Question from Reddit user:
What is the best way to ONLY push qualified leads back to Google as conversions.
This is in the legal space so for now could be calls or form fills – but would be happy if we could push back one – both would be amazing.
I assume we would need to do this with “offline conversions” and only push those back that met certain criteria as qualified conversions.Can we do that for just certain campaigns to test performance against campaigns that count all conversions.
The issue is we get 80% tire kickers and only about 20% of leads are worth anything at all – so trying to get that split a bit more dialed in.
Open to any suggestions or tools – or software that might help with this.
Thanks for any help!!
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
You are absolutely correct that the best way to push only qualified leads back to Google Ads is through Enhanced Conversions for Leads using the Offline Conversion Import method.
This approach allows you to filter out the 80% “tire kickers” before they ever hit Google Ads’ bidding models.
The most robust and cost-effective solution is to build a server-side pipeline using the Google Ads API in combination with an intermediary like Stape or Google Cloud Platform to process and filter your leads, ensuring only those that meet your internal qualification criteria are sent back as true conversions.
This method also lets you easily create a separate conversion action in Google Ads for testing, allowing you to run certain campaigns against all leads and others against only qualified leads.
The long answer is:
The problem you’ve identified with a low qualification rate (80% unqualified) is a perfect scenario for implementing a superior conversion tracking method known as Enhanced Conversions for Leads via a server-side process, as relying on standard form submission tracking directly from your website will always over-report conversions and confuse the Google Ads smart bidding algorithms.
The core of the solution is to connect your internal lead qualification system – whether that’s a CRM, a call tracking platform, or a spreadsheet you manually update – to Google Ads using the Google Ads API.
To set this up efficiently and affordably, you can use Google Tag Manager (GTM) on your website to capture the initial lead submission.
When a user completes a form or makes a call, GTM’s web container fires an event that captures the necessary user identifier (such as a hashed email address or phone number) and the Google Click ID (gclid), ensuring you have the link back to the Google Ads click.
Instead of sending the conversion directly to Google Ads, GTM sends this data to your server-side environment, which can be hosted cheaply on a platform like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
This server acts as a waiting room for your leads.
Once a lead is processed and your team determines it has met your internal criteria for a qualified lead – for example, if a call exceeds a certain duration or a form submission contains specific required information – you then use a script or service to push that specific, qualified lead’s data back to Google Ads using the Google Ads API’s Offline Conversion Upload service.
This is the filtering step.
This method is excellent because it is a cheap, scalable, and direct solution that gives you complete control over what is defined as a conversion.
You can create a new conversion action in Google Ads, name it “Qualified Lead,” and only send data to that new action.
By segmenting your campaigns, you can then set specific campaigns to optimize for the new “Qualified Lead” conversion action while letting others (perhaps high-funnel or awareness campaigns) continue to track the standard form-fill conversion.
This allows you to A/B test the performance difference and confidence-test the smart bidding algorithms on truly high-value data.
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