Optimizing Google Ads with Dreamdata: Which Stages to Feed Enhanced Conversions?

Updated by Elise McCreary

Dreamdata's Google Ads Enhanced Conversions integration allows you to send valuable first-party conversion data back to Google, improving the accuracy of your campaign measurement and fueling Google's Smart Bidding strategies. A key question for many B2B marketers is: which stages of the customer journey should I send back to Google Ads?

The answer depends on several factors, primarily the volume of data you have and the complexity of your Google Ads campaigns. Google Ads allows you to optimize campaigns towards multiple conversion actions, providing flexibility to align with your specific business goals.

1. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs):

  • When to use: If you have a lower volume of conversions or your campaigns are focused on brand awareness and top-of-funnel activities, optimizing for MQLs is a strong starting point. MQLs indicate a significant level of interest and engagement with your marketing efforts, making them a valuable signal for Google to learn from.
  • Benefits: Helps Google understand which ad interactions are driving qualified interest early in the funnel, allowing for optimization towards generating more potential future customers.

2. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs):

  • When to use: If you have sufficient data volume and your campaigns are designed for high-intent, bottom-of-funnel activities, optimizing for SQLs can be highly effective. SQLs represent leads that have been vetted by your sales team and are considered ready for a direct sales engagement.
  • Benefits: Provides Google with a more direct signal of sales-ready leads, enabling the algorithm to optimize for ad spend that results in higher-quality opportunities for your sales team.

3. Closed Won Deals:

  • When to use: While less common, sending "Closed Won" conversions to Google Ads can make sense, particularly if ads play a crucial role in moving customers from SQL to a closed deal. This is most impactful when you have a high volume of Closed Won deals, ideally >30 monthly and preferably 50-100.
  • Considerations: Optimizing for Closed Won requires a significant amount of data for Google's Smart Bidding to effectively learn and optimize. Without sufficient volume, the signals might be too sparse to provide meaningful optimization.

Data Volume and Smart Bidding

Google's Smart Bidding strategies (e.g., Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, Maximize Conversion Value, Target ROAS) rely on conversion data to make informed bidding decisions. The more relevant and consistent conversion data you feed back, the better these strategies can perform.

While there isn't a strict universal minimum, this Google support documentation suggests to evaluate results accurately, they recommend measuring performance over longer time periods that have at least 30 conversions, such as a month or longer.

The key takeaway is that more data (and consistent data) generally leads to better optimization for Smart Bidding. If your conversion volume is low for a particular stage, consider starting with a higher-funnel conversion (like MQLs) and then exploring deeper funnel stages as your data volume grows.

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