Enhanced conversions with GA4

Enhanced Conversions in a cookie-less future

With recent technological developments, tracking users online has become increasingly difficult.
Advertisers face constant challenges in our cookieless future. With new legislation being introduced on regular basis (think of GDPR and popular browsers blocking third-party parties), it has made it harder for us as analysts and marketeers to understand our user behavior. But solutions for these new challenges are also on the rise. Enhanced Conversions in Google analytics 4 is one of those solutions every marketeer working with Google analytics 4 or Google Ads should know about. We will guide you through it in this article.

Google Tag

Conveniently, Google has spent millions developing technologies such as Google Tag. This is vital in our battle against a cookie-less future. A Google tag helps us map out a user interaction.

In the long term, this gives you a better understanding of what converts strangers into loyal customers. In digital marketing, sometimes, a purchase is quite difficult to establish at the first touch point. Realistically, a person may see your ad on a Monday and then purchase it around 3- 4 days later.

Let’s say we cannot track conversions accurately. What could happen? You might misattribute the conversion to a wrong channel, or miss out on measuring the conversion completely.

Enhanced Conversions can help with this.

Fear not—we will explain the benefits in detail and show you how you can implement Enhanced conversions within your digital marketing strategy.

What is enhanced conversions?

I did go through the basics of enhanced conversions above, but this can become very technical. Do not worry; I simplified it for you.

Firstly, we need to understand what Google does to overcome a cookie-less future. Google tracks user interaction. Let’s say they click on your ad and visit your website. Google will collect first-party conversion data from your website. Google then hashes the data using a one-way SHA256 hashing algorithm. The hashing algorithm is a guarantee to keep your customers’ data safe. Now, this data is used by Google to better understand what drives action.

Enhanced conversions optimise your bidding and reduce your digital advertising costs.

Now, not all enhanced conversions are equal. There are mainly two different types. Below is a small description of each and a diagram accompanying it.

Web:

This is optimal for a business that mainly operates on online transactions. For example, an e-commerce store might find this to be very useful and effective.

Lead:

This is optimal for offline businesses and transactions. Car dealerships, for example, may use this.

Each type of enhanced conversion has its own use. Now, it’s not that hard to choose what type to use, whether it’s offline or online. Next, we will go into the benefits of using this in much more detail. There is no point in implementing this if it doesn’t help you, so let’s see how it does.

How does it benefit you?

Recovery of unmeasured conversions is the most beneficial aspect of enhanced conversions. You may ask yourself, Why? Recovering unmeasured conversion gives you a more realistic measure of your performance on a particular campaign.

For example, let’s say you ran a campaign. A week later, you look again and only see that you have converted three people but have converted ten people. Low conversion may lead to an impression of a bad-performing campaign, but it would have been making you a lot of money. You just did not know it.

Another benefit is improving bid optimisation. Not having a clear and accurate image of what makes you money may result in you pumping large sums into inefficient campaigns. Inefficient investing does not cost you directly, but the potential you could have made with that investment is all gone.

Some customers only occasionally like to have their data used and recorded, as it could be prone to data theft. With the one-way hashing algorithm, you guarantee your customers’ data is stored safely. Hashing is the process of turning readable data into code that only an algorithm can decode back into readable content.

Setting up this is not a 3-month process that requires a team of 20 technical specialists. It does not require you to be a computer geek. Google simplifies the process for you and provides multiple ways to set it up to make it easier for you.

How to set it up?

Google advises three main ways to this set-up for the Web:

GoogleTag Manager
The Google Tag
Google Ads API

The last one is more technical and could require some technical expertise. However, the first two can be completed via a graphical user interface. To read more in-depth about how to do this, follow Google’s step-by-step guide.

Google advises three main ways to this set-up for Leads:

GoogleTag Manager
The Google Tag
Google Ads API
Lead from Ads

The setup methods are very similar but can vary slightly. However, if you cannot get along with technology, it may cause challenges for both. For support in such matters, you could book a quick free consultation on how we could implement enhanced conversions in your business.

What does the future hold?

With AI becoming a very hot technology, trends like this affect how we view digital advertising. If we accept change, we can stay ahead of our competition. Cross-device tracking has also been developed to become more accurate and measurable regarding your advertising efforts.

Now, this may seem far-stretched, but with the development of augmented reality, the shopping experience may change within a decade. What may be standard now could be outdated within 5-10 years. So, if you are to take away only one thing from this, you should adapt as time progresses. If you don’t change, others will.

If you are ready to go ahead and steer clear of your competition, have a look at this.

If you find this information overwhelming, consider signing up for a GA4 UP subscription. With this subscription, we audit your setup, implement new feature releases and update you on new privacy releases (stay updated with GDPR / CCPA) for a small monthly fee. This subscription allows you to focus on your priorities while the experts handle the rest. Learn more about how we can support you here.

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