How to Track Google Ads and Local Services Leads in Salesforce

Many service businesses spend heavily on Google Ads and Local Services Ads, then lose track of what happens after the click. The form fill lands in Salesforce, the deal closes weeks later, and nobody can say which campaign paid for itself. Closing that loop is one of the highest-return integrations a marketing team can build.

What changed in 2025

For years, Google Ads offered a built-in Salesforce integration for importing offline conversions. Google announced that this legacy integration would no longer be supported from May 31, 2025, and recommends that advertisers move to Data Manager and enhanced conversions for leads. If your conversion imports stopped or changed around that date, this is the reason.

Step 1: capture click data on every lead

Everything depends on knowing where a lead came from. Add hidden fields to your web forms and store their values on the Lead:

• GCLID, the Google Click ID added to landing page URLs when auto-tagging is enabled.
• UTM source, medium, campaign, term and content, for reporting across all channels.
• Landing page and first-touch date, useful when leads return days later.

Map these fields so they carry over to Contacts and Opportunities on lead conversion. Without the mapping, the attribution data disappears exactly when the lead becomes valuable.

Step 2: define the conversions that matter

A form fill is not a customer. Decide which Salesforce milestones represent real value, for example Lead Qualified, Opportunity Created and Closed Won, and create a matching conversion action in Google Ads for each. Assign values where you can, such as the opportunity amount on Closed Won.

Step 3: send conversions back to Google Ads

There are two main routes today:

• Data Manager in Google Ads connects to Salesforce and supports enhanced conversions for leads, which match conversions using hashed first-party data such as email addresses, with GCLID used where available.
• The Google Ads API, used by custom integrations and third-party tools, uploads conversions with their click IDs or user data, timestamps and values.

Either way, the principle is the same: when an opportunity reaches a defined stage, Salesforce reports that conversion, with its value, against the original click. Smart Bidding can then optimize towards leads that actually turn into revenue.

Step 4: bring Local Services Ads leads into Salesforce

Local Services Ads generate calls, messages and bookings inside Google’s own interface, which makes them easy to miss in a CRM. The Google Ads API exposes these leads through a read-only Local Services lead resource that includes details such as the lead type, service category, contact details, status and whether the lead was charged.

A scheduled integration can pull new leads into Salesforce, create or update Leads with the right source values, and assign them for follow-up. Teams then see LSA performance next to every other channel instead of in a separate dashboard. We built this kind of sync for a client, and you can see it in our Google Ads and LSA integration case study.

Step 5: report on cost per closed deal

With click IDs, sources and conversion stages in Salesforce, you can report on what matters: cost per qualified lead, cost per closed deal and revenue by campaign. Combine Salesforce opportunity data with ad spend from Google Ads to see return on ad spend by campaign, service and location.

Privacy and consent

Enhanced conversions rely on hashed customer data, and consent rules differ by region. Make sure your privacy policy explains how advertising data is used, follow Google’s customer data policies, and respect consent choices in the regions where you advertise.

Frequently asked questions