process.
Once there on your site,
you are gonna need to capture this GCLID
and save it for later usage.
Because when they fill out the form,
you are gonna have to pass that GCLID value
along with the lead information.
So that it ultimately makes it into your CRM database.
And later on, when that conversion event happens,
is this GCLID
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 GCLID 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 GCLID
when each lead or opportunity reaches a specific conversion milestone.
The GCLID is a very long alphanumeric string, up to a 120 characters long.
Your web development team will capture the GCLID when the ad click reaches the website,
and then they'll modify the lead form to pass this value
along with the lead's 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 lead's GCLID
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 are going to monitor your CRM data
to see which ad clicks led 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,
they'll need to retrieve the GCLID 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 GCLID 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 GCLID custom field
in each of the relevant objects, like again, lead or opportunity.
And you need to make sure that these fields are linked
so the GCLID value from a lead
gets passed to the opportunity.
Now, we recommend that you enable change history.
Next, you’ll wanna capture the GCLID from the lead form submission.
Finally, you'll extract conversion data for upload to Google Ads.
Now let's deep dive into each of this steps.
First thing you need to do is determine which objects you need to store the GCLID in.
The best way to do this is to ask your ad’s 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 won,
well, then you know you need to add the new GCLID fields
to both the lead and the opportunity objects.
Since the GCLID 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 GCLID field in each object to store the GCLID.
We recommend you simply call it "GCLID".
This field needs to be able to hold an alphanumeric string 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 GCLID 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 GCLID 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 developer's process is to ensure that the website lead forms are ready to pass
the GCLID 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 gonna manually append test parameter to the end of the page's URL,
we suggest “gclid=crmtest”,
and hit enter to re-submit the URL.
Then simply submit a test lead from that page.
If everything is working,
you should see the test lead, along with the GCLID value "crmtest",
in your CRM system.
From there,
go ahead and inspect the other objects that you modified earlier
to ensure that the GCLID value has been stored in all of them as well.
For example, if you store GCLID in the opportunity object,
then convert the lead to an opportunity and see if the value is 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 won" 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 won".
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 teams 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 system's 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 this solution at this URL.
We hope you found this video helpful, and thank you for your time.