How to Set Up ‘Lead’ Conversions on AdWords using Google Tag Manager | Tutorial

One of, if not the most common type of conversion on Google AdWords is ‘Leads’. For this type of conversion, it is down to you to decide what counts as a ‘Lead’ for your business. That being said, one of the most common types of leads by far is online enquiry forms. If you are currently using Pay-Per-Click advertising, it is essential that you are tracking leads on your website.

One of the easiest ways to get conversion tracking for leads up and running, is by using Google Tag Manager. So, in this post, we are going to be talking you through how to set up Conversion tracking for Leads on AdWords using Google Tag Manager.

It goes without saying, that you will need a Google Tag Manager account for this tutorial. So, if you haven’t got one, you need to create a GTM account and link it with your WordPress site.

There are two parts to setting up Lead conversions using Google Tag Manager. The first part of the process involves the creation of the conversion in AdWords. Then part 2 involves installing the conversion tag using GTM. If you have already created the conversion, then you may as well skip straight to part 2.

Part 1 | AdWords

Here’s how to create a ‘Lead’ Conversion;

Step 1 – Create a new Conversion

As the ‘Part 1’ title suggests, you will need to login to your Google AdWords account. Once you have your account’s dashboard loaded up, you will need to click on the spanner icon in the top right-hand corner of your screen.

This will present you with 5 categories, one of which being “Measurement”. Underneath that, you should see “Conversions”; click on that. This is the section of your account where you can view all of your conversions once they have been set up. Obviously as this is likely to be your first conversion, you probably won’t be able to see much at the moment.

However, what you should be able to see is a blue circle with a white plus sign in it, on the left-hand side of your screen.

Upon clicking that button, you’ll be required to select the type of conversion that you are looking to track. To set up conversion tracking for leads, you will need to select the “Website” option.

Step 2 – Edit the Conversion Settings

Now you should see the screen with all of the settings for your conversion. Most of these settings are fairly straight forward, but I’ll run through the main settings quickly any way:

Conversion Name

You need to give your conversion a name that will make it easily identifiable in the list of conversions. So, if you create a conversion to track enquiry form submissions from your ‘Contact Us’ page, then you might call it “Enquiry Form Submissions – Contact Page”.

Category

The category is basically a description of the conversion action. You will just need to choose “Lead” from the drop-down menu.

Value

This is how much you believe the conversion is worth to your business. For leads, however, it can be quite tricky to establish a value. This is because most of the time, there is no direct financial benefit just from an enquiry. Having said that, it is always best to assign a value whenever possible.

• QUICK TIP: A good way to work out a rough value for a lead is to try and work out an average conversion rate. Do some research into how many people became customers after sending through an enquiry. If 1 in 10 people did, then you could take the cost of the product/service they were enquiring about and divide it by 10. That figure can then be the figure you use for the value of that conversion.

Count

With this setting, you are specifying how many conversions you would like AdWords to count per click/interaction with your ad. Normally, you would only set it to count “Every” conversion when every conversion adds value. So, when you are tracking leads, it is most common that you would tell AdWords to only count “One” conversion. Because if someone submits the same enquiry form three times, they are still only one lead.

Other Settings

There are four more settings that you can edit and these are: Conversion window, View-through conversion window, Include in “Conversions” and Attribution model. You really don’t need to worry about these when you are setting up your conversions for the first time.

However, you may look at changing your attribution model after you have got your conversions set up and running. Because, this is the method AdWords uses to credit keywords and ads with conversions. The default setting, ‘Last click’ credits the last ad (and keyword that triggered that ad) that they clicked on before converting with the entire value of the conversion. So, for getting started, the ‘Last click’ model is absolutely fine. But you may wish to explore more informative attribution models going forward.

Step 3 – Get the Conversion Information

After you have finished tinkering with your settings and have clicked “Save and Continue”, you will then be prompted to select your method of installing the tag. You won’t be surprised to hear that in our Google Tag Manager setup guide, we are going to advise you to click on “Use Google Tag Manager”…

It will display your Conversion ID and your Conversion Label. Now that you have these up in front of you, it is time to crack on to Part 2!

Part 2 | Google Tag Manager (GTM)

For this part, you are going to need to open a new tab in your browser and log in to your Google Tag Manager account.

Step 1 – Adding a new Tag

On your GTM dashboard, you should see the “New Tag” tile that looks like this;

After you have clicked to “add a new tag”, a screen should load for you to setup the Tag Configuration and the Trigger. But just before we get into those two crucial steps, there’s one simple and quick thing that you need to do; name your tag.

That is all you should see in the top left-hand corner of your screen at the moment. Just like you did with your conversion name in AdWords, make sure your tag’s name is easily recognisable. So, for the example I used earlier, I might call my tag “AdWords Conversion – Contact Us Page Enquiry”.

Step 2 – Configuring your Tag

When you click on the “Tag Configuration” box, you will see a list of the types of tags you can add on Google Tag Manager. You want to be looking out for “AdWords Conversion Tracking”, as shown below.

This is when you will require the information for your conversion from AdWords. Can you remember that when you finished the setup of your conversion, you was provided with a ‘Conversion ID’ and a ‘Conversion Label’? Well, hopefully as you should be able to see, that is what you need now. If you were able to assign a value to the conversion, then you will just need to copy that over along with the currency code (USD, GPB, EUR etc.) as well.

With any luck, that should be the conversion itself all set up. All that’s left for you to do now, is to choose when the conversion is to be triggered…

Step 3 – Choose a Trigger

The ‘Trigger’ is the point at which you want that conversion tag be fired. Google Tag Manager will run a bit of code when it identifies a trigger, for example maybe when a page is loaded or a button is clicked (either of which you could choose as a trigger); that code will fire the respective conversion tag.

But before we look at how to set up your trigger, you need to know what your trigger is. As we’re talking about ‘Lead’ conversions, it’s fairly likely that your lead is going to be an online form. A lot of online enquiries have a kind of ‘Thank you’ page that users get redirected to. This ‘Thank you’ page would be a perfect place to set up your trigger.

That should have given you an idea as to where your trigger needs to be. So, let’s get it set up!

When you click on the box titled “Triggering” underneath your Tag Configuration, it should bring up the screen with all of your past triggers. Although, this probably looks very bare at the moment, you are going to add your first one by clicking on the little blue “+” in the top right corner of your screen.

Again, you will need to enter a name for your trigger in the top left-hand side of the window that opens. So, more of what we said earlier here regarding making sure it is easily identifiable etc. If you were to create the checkout page as a trigger, for example, then you may just name it ‘Checkout Page’. The simpler the better.

Trigger Type

After you have named your trigger, you can then click on the “Trigger Configuration” box and choose which type of trigger you would like to set up.

As we mentioned earlier, “Page View” is normally the best trigger for Lead conversions. This is generally because it is the most straight-forward trigger to set up for leads. You just need to have a page that you can redirect people through to after they’ve submitted an enquiry. If you don’t, you can look into setting up a ‘button click’ as a trigger. But for this tutorial, we will be using the page view trigger.

Here’s what you should see after you select “Page View” and then check the “Some Page Views” circle;

From the first drop-down menu, you will need to select “Page Path”; and from the second, click on “equals”. If you’re not sure what ‘Page Path’ is referring to, no worries! The highlighted part of the URL below is what you need to be looking for.

You just need the same part of the URL from the page that you want to set the trigger up on. Then you just chuck your page path into the empty field next to “equals”. So, if we use our page path example from above, here’s how our Tag Configuration box should look;

Once you have entered the Page Path for the page that you want to set the trigger up on, then you just need to click “Save” in the top-right hand corner. And again click “Save” again.

Step 4 – Preview and Publish

You’re nearly there now! All that is left for you to do is preview the changes and providing all is good, publish it. After saving the Trigger and the Tag Configuration above, you should be back on your GTM dashboard. In the top right-hand corner of your screen you should see this;

When you click “preview”, the changes will have been made temporarily on your website. So if you now open up your website, you should see your on-site Google Tag Manager. This should list any tags that have been picked up by Google Tag Manager. Furthermore, it details which tags have and which tags haven’t been fired on your current page. Here’s what to be looking out for;

As long as your tag is being displayed here, then we’re in business. If you now go to the page on your site where you set the trigger up, with any luck, your conversion should be showing underneath “Tags Fired On This Page”. Providing this is the case, then it is time to publish your tag!

So, head back over to your GTM account. Click on the “Submit” button, which is next to the preview button you clicked on a few moment ago. It will now prompt you to add a name and description for this ‘version’.

This is only for your records on your GTM account. What name you give the version really doesn’t matter. But again, just something obvious and recognisable will do the trick. For example, ‘First Lead Conversion Setup’, will do the trick. Once you have named it, you can click “Publish” in the top right-hand corner. And now… YOU’RE DONE! *Big cheers.

Now you know how to set up conversions on AdWords using Google Tag Manager!