For many businesses, the journey from lead to customer doesn’t end online—it extends into offline interactions like phone calls, store visits, or in-person consultations. However, attributing these actions to your Google Ads campaigns can be challenging. This is where offline conversion tracking comes in, offering a way to link your offline customer interactions back to your digital marketing efforts.
Offline conversion tracking not only helps you measure the full impact of your campaigns but also provides actionable insights to refine your targeting and bidding strategies. In this guide, we’ll explore how offline conversion tracking works, the steps to implement it, and the critical role of privacy in handling CRM data. We’ll also discuss how offline data can be leveraged to create specific audiences for even more targeted campaigns.
What Is Offline Conversion Tracking?
Offline conversion tracking allows advertisers to measure conversions that happen outside the digital realm, such as a closed sale after a lead submission or a customer signing a contract weeks after visiting your website. By integrating these offline events into your Google Ads account, you can:
- Attribute offline outcomes to specific ads, keywords, or campaigns.
- Identify which campaigns drive high-quality leads.
- Optimize bids and budgets based on the complete customer journey.
This feature is particularly valuable for industries with long sales cycles, such as B2B, real estate, or higher education, where the final conversion often occurs offline.
How Does Offline Conversion Tracking Work?
Offline conversion tracking involves collecting key identifiers from your digital campaigns, such as the Google Click Identifier (GCLID), which links ad interactions to user actions. When an offline conversion occurs, this data is uploaded back into Google Ads to close the attribution loop.
Here’s how the process works step-by-step:
Tracking Clicks Online: When a user clicks your ad, Google assigns a unique GCLID to that click. This identifier is captured and stored in your CRM or database when the user completes an online form or engages with your website.
Capturing Offline Conversions: When the user completes an offline action, such as making a purchase or signing a contract, your team associates the conversion with the GCLID stored in your system.
Uploading Offline Data: The offline conversion data, along with the corresponding GCLID, is uploaded to Google Ads via a template or API. Google matches the data to the original ad click, attributing the offline event to the appropriate campaign or keyword.
Leveraging Offline Data for Specific Audience Creation
One of the most powerful benefits of offline conversion tracking is its ability to help you create highly specific and valuable audiences for your Google Ads campaigns. When you upload offline conversion data to Google Ads, you can use it to build custom audiences based on user behavior or attributes.
For instance, you can segment your audience into groups like:
- High-Value Customers: Users who completed offline purchases or reached a specific lifetime value threshold.
- Qualified Leads: Prospects who engaged with your sales team but didn’t convert yet, allowing you to retarget them with tailored offers.
- Returning Customers: Individuals who made repeat purchases or returned to your business after a significant time.
These audiences can then be used to create targeted remarketing campaigns for acquisition, or even exclusion lists to avoid wasting ad spend on already-converted customers. By aligning your messaging and bidding strategies with these specific audience segments, you can drive higher ROI and foster long-term customer relationships.
Protecting CRM Data Privacy in Offline Conversion Tracking
Handling sensitive customer data, such as email addresses, phone numbers, or transaction IDs, is a significant concern for businesses implementing offline conversion tracking. Google takes this responsibility seriously, ensuring that data privacy is maintained through a secure hashing process.
How Data Hashing Works
Data hashing is a procedure that converts customer information into a fixed-length string of characters using a secure algorithm, such as SHA256. This process ensures that the original data cannot be reverse-engineered, even if intercepted.
Here’s how the hashing process protects CRM data:
- Local Hashing: All customer data is hashed locally on your systems before being uploaded to Google Ads. This ensures that raw data, such as email addresses or phone numbers, is never transmitted in plain text.
- One-Way Encryption: Hashing is a one-way encryption process, meaning it’s impossible to retrieve the original data from the hashed output. This complies with GDPR, CCPA, and other global privacy standards.
- Secure Matching: Google matches the hashed data against its database of hashed user data. If a match is found, the conversion is attributed to the original ad interaction. No sensitive data is stored or shared during this process.
By hashing data before transmission, offline conversion tracking enables precise attribution while maintaining strict privacy standards.
Implementing Offline Conversion Tracking: Step-by-Step
If you’re ready to integrate offline conversion tracking into your Google Ads strategy, follow these steps:
Step 1: Enable GCLID Tracking
Ensure your website and CRM are configured to capture GCLIDs for every user who interacts with your ads. This can be done by appending GCLIDs to form submissions or URL parameters. You can follow these steps from Google
Step 2: Store Data in Your CRM
As users engage with your website and move through your sales funnel, store their GCLID along with their other information (e.g., name, email, or phone number) in your CRM.
Step 3: Record Offline Conversions
When a customer completes an offline action, such as making a purchase or signing a contract, update your CRM to include the conversion event. Associate it with the corresponding GCLID.
Step 4: Hash and Upload Data
Export the conversion data, including GCLIDs and hashed customer information. Use Google’s offline conversion template or an API to upload the data securely to your Google Ads account.
Step 5: Monitor and Optimize
Once your offline conversions are uploaded, review the performance data in Google Ads. Use these insights to refine your bids, keywords, and audience strategies.
Bonus
If you are using funnel.io to manage data, there is a new feature to insert your offline conversion. You can choose gclid, email or phone number as user identifiers.
Benefits of Offline Conversion Tracking
Offline conversion tracking provides a more holistic view of campaign performance by connecting the dots between online ads and offline outcomes. Key benefits include:
- Better Lead Quality Insights: Identify which campaigns generate leads that convert offline, helping you focus your budget on high-value audiences.
- Improved ROI: Attribute every sent spent on ads to actual business outcomes, ensuring your investments deliver measurable results.
- Enhanced Bidding Strategies: With accurate offline data, automated bidding strategies like Target ROAS or Maximize Conversions can optimize performance based on the complete customer journey.
Conclusion
Offline conversion tracking is an invaluable tool for businesses looking to measure the full impact of their digital campaigns. By securely connecting online ad clicks to offline customer actions, you gain actionable insights to optimize your strategy and drive better results.
The ability to create specific audiences based on offline data further amplifies its impact, allowing for precision targeting and personalized campaigns that drive engagement and conversions. Coupled with robust privacy measures like data hashing, this feature ensures you stay compliant while reaping the benefits of full-funnel attribution.
Need help implementing offline conversion tracking or leveraging your data for better audience targeting? CLICKTRUST is here to guide you through every step. Get in touch today to unlock the power of your offline data!
