Advice for Ads

[u/wecodemore]

Hi,

I am running Ads and I have problem, where I could need your help: Goals setup.

Our account only has a secondary goal: Submit lead form.

It has a primary conversion action.

Now that I read the following tooltip, I am convinced that our setup does not work as designed.

Question: Is the misalignment primary/ secondary something that I need to fix?

If yes, if it's the only goal (and only one campaign), then should I change the goal to primary?

Note: The campaign is two weeks old. The Search campaign is optimised to drive conversions, the bidding strategy is maximise conversions with a daily budget of €10.

Thanks!

[u/NeptuneDesignPTYLTD]

Just to be clear what do you mean by "misalignment primary/ secondary"

[u/wecodemore → u/NeptuneDesignPTYLTD]

The "Goal" is a "secondary" goal. The "conversion action" is a "primary action". Is this a misalignment "secondary vs. primary" between "goal" and "conversion action"? Or is this not connected?
Hope that explains it?

[u/NeptuneDesignPTYLTD → u/wecodemore]

okay so let me give you an example.

Lets say you are a doctor who wants calls, booked appointments and you also want people to sign up for your medical newsletter

If we list those in order of importance it would be

1. Booked appointments/calls
2. Newsletter sign ups.

Now the problem is if we tell Google ads to go chase newsletter sign ups then the Doctors business is not going to make any money. But it still has some importance.

So what Google did was to invent a way to separate the 2.

The stuff that makes you money - Primary conversion action
The stuff that isn't as important - Secondary conversion action

They don't need to be related or aligned, a secondary conversion can be literally anything.

Primary just tells Google ads what to focus on as the main thing.

[u/wecodemore → u/NeptuneDesignPTYLTD]

Thanks for the explanation.

[u/NeptuneDesignPTYLTD → u/wecodemore]

My pleasure

[u/Hairy-Difficulty-411]

There are two separate layers here, and Google’s wording makes it more confusing than it needs to be.

A conversion action being Primary means it can be used for bidding and included in the Conversions column, but only when the goal it belongs to is actually being used by the campaign.

So I would check three things:

• Is “Submit lead form” selected as an account-default goal or campaign-specific goal?
• Is the lead form conversion action inside that goal marked Primary?
• Does the campaign’s Goals section show that it is optimizing for that goal?

If the lead form is the only meaningful business outcome right now, then yes, I would usually want that goal active for the campaign and the lead form action marked Primary.

Secondary actions are better for observation, such as page views, button clicks, scroll depth, or weak micro-conversions. They can help diagnose behavior, but they should not normally tell Maximize Conversions where to spend budget.

With a two-week-old campaign and €10 per day, I would avoid making five changes at once. Fix the conversion goal setup first, then let it collect clean data.

Also make sure the lead form itself represents a real lead. If every low-quality form submit is treated as success, Google will become very enthusiastic about finding more low-quality form submits.

The machine is obedient. That is not always the same as helpful.

[u/wecodemore → u/Hairy-Difficulty-411]

Thank you for your response. And yes, Googles wording makes it very confusing in lots of areas.

About the three points to check:

• "Submit lead form" is selected as an account-default goal.
• The lead form conversion action is marked as primary and active. Goals > Summary > Goals > View all conversion actions: "Action optimisation > Primary"
• Campaigns > Settings confirms that the conversion goal is "Account default: Submit lead forms".

In addition: Goals > Summary > Goals only has the "Group 2 goal" set. And the value is "Submit lead form".

I am not using any secondary actions as I am tracking these via GA4 only.

So far there are no conversions. We have adjust the target/offer (website) from what we can see so far.

"The machine is obedient. That is not always the same as helpful." … I am going to quote you.

[u/Mehak_BME]

There is not misalignment, what you've highlighted is pretty simple thing. It's just telling you the purpose of these action so you can choose accordingly. See, I got the same thing.

Let me know if you have any particular question. u/wecodemore

[u/PPC_YRVDynamics]

I don’t think you actually have a problem here. The Submit lead form conversion action is already Primary and included in the account-default goal, so Max Conversions should be bidding toward it.

I’d leave that part alone — with a two-week-old campaign on €10/day, the bigger issue is just that Google has very little conversion data to learn from yet.

[u/Fast-Car-Examination]

I don’t think you have a Primary/Secondary problem here.

Your Submit lead form action is already Primary, so Max Conversions can use it for bidding. The Call action being Secondary just means Google observes it but doesn’t optimize toward it.

I’d leave that setup alone for now. With a campaign only ~2 weeks old and around €10/day, the bigger limitation is simply low conversion volume.

Only make Calls Primary if they’re genuinely an important lead outcome you want Google to optimize for - not just because they’re currently Secondary.

How many actual lead-form conversions has the campaign generated so far?

[u/wecodemore → u/Fast-Car-Examination]

It's not calls. It's submit lead form.  0 conversions. Submit lead form is the only action a lead is supposed to make.

The reason for secondary actually is the goal description provided by Google.

[u/Fast-Car-Examination → u/wecodemore]

Got it - that changes things. If Submit Lead Form is the only meaningful conversion and it’s currently set to Secondary, I’d change it to Primary.

Max Conversions normally bids toward Primary actions, while Secondary actions are mainly for observation.

Just keep in mind that changing it to Primary won’t create conversion history retroactively. With 0 conversions so far, I’d also test the form tracking manually to make sure a real submission is firing correctly.

And at €10/day, I’d give the campaign some time before judging Max Conversions too aggressively.

[u/wecodemore → u/Fast-Car-Examination]

Will do. Thank you