Boost Your Lead Generation with Google Ads Lead Form Assets

Google Ads lead form assets have changed quite a bit, so we want to provide an update. In this article, we will show you where lead form assets can appear and which campaign types can now use them.

We’ll go through the requirements that are needed to run and serve lead form assets, and most importantly, we’ll walk through a complete setup of how you can make your own lead asset and attach it at the campaign and account level.

Then we will show you the specific account settings that are necessary – where to download the leads, and how to create a dedicated lead form campaign for your search ads. The easiest way to find examples would be in search ads, but lead form assets can appear on more campaign types than search ads.

And now let’s go through where lead form assets can appear and what requirements are needed in order for you to run and serve lead gen assets.

Which campaign types can use Lead Form Assets

As we just saw in the previous two examples, you can use lead form assets within your search ads. And just to clarify, they have to be responsive search ads. Even if you have legacy expanded text ads still running in your account, they will no longer show the lead form asset alongside it. And with search campaigns, lead forms can appear on desktop and mobile devices.

Lead form assets can appear on Discovery image ads; they do not show up with Discovery Carousel ads.

For display, lead forms can appear on both desktop and mobile devices.

Next, I do want to call out Performance Max, understanding that it’s taking a lot of the campaign types we mentioned, combining them all into one. So make sure that you have a lead form asset at the account level.

And then I saved video for last, understanding that video is also part of Performance Max, but standalone video lead form assets are still in beta. So you may not see them within your account. If you’re still not seeing it, reach out to your Google rep or support and see if you can get access. But for video campaigns, lead forms still only appear on Android mobile devices – no desktop, no iOS devices as of right now.

• Search
• Discovery
• Display
• Performance Max
• Video (Still in beta)

Requirements to have your Lead Gen Assets serve to the public

So really, lead form assets are available to many of the campaign types offered within Google Ads. But just because they’re available, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to run them. You have to meet certain requirements first.

And the first one is you have to use a conversion-focused bid strategy. We’re trying to get leads here, and leads are going to be a conversion. So your maximized conversions, even enhanced CPC, is still conversion-focused.

But when we’re looking at other campaign types like display and YouTube that have brand awareness campaign objectives as an option, those don’t always have conversion-focused bid strategies.”

Some of the campaign types only offer CPM as a bid strategy. These are focused more on brand awareness and reach, rather than on getting as many conversions as possible.

Therefore, make sure that you choose one of the campaign goals that allow you to have a conversion-focused bid strategy. When setting up a campaign, you must also make sure that the lead form conversion available within Google Ads is set up to be optimized towards that goal.

Additionally, it must be a Google-hosted ad. For instance, with display ads, you still have the ability to upload image ads where you can fully control the message. However, Google won’t attach a lead form asset to your display image ads that you’ve uploaded.

You would have to use a responsive display ad so that the lead form could be part of the particular ad format.

• Conversion-focused bid strategy
• Must include lead form conversion as a campaign goal
• Must be a Google-hosted ad

Requirements to run Lead Gen Assets

There are a few more requirements to run lead gen assets.

Firstly, you must have a good policy compliance history, meaning that you are not constantly getting flagged for ad disapprovals, policy violations, or similar issues.

Therefore, be sure to check your policy manager under “tools and settings” and ensure that you have a good history of staying in line with Google’s rules.
Secondly, you cannot be in a non-sensitive vertical, such as a sexually-based or health-care-related account.

Finally, you must have a privacy policy for your business.

The first two examples we saw in the disclosure that Google put right above the submit button included links to your company’s privacy policy. Therefore, this is a necessary step.

• Good policy compliance history
• Non-sensitive vertical
• Must have a privacy policy for your business

Now that we’ve briefly talked over some of the requirements, let’s finally go into Google Ads and start creating an example of a lead gen asset.

See also: “Everything You Need to Know About Promotion Asset (Extension) in Google Ads“

Creating Googele Ads Lead Form Extension

Firstly, we need to head over to “Ads & assets” and then drop down to “Assets.” If you already have lead form assets running, you can just click on the lead form button, and that’ll segment your view to just view your lead forms, which will make it easier for us when we create a new one.

We are now going to create a new lead form, so we will click on the blue plus button.

Add lead form

Since we started this demo in the overview section, I was not in a specific campaign, which is why it defaults to adding it at the account level. However, we can add the lead form to a specific campaign by going down and selecting it.

This is the deepest level we can go with the lead form asset; there is no option for lead forms at the ad group level like we have with other assets.

But the same hierarchy rules apply – any asset created at the campaign level will override any asset created at the account level. And if your lead form asset at the campaign level is disapproved for some reason, Google may default to your account level asset, if you have one. That’s why it’s always good to set up one at the account level as a safety net.

This is going to be the first part of creating the lead form asset.

1. First, you will need a 30-character headline.
2. Next, you have 25 characters to enter your business name. If your company or business name is more than 25 characters, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to get clever. You can use your website instead of the company name.
3. Then, you get 200 characters for a description.

Even if a good chunk of the information could be auto-populated, the user still has to go and submit the form. So we like to include a message that either builds trust or showcases the value of why this offer is good enough for them to give us their information.

But once you have the three intro fields all completed, we can now go down and look at our form field options.

We see in the preview off to the right the two default options are full name and email. But we see there are more options than just those two.

So, yes, we can still click on name. And this is the part we really like because many of us have certain clients that have a CRM where they need the first name and last name separately. Google will still auto-populate both of those.

Of course, we’ll want email. But if you don’t want the user’s personal email, you can try to collect their work email. This option is not pre-filled, but for a lot of our B2B and lead gen clients, we like to use this option because it forces the user to pay attention.

It makes them work a little bit, and we see better lead quality come through because the people who are more willing to work for the lead form submission are more qualified for the most part.

We also see the City, ZIP code, State or Province, the Country, and then back down to more work information.

Maybe you want a company name, maybe you want the work phone number. An optional job title could be another lead qualifying aspect of “are you actually talking to the decision maker or a lower level employee?” And then depending on your industry or what type of company you are, asking if they’re over a certain age.

Next, and this is the part that is really cool on Google’s side. You can start looking at certain “Qualifying questions”, and they are broken out depending on what industry your account is in.

For example in the general part: would you recommend this vehicle? The service? This product? Funny enough, they seem pretty car-focused.

Let’s go to business: what size is your company? What is your job role? Annual sales volume? A ton of information depending on what industry you’re in to just try to collect more qualifying information.

It can also help your salespeople to understand who they’re talking to and what their needs may be.

Now, let’s go up to “New questions”, and again, there we see another variety. But it doesn’t offer you the full customizability like lead forms can do on LinkedIn, where you can really create your own custom questions. However, this is definitely better than nothing. If you really focus on getting quality leads over quantity.

Then you can grab your website’s privacy policy URL, come back and paste it in.

We’re good there, and next we can add an image.You just can pick one from your Asset library. Crop it if you need to.

Creating the submission message

Then we can move on to the next part, which is creating the submission message after the user has filled out the form and clicked the submit button.

You can see we can jump straight to the section within the preview.

We get 30 more characters for the submission headline, an additional 200 characters for the description. Just paste in something generic here, but we like to use this to set expectations. Either verify when you’re going to get back to the user or if you’re doing something like a contest. Let them know what you’re going to do with their information.

A very common thing that we do for many of our clients is promote PDFs, ebooks, white papers, those sorts of things. If that’s what you were promoting in your offer, they submitted their information, maybe your description is “thank you for your interest in our white paper, click on the link below to download it”.

So, in the Call-to-action URL, We should put the link of where they would go and download it on the website. Maybe go up and change the call to action to be one of these options, and that’s an easy enough step.

So we would still have to reach out to them, but still give people the option to visit your website to learn more.

We still need one for the ad itself. We get a decent amount, but it’s still limited. We cannot create a custom option, so it’s the typical sign up, subscribe, join now, get a quote, book now, apply now, nothing too different.Then type in a call to action description for 30 characters.

Exporting Leads Form Google Ads

Now, there are going to be two ways that you’ll be able to export the leads once a user has filled it in.

Scroll down a little bit, there are ways that you can automatically export your leads directly out of Google ads.

In this case, if you haven’t done it already within the linked accounts section in your “Tools & Settings”, you can search for your third-party integration, create the Zapier link, and then export it within a variety of different ways. Looking at other integration options, you can look at setting up a webhook integration. So, if you want to use a webhook, or it’s automatically sent to your CRM without using Zapier, make sure to click on the “Learn More” button.

The other option will be to manually download the leads. After you have a lead form asset saved, we see the blue CSV links down below. Here is where you’ll be able to download your leads. There will be a different column header for each of the form fields that you have created for that particular lead form asset. But not everyone with access to your account will have the ability to download the leads manually.

Whether it’s an individual client or manager account, that person will need to have standard or admin access in order to download the leads from these assets.

You can see the leads will only live in Google ads for 30 days before they are permanently removed, and you won’t be able to get them back.

Import conversions

Then, the last thing we see before saving the lead form will be importing the conversions. For this you need a CRM hooked up to it.

Save it.

Lead Form Asset Monitoring

Like any asset that you create within Google ads, you’ll be able to review performance, update certain columns, and see what metrics are important to you.

So that is why we recommend, if possible and if you have the creativity and assets to do so, test a few different lead forms at a time. See which message is more appealing to the users you’re targeting in the given campaign. You’ll learn a lot quicker than just doing one lead form asset at a time.

Editing Lead Form Asset

If you’re looking at editing your lead form asset, if you click on the pencil, you can update some of the main description and business information. But once you save the lead form, your form fields cannot be changed.

Sounds like a lot of the paid social platforms, so you would need to go and create a brand new lead form asset if you do want to do additional testing or add or remove any other fields. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not too hard to create a new one.

Important – Lead form ads terms

So, the next thing that’s important will be within settings, and then go to your account settings. Before you run any lead form assets, you need to make sure that you have the lead form terms accepted. That’s going to be in your account settings.

It’s pretty much Google putting the onus on you that you will be honest with the information you’re collecting, you’re not going to sell any of the information, all of that stuff.

So go ahead and read it yourself, accept the terms, and then you’ll be eligible to use lead form assets within your ads.

Lead form assets as the main goal action

The last thing we want to show you is how you can use lead form assets as the main goal action for search campaigns. So, to do this, you must start creating a new campaign. In this case, of course, our objective would be leads. Confirm that you have the lead form asset goal conversion added here and then click continue. In this case, it has to be a search campaign because it involves just responsive search ads.

And then for the ways that you’d like to reach your goal, choose lead form submissions.

After you name your campaign, click continue, and then you would go through the rest of the campaign setup.

You can see it says add a lead form on the next step.

So, here’s what happens when you only have this box checked for your search campaigns: every time a user clicks on your responsive search ad, the lead form asset will be the only action a user can do. They will not land on whatever you have set as the final URL within the ad.

If you just want your lead form to be an additional part, like a true extension to your responsive search ad, either don’t check any of these or check the lead form submissions and any of the other four.

But overall, they do get less impression share than many of the other assets, like site links and callouts. We’ve seen them work the best with higher level actions like downloading white paper, those sort of things. If you have a higher ticket item, asking for the demo right away, may not work the best, but it’s certainly worth testing.

FAQs

What campaign types can use Lead Form Assets?

Lead Form Assets can be used in Search campaigns, Display campaigns, and Discovery Image Ads. They can also be used in Performance Max campaigns, provided a lead form asset is available at the account level. For video campaigns, standalone video lead form assets are still in beta and only available on Android mobile devices.

What are the requirements to have your Lead Gen Assets serve to the public?

To have your Lead Gen Assets serve to the public, you must use a conversion-focused bid strategy, include lead form conversion as a campaign goal, and have a Google-hosted ad. Additionally, you must have a good policy compliance history, cannot be in a non-sensitive vertical, and must have a privacy policy for your business.

What are the requirements to run Lead Gen Assets?

To run Lead Gen Assets, you must have a good policy compliance history, cannot be in a non-sensitive vertical, and must have a privacy policy for your business.

Can I add a Lead Form Asset at the ad group level?

No, there is no option for Lead Forms at the ad group level. The deepest level you can go with the Lead Form Asset is the campaign level. Any asset created at the campaign level will override any asset created at the account level.

How do I create a Lead Form Asset in Google Ads?

To create a Lead Form Asset in Google Ads, go to "Ads & assets" and drop down to "Assets." Click on the blue plus button to create a new lead form. You can add the lead form to a specific campaign by selecting it. However, there is no option for Lead Forms at the ad group level.