Offline Conversion Tracking Is Your Secret Weapon: Here’s Why It Matters
Online conversion data doesn’t give you the full picture of who’s buying your products or services. Business happens offline, too.
Someone might download a free eBook on your website but sign up for a service agreement in person.
A homeowner might find a plumbing company via paid search but then call the company directly to schedule an appointment.
A foodie might see a banner ad for a new product but wait to purchase it until their next trip to the grocery store.
You need a way to tie offline transactions and purchase activity with your paid digital marketing efforts. Thankfully, Google and Facebook offer offline conversion tracking (OCT).
What Is Google Offline Conversion Tracking?
It’s a powerful tool that allows you to import conversions tracked in another system—such as your CRM or POS system—into Google Ads. Conversions can be anything from page visits and form submissions to phone calls and closed deals.
What Are the Benefits of Google Offline Conversation Tracking?
- It helps you evaluate targeting criteria, like which times of day or days of the week see the most offline sales, as well as location information.
It gives you a better idea of which ad clicks lead to offline sales so you can more accurately evaluate your return on ad spend.
- It helps you identify which keywords are working best to drive offline sales.
- It lets you track the entire customer journey for offline sales, rather than just up to the point where someone clicks on your ad.
You can use the information you glean with offline tracking to adjust bids for different keywords, locations, times of day, and audience segments to improve your Google Ads results.
What Can You Track with Google Offline Conversion Tracking?
There are two kinds of conversions you can track in Google Ads: conversions from clicks and conversions from phone calls.
Conversions from clicks
Google assigns a unique ID called a GCLID (Google Click Identifier) every time a person comes to your website from a Google ad. Your job is to save that ID along with any other information you collected from the person who clicked on your ad.
If the person later converts in the offline world—by purchasing an item in your store, for example—you upload the GCLID back to Google Ads along with details about the type of conversion and when it happened. Google Ads will record this data, so you can keep track of which ads are driving leads and sales offline.
Example: You’re an addiction treatment center that uses Google Ads to bring customers to your website. When a prospect clicks through an ad and fills out a form on your website or requests a call back, Google issues a GCLID and stores the person’s information. You follow up with the prospect by phone, who then enrolls in a treatment program.
Once a week your team reviews new client signups, along with the date and time of each enrollment. You compile the data (including the GCLID) into a spreadsheet and upload it into your Google Ads account. Within hours you’ll be able to see which keywords and queries are contributing to new leads and sales.
Read more about Google offline conversion imports and how to set them up.
Conversions From Calls
Google Ads also gives you the option of importing call conversion data into Google Ads. This lets you see which of your campaigns and keywords result in the most sales calls for your business.
Conversions from calls doesn’t use GCLIDs. Instead, you’ll need to keep track of information from your phone calls that resulted in sales or other customer actions, and Google will match the phone calls from your ads with the conversions.
Read more about how conversions from calls works and FAQs.
In-Store Visit Conversions
Google’s store visit conversions option lets you track which ads influence customers to visit your store.
You’ll be able to drill down on which campaigns and keywords drive the most visits to your business. Then you can optimize your campaigns for omnichannel performance.
Store visit conversion is not available to all advertisers. Read more about eligibility criteria.
Basic Requirements to Set Up the Google Offline Conversion Tracking Tool
There are a few things you must have/do to set up offline conversion tracking in Google Ads:
You need to enable auto-tagging on your Google Ads account.- You must be able to make code changes to all your web pages.
- You must have a CRM that can store GCLID codes.
- You must have a click-to-conversion cycle that’s less than 90 days.
Read Google’s instructions for setting up the offline conversion tracking tool.
What Are Facebook Offline Conversions?
Facebook also gives you the option of tracking offline conversions. Offline conversions can be everything from qualified leads to phone bookings to brick-and-mortar sales.
As with Google’s OCT option, Facebook’s offline conversion tracking will give you a better idea of how your Facebook Ads are affecting offline activity.
You’ll be able to measure offline return on ad spend and even show ads to people based on their offline activity. With this information, you can optimize your digital campaigns.
Tracking Offline Conversions in Facebook
There are three ways to track offline conversions in Facebook:
- You can upload offline conversion data from the offline events page in Events Manager.
- You can send offline events data directly to Facebook using the Offline Conversions API.
- You can send offline events data directly with Partner Integrations.
Once you’ve uploaded your data, you’ll be able to see the number of offline conversions attributed to people who saw or clicked your ads.
Start Tracking Offline Conversions
Now that you know the benefits of offline conversion tracking, think about what you can track. Start by identifying conversions that happen outside of your website. Tie them to trackable data you can link to your Google Ads campaigns, then start tracking.
Need help with offline conversion tracking? Want to supercharge your PPC campaigns? National Positions can help. We’re experts in everything digital marketing. Get in touch today for help with lead tracking, paid search, conversion rate optimization, and more.