How to Track Google Ads Leads Through to Sales

Google Ads can tell you which click became a form fill. It can't tell you which form fill became a paid job unless someone tells it. So a campaign can look healthy in your ad account while the work it brings barely covers the spend.

There are three levels of tracking below. Start at the lowest one you'll really keep up, because a simple system that's filled in beats a clever one that isn't.

What every level needs

Whichever level you choose, each lead needs three facts recorded against it:

• Where it came from: at the very least "Google Ads", and ideally the campaign.
• What happened: contacted, quoted, won or lost.
• What it was worth: the job value, once it's won.

If nobody records the outcome, the rest is wasted effort. Make updating leads somebody's job, with a set time each week.

Level 1: Source and outcome

Effort: about an hour. Good for: one campaign, or a small monthly spend.

• Send your ads to a page or form used only by ads, so the form itself tells you the source.
• Use a separate phone number on that page, so calls can be counted too.
• Don't rely on asking "how did you hear about us?". People say "Google" when they mean a map listing, an organic result or a friend's recommendation they looked up.

At the end of the month you can work out spend, leads, jobs won and won value for Google Ads as a whole. That alone answers the biggest question: is this paying for itself?

Level 2: Campaign by campaign

Effort: about half a day. Good for: anyone running more than one campaign.

• Website forms: add tracking tags to your ads, such as utm_source and utm_campaign in the final URL suffix. Add a hidden field to the form that reads the tag and sends it with the lead.
• Lead form assets: Google's webhook data includes a campaign ID and the time the form was submitted, so you can keep both with the lead. Don't depend on downloads. Google stores these leads for 60 days and the CSV only covers the last 30.
• Calls: use a call tracking service that reports which campaign produced each call.

Now you can build the table that changes decisions. Say a heating firm spends £2,600 in a month across three campaigns.

Campaign	Spend	Leads	Cost per lead	Won	Cost per won job	Won value	Won value per £1
Boiler replacement	£1,200	30	£40	4	£300	£10,000	£8.33
Emergency repairs	£600	40	£15	12	£50	£2,400	£4.00
General plumbing	£800	32	£25	2	£400	£600	£0.75

The formulas are simple:

• Cost per lead = spend ÷ leads
• Win rate = jobs won ÷ leads
• Cost per won job = spend ÷ jobs won
• Won value per £1 = won value ÷ spend

Look at what the table shows. On cost per lead alone, boiler replacement is the worst campaign. On won value it's the best. General plumbing looks fine on cost per lead and returns less than it costs. Emergency repairs brings small jobs cheaply, and may bring boiler work later, which this table can't see. The numbers start the discussion, and you still need your own judgement.

Two refinements make it more honest:

• Use profit if you know it. £10,000 of boiler work at a 30% margin is £3,000 of profit against £1,200 of spend, which is a very different picture from £8.33.
• Credit the month the lead arrived. A lead from October might become a job in December. Revisit the last three months each time, or slow-selling campaigns will always look worse than they are.

Level 3: Sending sales back to Google

This is usually called offline conversion import. It connects each sale to the original click, so the sale shows up in Google Ads.

Here's how it works, based on Google's setup guide:

1. With auto-tagging on, each ad click carries a unique ID called a GCLID.
2. A hidden field on your form saves that ID with the lead.
3. When the lead becomes a customer, you upload the ID, the conversion name and the time, plus the value if you want it.
4. Google records it with your other conversions, and you can judge campaigns on sales rather than form fills.

Google's lead form webhook also includes a click ID. A few things to know before you start:

• There are time limits. Google's guide says the gap between click and conversion must be under 14 or 90 days, depending on the data source. Long sales cycles need some thought.
• Check the current method. Google recommends enhanced conversions for leads for new setups, which works differently, and its upload tools have been changing. Follow its help pages as they stand when you set this up.
• Consent matters. Google's upload template has consent columns for European users. Check what applies to you.

Is it worth it? It suits firms with steady lead volume and someone technical to look after it, especially if you use automated bidding. It's rarely the right first step. If your team doesn't update statuses reliably, the upload will be empty or wrong. Get the Level 2 table working first.

Mistakes that distort the picture

• Treating Google Ads conversions as sales. A conversion is whatever you told Google to count. Usually that's a form fill or a call.
• Ignoring phone calls. If half your enquiries ring you, a forms-only report leaves out half the story.
• Counting the same person twice. Someone may fill in the form and call you as well. Tidy these up before you work out your cost per lead.
• Renaming campaigns mid-month. Your table stops adding up. Change names at the start of a month, or keep a note of the old ones.
• Judging too soon. With a six-week sales cycle, last week's leads haven't had time to become jobs.
• Recording only the wins. Lost reasons tell you whether a campaign is bringing the wrong people or whether your team is losing the right ones.

Doing this with LeadCentre

Here's what LeadCentre does and doesn't do for Google Ads tracking.

What it does: Google Ads lead forms can post to your LeadCentre webhook, and so can website forms. A hidden campaign field can be matched to Lead source or to a custom field. Each lead moves through New, Contacted, Quoted, Booked, Won and Lost, and marking it Won asks what the job was worth. The Home screen then shows leads, win rate and won value over a chosen time frame. See conversion tracking for more.

What it doesn't do: it doesn't bring in your ad spend, and it doesn't send conversions back to Google. Meta and Google conversion feedback is listed as Coming Soon. You can keep a click ID in a custom field, but any upload would be a separate job done outside LeadCentre. For now, the per-campaign table above is best kept in a simple spreadsheet.