I've managed many Google Ad Campaigns over the years, and close to 99% of all lead gen campaigns I've managed had phone numbers on their website. I've typically set up conversion tracking for calls and have used the Google Ad Call Extension.

All set up as a "Primary" conversion so we can see them 'in column' and optimize the campaign to increase calls as well as any other lead gen capture the site had, like form submissions or chat initiations.

My motto has always been, "the more conversion data we can get the better."

Lately, however, I've ran into come clients that don't count phone calls as a true lead or conversion even though they have the phone # on their website. They only care about form submission leads.

Obviously, I hate not getting credit for a lead just because they decided to call the phone # on the website instead of submitting a form. The way I figure it, if the client didn't want leads taking a certain action on their website, like placing a call, then they shouldn't have that option available because it's going to lower our cost per conversion on the one action they care about; form submissions.

Removing phone numbers from a site is not an easy ask for most clients, however.

This situation got me wondering if I should just be tracking all call conversions as a Secondary Conversion in Google Ads and just track form submissions as the Primary Conversion for lead-gen campaigns.

You'd still be able to report on how many calls are coming from the campaign but you'd be optimizing the campaign to increase form submissions only. Would this generate better results on the campaign? Would this give us higher quality conversions?

Maybe!

One concern I have though is there will be less conversion data for Google's automated bidding algorithm, which is only an issue if you're using a 'smart' bidding strategy.

So long as there are still at least 30 conversions per month it wouldn't be an issue either way.

I plan on testing it out soon and I'll be sure to publish my findings.