Why You Need Enhanced Conversions For Your Google Ads

Want to make the most of a cookie-less world with first-party data? Enhanced conversions are the key to improving your PPC campaigns with better targeting capabilities.

In this blog, Logan Schiff, VP of Paid Search, will review the basics of enhanced conversions in Google Ads and how to set them up for your strategy.

What You’ll Learn

• What Are Enhanced Conversions?
• How to Set Up Enhanced Conversions for Web
• How to Set Up Enhanced Conversions for Leads
• Meet EC Assist: The Extension You Need for Enhanced Conversions

What Are Enhanced Conversions?

In an effort to help advertisers make full use of their hashed first-party data, Google developed an enhanced conversion feature for Google Ads campaigns. This feature makes it easier to accurately measure conversions and engage in more powerful bidding.

A Real Life Example

For instance, someone might look for home remodeling services online via their phone, click on an ad, and then use their desktop at work. That desktop browser is logged into an email when the user visits the corresponding remodeling company’s website to request an estimate for services, which would entail the user entering and authenticating their email.

Using their phone, the user would then authenticate the email, connecting the phone number and email through Google Ads, effectively connecting both the phone and desktop emails. Subsequently, the enhanced conversions feature would store this individual as a single user, allowing for better conversion tracking and targeting toward similar users.

My Expert Insight on Using Enhanced Conversions

Using Google’s enhanced conversions allows you to take full advantage of first-party data, especially as user privacy restrictions increase and third-party cookies disappear.

Without this feature, Google Ads won’t be able to identify unique visitors and target them accordingly, making enhanced conversions essential in maximizing the accuracy of data in your PPC strategy.

To further bring advanced advertising techniques to all businesses, Google just released a new Chrome extension, EC Assist, to simplify the setup and help you troubleshoot any issues with your tracking.

Action Item: Improve the accuracy of conversion measurements in your Google Ads campaigns by setting up enhanced conversion in Google Ads for either web or leads. Doing so will ultimately help set your PPC campaigns up for long-term success using the first-party data you collect.

How Can I Set Up Enhanced Conversions for the Web?

One way you can set up Google Ads enhanced conversions is the “web” type, which optimizes campaigns for first-party data collected from your website. For example, you can match data like email addresses entered on your website to Google hashed user data connected to Google Accounts for improved tracking.

Generally, this method of integrating enhanced conversions into PPC campaigns is ideal if you’re focused more on generating website conversions over lead generation. However, the accuracy here tends to be slightly lower than what you would get with enhanced conversions for leads because of its dependence on hashed first-party data to preserve user privacy.

The following are the three main ways you can set up enhanced conversion for the web in Google Ads:

1. Use Google Tag Manager

Using Google Tag Manager, you can set up enhanced conversions by taking the following steps:

1. Click on the Goals icon within your Google Ads account.
2. Select the Conversions menu within the Goals menu and select Settings.
3. Select Enhanced conversions and expand the panel, checking “Turn on enhanced conversions” and agreeing to Google’s compliance statement.

   

4. Choose “Google Tag Manager” from the Select an option dropdown.
5. Choose “Go to Google Tag Manager” to begin setting up enhanced conversions using this method.

From here, you can set up enhanced conversions in Google Ads using three specific methods:

• Automatic Collection: This option enables Google Tag Manager to automatically identify and collect user data from the web page. While this method is convenient, you may get better results by specifying Javascript variables or CSS selectors or adding a specific code snippet to your site.
• Code: This method entails adding a code snipped to a site for more accurate matching of hashed customer data through proper data formatting.
• Manual Configuration: This step involves specifying Javascript variables or CSS selectors on web pages that include critical first-party data, but it’s still not as accurate as adding code snippet to your site.

2. Use A Google Tag

If you would prefer to set up Google enhanced conversions using the Google Tag, you can do so by following steps 1 through 4 above for Google Tag Manager, along with the following additional steps:

1. Select “Google Tag” from the Select an option dropdown.
2. Choose “Tag details,” which will help you determine how to use tags to collect user-provided data.

Here, you have a few different options:

• Automatically detect user-provided data: Like in Google Tag Manager, you can choose to have the Tag automatically detect relevant user-provided information, but this won’t be quite as accurate as including a site code snippet or specifying either Javascript variables or CSS selectors.
• Adding code snippets: Adding a code snippet to your site maximizes the accuracy of data collection and matching through proper data formatting.
• Specifying Javascript variables or CSS selectors: The third option involves specifying CSS selectors or Javascript variables on web pages containing first-party data.

Click on Save when you’ve chosen your options, and validate the implementation to confirm the proper setup.

3. Use Google Ads API

To use Google Ads API to set up Google Ads enhanced conversions, follow steps 1 through 4 for Google Tag or Tag Manager above, followed by these steps:

1. Choose “Google Ads API” from the Select an option dropdown.

   

2. Check to ensure your website has a conversion tracking tag and that you’re implementing the transaction ID function tag, which will enable Google to avoid duplicate results by matching API and tag conversions.
3. Use a secure HTTPS connection to set up an internal server that can send all relevant user data.
4. You can then use the Google Ads API to transfer conversion data into Google Ads using a standard format along with SHA-256 hashing. 

How to Set Up Enhanced Conversions for Leads

If you would rather focus on lead generation over website conversions, you also have the option of setting up enhanced conversions for leads. This option tends to be more accurate, leading to potentially more valuable insights into audience engagements for conversion rate optimization.

Here are the two main ways to set up enhanced conversions for leads in Google Ads:

1. Use Google Tag Manager

To set up enhanced conversions using Google Tag Manager, take these steps:

1. Choose the Goals icon in the Google Ads dashboard.
2. Choose Summary under the Conversions menu and click on “New conversion action.”
3. Choose “Import” on the next page.
4. Select what kind of data you wish to import. Once you’ve done this, you can connect new data sources using either direct connections or Zapier third-party integration, and choose the settings for the conversion action before saving and continuing.

   

5. Select Settings within the Conversions menu.
6. Expand the Enhanced conversions for leads tab within the Settings menu.
7. From the “Select an option” dropdown, select Google Tag Manager.
8. Choose “Go to Google Tag Manager” and choose how to import offline data.

2. Use Google Tag

Setting up enhanced conversions using Google tag will entail steps 1 through 8 above. 

Then, choose “Google tag” from the dropdown. Click Save to continue.

Meet EC Assist: The Extension You Need for Enhanced Conversions

To ensure your enhanced conversions are working properly, consider integrating Google’s newest tool: the EC Assist extension into your Chrome browser. 

This tool makes it easy to validate and troubleshoot enhanced conversions in Google Ads.

It works by looking at your setup to determine if there are any issues present that might prevent proper implementation, with certain troubleshooting steps to guide you through resolving those issues.

How to Troubleshoot & Optimize Enhanced Conversions With EC Assist

To use EC Assist, take the following steps:

1. Add the EC Assist extension via the Chrome Web Store.
2. Enter your website’s domain to identify enhanced conversions.
3. Move on to the Perform conversion phase, which will entail monitoring for conversions to identify issues with EC implementation. 

   

4. You can then move on to the Troubleshoot phase to begin resolving EC issues based on the results of the conversion.

   

Get The Most From Google Enhanced Conversions With Ignite Visibility

With the help of Google Ads enhanced conversions, you can harness the power of first-party data to more effectively optimize your PPC campaigns and target segmented audiences. In turn, you’ll be able to boost conversions with more optimized strategies that shorten the distance between the beginning and end of the customer journey.

Ignite Visibility can give you the help you need to set up and continually monitor enhanced conversions as part of a holistic PPC strategy. In addition, we can help with everything from search engine optimization to content marketing to optimize your business’s online performance.

With our experts by your side, you can:

• Properly set up enhanced conversions in Google Ads
• Measure your PPC efforts for continual optimization
• Develop compelling and highly targeted ad creative and copy
• Identify all target audiences for your ads to maximize reach and engagement

If you like this idea, connect with Ignite Visibility today to speak with a professional about your next strategy.