The best way to track Avada Forms submissions as conversions in Google Ads

Google Ads can drive genuinely good leads and customers for your business, but setting up conversion tracking properly is a lot harder than it ought to be.

Try to do it through Google Tag Manager and you're stuck writing custom code to listen for the form submission, then piecing together triggers, tags, and variables just to get one accurate number on your dashboard. It's a lot of work for something that should be simple.

And unfortunately, the simpler-looking options don't really work very well. Counting visits to a thank you page can miss up to 30% of your real conversions once you factor in ad blockers and the privacy features built into browsers like Firefox and Safari. And a thank you page URL doesn't carry the lead's name, email, or phone number, which is exactly what Google Ads now wants attached to every conversion you send it.

So what's the better approach?

This article walks through a better way to track conversions in Google Ads when someone fills out an Avada form on your website, using server-side tracking.

The usual approaches to tracking Google Ads conversions, whether that's counting thank you page views or firing events through Google Tag Manager, all run into the same wall. Studies suggest these methods miss up to 30% of the conversions that actually happen.

Here's why:

• Ad Blockers. They stop the Google Tag from ever loading when the person lands on your site, so nothing that they do on your site gets tracked (including submitting a form).
• Browser privacy features. Browsers like Safari cut the Google Tag off from tracking a visitor after roughly a day, so if someone clicks your ad today and converts 4 days later, there's no way to connect that conversion back to the click.
• Device switching. A lead might click your ad on their phone during lunch, then come back that evening and fill out your form from a laptop. Browser-based tracking has no way to link those two sessions together because they happened on different devices.

Fortiunately, server-side tracking solves these issues. Instead of waiting on something to happen in the browser (like a visitor landing on a thank you page) and hoping the Google Tag is still there to see it, you send a direct message to Google with the lead's details (which means ad blockers and browser privacy settings can't interfere at all).

Google's own figures show server-side tracking typically brings a 23% average increase in total recorded conversions and a 10% cut in cost per conversion, mostly because Google's bidding algorithms have more data to understand what your ideal customer looks like and can serve your ads more prominently to people like them.

There are two main routes here, and which one is best depends on when you want to send the conversion back to Google Ads.

A tool like Converly can send a server-side conversion straight to Google Ads as soon as someone submits an Avada form on your site.

Rather than building custom code in Google Tag Manager to listen for the form submission, pull the lead's details out, hash them with SHA-256, and post them to Google's API yourself, Converly gives you a visual builder to put the whole flow together instead.

You simply pick a trigger (like an Avada form being submitted) and choose the actions that should happen after (like sending a conversion to Google Ads, in this case).

From there, Converly handles everything for you. It watches for new submissions, pulls the lead's name, email, and phone number off the form, hashes each one with SHA-256 (a requirement on Google's end), and sends the whole package to Google Ads. It also captures the GCLID, IP address, User agent, and other signals that give Google a much better chance at matching the conversion back to a real person and exact campaign, ad, and keyword they clicked through on.

The end result is every advantage of server-side tracking (that 23% average lift in recorded conversions, and the 10% drop in cost per conversion) without writing a line of custom code, learning what SHA-256 is, or dealing with Google's API directly.

You can also wait and send the conversion back to Google Ads later on (like once a lead actually turns into a paying customer).

To do that, you need to capture a little extra data when they submit the form and carry it through to the contact record in your CRM. Here's the process:

Across 15 years running marketing teams, I've spent millions of dollars on Google Ads and built more reports than I can count trying to figure out what was actually working.

These are the 3 I kept coming back to:

Most businesses run several campaigns at once, often split out by service line. A recruitment agency, for example, might bid on "executive search firm" in one campaign and "temporary staffing agency" in another.

This report shows which of those keywords are actually converting, rather than just piling up vanity metrics like impressions and clicks that don't translate into real leads and customers. It makes it obvious which keywords are earning their spot in your budget and which ones are just burning through spend.

Once you're sending conversions back to Google Ads from your CRM, you can attach a value to each one (usually pulled straight from the deal or opportunity record in your CRM).

This matters because not every new client is worth the same. For a recruitment agency, a new client acquired through an "executive search" campaign is worth a lot more than one who came in through general "temp staffing" ads.

Sending that value along with the conversion means you end up with reports showing you earned $2,000 in revenue from one campaign and $20,000 from another. Once you can see that split, deciding where to shift budget stops being a guessing game.

This one is especially useful for businesses that win most of their work locally (recruitment agencies, law practices, accounting firms, and similar). It breaks conversions down by geographic region.

You can zoom out to country or state level, or drill all the way down to an individual postcode. Either way, you get a clear picture of whether your leads are actually coming from the areas you want to serve, or whether some of your budget is going toward clicks from outside your service area.

Once you have that picture, Google Ads' Location Bid Adjustments feature lets you act on it directly. Bid harder in the postcodes performing well, and pull back (or stop bidding entirely) in the ones that aren't.

Accurate conversion data is what lets you make real calls on how to run your ad campaigns, like which keywords deserve more spend and which locations need less.

It also feeds Google's automated bidding algorithms the data they need to understand what your ideal lead looks like, so they can put your ads in front of more people like them (and ultimately get you more leads at a lower cost per lead).

So go ahead and get real server-side conversion tracking running in Google Ads. Your ad campaigns will perform noticeably better for it.