Solved: Enhanced Conversion Impact on Google Ads Campaign

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some of my thoughts on this. Your Google account manager has suggested something that, on the surface, sounds like a logical next step. But from my experience, these kinds of suggestions from platform reps can sometimes be a wolf in sheep's clothing, especially when you've got something that's already working well.

The short answer is you're right to be cautious. Your concern about how this will alter performance is completely valid. Let's break down why this 'upgrade' might not be the straightforward win your account manager is painting it as.

We'll need to look at the real risk here... and it's not small

Okay, let's be brutally honest. Your account manager has one primary goal: to get you to adopt Google's latest tech and, usually, to spend more money. They often work from a playbook of 'best practices' that are applied across thousands of accounts, without necessarily considering the specific context of yours. You have a single, major campaign that's generating 100% of your leads and is "doing quite well". In the world of paid advertising, that's a golden goose. The absolute number one rule is: you do not mess with the golden goose.

Implementing the data layer for Enhanced Conversions isn't just "attaching more data". You are fundamentally changing the DNA of the conversion signal you're sending to the Google Ads algorithm. For months, maybe even years, the algorithm has been learning and optimising based on a very specific signal: a GA4 event firing. It has built a detailed profile of the type of user, the type of search query, the time of day, the device, and a hundred other signals that lead to that specific conversion event. It's a finely tuned machine.

When you introduce Enhanced Conversions, you're telling that machine to ignore much of what it's learned and start over. Hashed data like an email address is a completely different type of signal. The algorithm will be forced back into a 'Learning Phase', and this is where the danger lies. The learning phase is notoriously volatile. Your costs can spike, your lead volume can plummet, and it can take weeks for performance to stabilise, if it ever returns to its previous level. I've seen it happen countless times. A client gets a similar bit of advice, implements a "simple" tracking change on a campaign that was delivering leads for £50, and suddenly their Cost Per Lead shoots up to £200, or the campaign just stops delivering altogether.

Your concern isn't just valid; it's the most important consideration. The "inconclusive" internet research is inconclusive because the outcome is unpredictable. It's a gamble. And why would you gamble with the one campaign that's driving your entire business? The potential upside of EC is, at best, a marginal improvement in attribution for a few edge cases (like cross-device conversions). The potential downside is catastophic for your lead flow. The risk/reward ratio is completely out of whack.

I'd say you need to understand Google's motivation...

So why is your account manager pushing this so hard? You have to think about what's happening in the wider industry. Third-party cookies are dying. Apple's privacy changes (ATT) have already kneecapped tracking on iOS. Google's entire advertising model is built on data, and the sources of that data are drying up. Enhanced Conversions is Google's answer to this problem. By getting advertisers to willingly hand over first-party data (even in a hashed, privacy-safe form), Google can feed its machine learning models. It helps them build more accurate conversion models to fill in the gaps where direct tracking is no longer possible.

Notice who this primarily benefits: Google. It helps them maintain the accuracy of *their* overall system and preserve the value of *their* ad platform in a post-cookie world. Does it directly help you, the advertiser with a single, high-performing campaign? The answer is much less clear. It's a bit like having a perfectly reliable car that gets you to work every day, and a mechanic insists you need to install a complex new experimental engine. The new engine might be more efficient *in theory*, but it might also leave you stranded on the side of the road. Your current engine, while perhaps not the latest tech, is proven to work for *your* journey.

Think of it as a hierarchy of data quality for the algorithm:

Your current setup is Level 3. It's working. The rep wants you to move to Level 2. While technically "better" from a data-matching perspective, it's a disruptive change for your algorithm. The irony is that if your leads all come from people clicking an ad and signing up in the same session, EC provides almost zero additional value, as the standard tag captures that perfectly well already. It's designed to solve a problem you might not even have, while creating a new, very real problem of campaign instability.

You probably should focus on what actually moves the needle...

So, if tinkering with your conversion tracking is off the table for now, what should you be doing instead? This is where you can make real, tangible gains without risking your core lead source. The biggest levers you can pull in any paid advertising campaign are almost never technical tracking adjustments. They are strategic.

1. The Offer Itself

This is the number one reason campaigns succeed or fail. Your ads are generating leads, which is great. But could the offer be better? You mention lead gen. What is the lead magnet or the call to action? Is it a generic "Contact Us" or "Request a Demo"? These are some of the highest-friction, lowest-value offers in B2B marketing. You're asking for a prospect's time in exchange for a sales pitch. It’s an arrogant ask.

A much more powerful approach is to offer immediate, undeniable value. Instead of a demo, could you offer:

• A free, automated tool: A calculator, an audit, a grader that solves a small piece of their problem instantly. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. This provides real value and demonstrates expertise.
• A high-value content asset: Not a flimsy eBook, but a detailed blueprint, a benchmark report, a video course. Something they would consider paying for.
• A productised, low-risk entry point: A one-off strategy session for a fixed fee, a discovery workshop.

Improving your offer is the fastest way to increase your conversion rate. A 20% increase in your landing page conversion rate has the same effect as getting 20% more clicks for the same budget, but it's far more achievable than trying to outsmart the algorithm.

2. The Message (Your Ad Copy & Creative)

How are you talking to your audience? Most B2B advertising is horribly generic. It talks about features and solutions. Great advertising talks about pain. It enters the conversation already happening in your prospect's mind. You need to define your customer not by their demographics, but by their nightmare scenario. What is the urgent, expensive, career-threatening problem they are trying to solve?

Once you know that, you can use frameworks like Problem-Agitate-Solve to write copy that they can't ignore.

Bad Copy: "Get Our All-in-One Project Management Software. Streamline Workflows and Increase Productivity. Request a Demo Today."

Good Copy (Problem-Agitate-Solve): "Another project deadline missed? Is your team drowning in spreadsheets and confusing email chains while your most important initiatives stall? Stop the chaos. Our platform gives you a single source of truth, turning project uncertainty into predictable progress. See how in a 2-min video."

The second example doesn't just describe a product; it describes a painful reality. It agitates that pain and then presents the solution. Testing new messaging angles like this will have a far greater impact on your lead quality and volume than changing your tracking method.

3. The Audience

You have one campaign. This suggests you might have one audience targeting setup. The well of any single audience will eventually run dry, or become more expensive as you saturate it. The key to scaling is methodical audience testing.

Are you targeting keywords based on broad, informational queries, or are you focused on high-intent, "problem-aware" and "solution-aware" keywords? For example, for an outreach tool, you would focus on users looking for outreach software like "software for lead generation", or "contact info finding tool". The intent is completly different.

If you were to expand to other platforms like Meta or LinkedIn, are you targeting broad demographics, or are you targeting the niche interests that define your ideal customer? People who are members of specific professional groups, who follow certain industry influencers, who use complementary software tools. This is where you find your best customers. Again, this is a much more fruitful area for experimentation than your conversion tracking.

You'll need a better way to test this... if you must

Now, let's address your second point, which is a much more sensible approach: integrating your CRM (Airtable) with Google Ads and creating a new conversion event. This is a form of Offline Conversion Tracking, and it is indeed safer because you can test it without disrupting your existing, working campaign.

However, your proposed method—letting it gather data for a month and then running a custom experiment—is still a bit clunky and slow. Experiments in Google Ads can be cumbersome to set up and often require significant traffic to reach statistical significance. There's a more pragmatic way.

The real question isn't "which tracking method is better?" The real question is "how much can I afford to pay for a lead and still be wildly profitable?" Most businesses have no idea. They just try to get the lowest CPL possible. This is a mistake. It leads to optimising for cheap, low-quality leads instead of valuable customers. The key is to understand your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Let's do some simple maths. You need to know three things:

1. Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPA): How much revenue, on average, does a new customer bring in over their lifetime?
2. Gross Margin %: What is your profit margin on that revenue?
3. Lead-to-Customer Rate: What percentage of the leads from this Google campaign turn into paying customers?

With these numbers, you can work backwards to find your maximum affordable Cost Per Lead (CPL).

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %)

A healthy business model often aims for an LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio of at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to a third of your LTV to acquire a customer.

Max CAC = LTV / 3

And finally, to get your maximum affordable CPL:

Max CPL = Max CAC * Lead-to-Customer Rate

This number is your north star. It's the real benchmark of success. Who cares if your CPL is £100 if you know that every lead is worth £200 to your business? Suddenly, the pressure to just lower the CPL vanishes, and you can focus on acquiring high-quality leads, even if they cost a bit more.

Here, I've built a small calculator for you. Play around with the sliders to see how changes in your business metrics affect how much you can really afford to pay for a lead.

Once you have this number, you have a much better framework for testing. If you still want to test the CRM integration, here's the simpler way:

1. Set up the new conversion action (e.g., "Qualified Lead from CRM").
2. Create a brand new campaign, duplicating your existing one.
3. Set the new campaign to optimise for the new "Qualified Lead" conversion action.
4. Run this new campaign alongside your existing one with a small test budget (e.g., 10-20% of your current spend).
5. Compare the results after a few weeks. Don't just look at the CPL. Look at the Cost Per *Qualified* Lead. Look at the Cost Per Customer.

This approach completly insulates your golden goose campaign from any risk. You're testing in a controlled environment. If the new campaign proves to be more profitable (i.e., it delivers customers at a lower CAC), you can then gradually shift more budget to it. If it doesn't, you turn it off and you've lost very little. No month-long data gathering, no complex experiments. Just a straightforward, real-world test.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To summarise everything, you're at a crossroads. One path is the one your Google rep suggested: a technically complex change with high risk and questionable rewards. The other path is to focus on the fundamental drivers of growth that have nothing to do with tracking code. Based on my experience scaling hundreds of campaigns, the second path is almost always the right one.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Navigating the world of paid advertising is complex. It's filled with advice from platforms that have their own agendas, and it can be difficult to know what will actually work for your specific business. Making the wrong move, like the one you were considering, can be incredibly costly—not just in wasted ad spend, but in lost leads and revenue that your business relies on.

This is where having an experienced expert in your corner can make all the difference. We've seen these scenarios play out hundreds of times and can help you cut through the noise, avoid the pitfalls, and focus your limited time and budget on the strategies that truly drive growth.

If you'd like to have a chat about your campaigns in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can review your account together and give you a clear, actionable plan to move forward.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh