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For the past 2 decades in the online advertising industry, a lot of business owners who have made offline sales would set their contact forms (or “lead forms”) as a Conversion in Google Analytics not knowing that they have to set a Conversion Value in order to get it to work properly.

With Facebook Instant Forms, for example, you have this thing called “Target Cost per Lead”, which basically means that you only want to spend X amount of dollars on a contact form submission for your advertisements.

In web development, as I learned in college, a “Conversion” is a sale—and nothing more.

Unless you are selling your contact’s information, you should not consider a contact form submission a sale.

A conversion is a sale. A form submission is a lead. Don’t get the two confused!

Donald Moore, Owner of DM Holdings Inc.

The problem that a lot of advertisers are facing is that they are relying too much on “the algorithm” to perform when they consider a contact form submission as a conversion. They are trying to “trick” the algorithm into preventing click fraud—a case where competitors might be clicking on your ads in an effort to deplete your advertising budget.

First of all, that would only be a conversion if you were a data vendor, which you are not, because Apple’s App Tracking Transparency is aimed at elminating that type of business model. Nobody in their right mind would allow someone to sell their information.

There are two solutions to this problem.

  1. Focus on Organic Traffic
    • Lower your advertising budget and focus on (local) SEO
    • The benefit of this is long-term “booming” traffic compared to short-term gains that tend to bust
    • You’ll learn a lot more if you do it this way
    • It’s healthier for your business
  2. Set your Conversion Value to your Target Cost per Lead
    • Since you’re able to identify a target CPL, then the value of a contact form submission should be equal to your target CPL (it’s the same thing)
    • You can also use Lead Forms, which prevent click fraud and eliminate the need for setting a conversion value in the first place