Question from Reddit user:
Hi everyone,
I’m just starting out with Google Ads and would love some advice. I’m running campaigns for customizable travel products (tours, transportation services, etc.) through a Shopify site.
A few details about my setup:
- Technically customers can place orders directly, but in most cases they have special requests, so I usually adjust the price or itinerary after they inquire.
- My landing pages are not just forms — they include attractions, itinerary details, and photos, plus a consultation option.
- The challenge I face is how to balance search intent with ad targeting, since it’s not as straightforward as selling a fixed product.
Questions I’m struggling with:
- What’s the best way to structure keywords and match types to avoid irrelevant clicks?
- For “soft conversions” like form fills or inquiries, what’s the best way to track and optimize in Google Ads?
- Should I focus on traffic first (to understand user behavior) or aim for conversion campaigns right away?
- Any suggestions on ad copy or campaign structure for the travel niche?
I’d really appreciate insights from anyone who’s managed Search Ads for travel services or other semi-custom businesses.
Thanks a lot! 😊
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
The best way to optimize Google Search Ads for custom travel products, which involve a soft conversion (inquiry) before a hard sale, is to use a tight, segmented campaign structure that focuses heavily on high-intent long-tail keywords and an immediate conversion focus, not traffic.
To accurately track and optimize for the soft conversion, you must use a server-side tracking implementation combined with the Google Ads Enhanced Conversions for Leads feature.
This robust setup, enabled by the Shopify API and Google Ads API, allows you to measure the soft inquiry and later send the offline, adjusted final sale back to Google Ads, enabling the smart bidding to optimize for both quality inquiries and eventual final revenue.
The long answer is:
Your challenge is common in the service and custom product niche, where the user journey involves a crucial offline step (consultation and price adjustment) between the initial click and the final sale.
First, regarding your keyword and match type structure, you should avoid broad, high-volume keywords and immediately focus on a skyscraping structure built around intent.
This means creating extremely granular ad groups centered on long-tail keywords that indicate specific travel needs, such as “private 7-day family tour to Rome” or “custom transportation service Venice airport to Dolomites.”
Use Phrase Match and tightly controlled Exact Match types, while aggressively adding non-specific terms to a robust Negative Keyword List to prevent irrelevant clicks.
For Ad Copy, focus on the unique value proposition of customization, using phrases like Tailored Itineraries, Private Consultation, and Price Adjusted for You to align with the soft conversion intent.
Now, to your core challenge of tracking and optimization for the inquiry, the best approach is to implement a two-step conversion tracking system using a server-side solution.
The two conversion steps are: Step 1: The Soft Conversion (Form Fill/Inquiry) and Step 2: The Hard Conversion (Final Adjusted Sale/Booking).
For Step 1, you’ll fire an event like lead or generate_lead using Google Tag Manager whenever a user submits your consultation form.
Critically, you must also collect the user’s email or phone number and implement Google Ads Enhanced Conversions for Leads.
This feature sends a hashed version of the lead’s contact information to Google Ads alongside the lead conversion, allowing Google to securely link the inquiry back to the original ad click.
For Step 2, this is where the Shopify API and Google Ads API come into play with a server-side container like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
When you adjust the price in your backend and the customer completes the final order in Shopify, that event is often decoupled from the original ad click.
Using the Shopify API, you can extract the final transaction details, including the actual revenue, and the lead’s unique identifier.
You then use the Google Ads API to send this transaction back to Google Ads as an Offline Conversion or an Enhanced Conversion for Sales event, using the contact information captured in Step 1 to match the final revenue event back to the original click.
This unified pipeline allows you to start your campaigns with a Target CPA bidding strategy focused on the lead event (Step 1) to generate volume, then transition to a Target ROAS or Maximize Conversion Value strategy once you have enough data on the final, high-quality, adjusted revenue (Step 2).
This ensures that Google’s smart bidding algorithms are optimizing not just for form fills, but for the form fills that actually lead to high-value, final bookings, solving your custom product tracking challenge perfectly.
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