The tracking I set up before spending a pound

Every account I've taken on with a cost per lead problem had a tracking problem first. The platform was being told the wrong thing, or nothing, so it optimised for the wrong people. This is the order I set tracking up in before any budget goes live, and why.

1. Decide what a conversion is

Not "a lead". A specific action with a specific value to the business: a purchase, a form with a qualifying answer, a call over 60 seconds, a WhatsApp conversation that gets a label. If the client can't tell me what a good enquiry looks like, we work that out before anything else.

2. Google Tag Manager, then GA4

Tag Manager goes on first so every later tag can be managed in one place without touching the site. GA4 is configured with events for the actions from step one, and consent mode is set up so the site stays on the right side of UK rules. GA4 and the ad platforms must agree on what a conversion is; if they don't, every report becomes an argument.

3. Meta Pixel and Conversions API together

The pixel in the browser, the Conversions API from the server, deduplicated with a shared event ID, and customer parameters sent so match quality is high. Then the event priority is checked so Meta optimises for the purchase or the lead, not the page view. More on why this matters.

4. Google Ads conversion actions

Imported from GA4 or set up directly, with only the real outcomes marked as primary. Calls from ads and calls from the website are tracked with a minimum duration so a wrong number doesn't count as a lead.

5. Calls and WhatsApp

For local service businesses most of the leads are phone calls, and for a lot of markets they're WhatsApp chats. Both are tracked as conversions, and WhatsApp chats get labelled so the outcome can go back to the platform later.

6. A test purchase or enquiry

I go through the site as a customer and watch the events arrive in Events Manager, GA4 DebugView and Google Ads. If anything fires twice or not at all, it gets fixed now rather than discovered in the first report.

Then the campaigns

Only now does the first campaign go live. The first few weeks are still a learning phase, but the platform is at least learning from the right people. On accounts where this is skipped, the usual story is three months of "the ads aren't working" followed by exactly this list.