TL;DR
- Google Ads is good for getting clicks and form fills. You need Salesforce® to see where the deals are. By connecting the two, you get to know which ads bring in revenue.
- Google uses Data Manager, which is limited. And the old “Linked accounts” Salesforce® link is no longer supported as of May 31, 2025.
- Data Manager gives you 1) enhanced conversions for leads (matches on email or phone) or 2) offline conversion import (matches on the Google click ID).
- On the Salesforce® side, Account Engagement and Data 360 each have a Google Ads connector that retrieves your ad data.
- Third-party tools like LeadsBridge sync both ways with no code, and add things like lead form syncing and Customer Match audiences.
- What is the right pick for you depends on your sales cycle, your team, and the way your data needs to be managed.
Which keywords bring in real customers? Which campaigns just use your budget with no return? Hard to say when your ad data and your deal data are kept in two different places.
That’s what a Google Ads Salesforce® integration is useful for. Once you connect the two platforms, you can track the prospects who come in through paid search and improve your Google Ads strategy accordingly.
You can also line up what you spent in Google Ads next to the opportunities in Salesforce®. And you get the numbers on your true cost per qualified lead and the real ROI of your search ads.
In this article, we’ll walk through five ways to connect them, what each one is good for, and where each one falls short. Along with easy integrations that you can set up in just a few clicks through a partner provider:
Why build a Google Ads and Salesforce® integration?
In just a few simple words, so you stop paying for leads that never turn into money.
Now for the long answer.
Google Ads are really good for whatever you call a conversion. For most B2B accounts, that’s a form fill. But we all know that a form fill isn’t a sale.
And Smart Bidding can’t tell the difference between a lead that closed for $40,000 and one that ghosted your sales team. To Google, they look the same.
Here’s what a Google Ads Salesforce® integration can do for you:
- You see exactly which ads make money. Knowing about clicks or form fills is good but gives little back. This integration helps you find out about your actual closed deals, which can also be traced back to the campaign, ad group, and keyword that started them.
- You know your real cost per qualified lead. Ad spend from Google next to opportunity data from Salesforce®.
- Google bids better by having enough data to work with. Send real deal values back to Google Ads, and you can use value-based bidding, like Target ROAS. Google’s data shows advertisers who moved from Target CPA to Target ROAS had a median 14% lift in conversion value.
- Your sales team gets the numbers and the context. Reps can see which ad or search term converted a lead so they know where that lead is coming from (pun intended). That’s a much better first call.
- Your CRM data works for your ads. You can turn customer lists in Salesforce® into Google audiences, so you can target lookalikes or stop paying to reach people who already bought with top-of-the-funnel ads.
So the only real question is how you connect them. Let’s look at your options.
5 ways to connect Google Ads and Salesforce®
There are really three methods for connecting , as well as five ways to make to build Google Ads Salesforce® integrations between the two platforms. The three methods include:
- Google’s built-in tool
- Salesforce®’s own connectors
- A third-party integration that sits in the middle.
Here’s how they break down:
- Google Ads Data Manager with enhanced conversions for leads
- Google Ads Data Manager with offline conversion import
- A third-party integration like LeadsBridge
- The Google Ads connector in Account Engagement
- The Google Ads connector in Data 360
The first two send Salesforce® data into Google Ads. The last two pull Google Ads data into Salesforce®. A third-party tool can do both without your (or your team’s) manual intervention.
One quick heads-up before we start. If you set this up years ago through “Linked accounts” in Google Ads, that old setup is gone.
Google stopped supporting the legacy Salesforce® integration on May 31, 2025. Everything now runs through Data Manager, which lives under Tools in your Google Ads account.
1. Data Manager: Enhanced conversions for leads
When someone fills out your lead form, the Google tag grabs their email or phone number, scrambles it (that’s called hashing), and sends it to Google.
Later, when that same lead turns into a deal in Salesforce®, Data Manager pulls the same info from Salesforce®. Google matches the two and then credits the right ad.
Why do people like it and why does Google recommend it? It doesn’t depend on a click ID surviving redirects or broken scripts. Pretty much every form already asks for an email. So it’s much sturdier.
What you need first:
- A Salesforce® login with the minimum permissions Google asks for
- Access to change Salesforce® settings, like turning on the API and field history tracking
- The Google tag or Google Tag Manager set up to track your website leads
- An email or phone number field on your lead form
- A green light that you can follow Google’s customer data policies
Email is the better pick out of them. It’s unique, and your CRM is less likely to mix up the format.
Before it’s matched, however, it gets trimmed of extra spaces and turned to lowercase. If you go with phone numbers, they need a country code (the E.164 format).
One limit to know: Google only imports these conversions up to 63 days after the click. If you have a lengthy sales cycle, do keep that in mind.
2. Data Manager: Offline conversion import
This is the older, classic way. Every paid Google click comes with a unique tag called the GCLID (Google click ID).
You grab it when the lead submits your form, save it in Salesforce®, and send it back to Google when the deal moves forward. Google matches the GCLID to the original click.
What you need first:
- A Salesforce® Sales Cloud login with the right permissions (a System Administrator account is easiest)
- Auto-tagging turned on in Google Ads
- Someone who can edit your website code to capture the GCLID
- Access to create custom fields and turn on field history tracking in Salesforce
- A way to get leads from your site into Salesforce, like Salesforce® web-to-lead
- A click-to-deal cycle under 90 days. Anything later than that won’t be imported
The setup, in five steps:
Step 1: Set up your Salesforce® account (custom GCLID field, permissions, history tracking)
Step 2: Add the GCLID field to your web-to-lead form
Step 3: Update your website so it reads the GCLID from the URL and saves it with the form
Step 4: Test it: click your own ad, submit a form, and check that the GCLID shows up on the lead
Step 5: Create your conversion actions in Google Ads through Data Manager
Just make sure the GCLID field carries over when a Lead becomes an Opportunity. If it doesn’t do that, the deal closes with no click ID. And Google has nothing to match.
3. Google Ads connector in Account Engagement
Using Account Engagement (the tool formerly known as Pardot)? It has its own Google Ads connector. It tracks prospects who find you through paid search and ties them to Google Ads campaigns inside Account Engagement.
To track clicks, you add a Final URL Suffix to your ads. You can put it at the account, campaign, ad group, ad, or keyword level. Your call.
Before you set it up, keep these in mind:
- Edition: It’s only available in Account Engagement Plus, Advanced, and Premium.
- What it tracks: Creative, match type, keyword, network, and device.
- Auto-tagging: Want it to capture other values, like campaign, source, or medium? Turn off auto-tagging. If you leave it on, you’ll have to add those parameters by hand with Google’s URL builder.
- Ads are still in Google: The connector shares insights. You still manage your ads in Google Ads.
- No do-overs on the account number: Once you verify the connector, you can’t change the Google Ads account number.
- One connector per account: Got several Google Ads accounts? Add a connector for each one.
This one’s mostly about reporting. The Google Ads Salesforce® integration shows you which ads bring in prospects. But it doesn’t send closed deals back to Google to help with bidding.
4. Google Ads connector in Data 360
If your company uses Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud), there’s a Google Ads connector there too. It pulls delivery and conversion data from your campaigns into Salesforce®. This includes your impressions, clicks, and conversions at the campaign and ad group level. This is very handy for spotting what’s working and making calls based on real numbers.
A few quick facts:
- It handles structured data and runs in batches and not real time.
- It’s generally available, but not in Government Cloud.
- You’ll need admin access to your Google Ads account to authorize it.
- On the first run, it pulls 180 days of history. After that, it refreshes from the last 7 days.
Want to go the other way and push Salesforce® segments into Google Ads? Data 360 has a separate Google Ads activation connector for that, but it needs the Ad Audiences add-on license.
3. Third-party integration with LeadsBridge
Not everyone has a developer on hand to edit website code. Or a Salesforce® admin with time to build custom fields. That’s where a third-party tool comes in.
LeadsBridge is an official Google Partner that connects Google’s ad tools to Salesforce®. You don’t write code. Instead, you just pick where the data comes from and where it goes.
How it works:
Step 1: Pick your source and destination. For example, Google Ads lead forms to Salesforce, or Salesforce® to Google Customer Match.
Step 2: Log in to both accounts to give LeadsBridge access.
Step 3: Map your fields. Tell it which Google field goes into which Salesforce® field.
Step 4: Save and publish. From then on, data syncs on its own.
That’s the whole setup. LeadsBridge calls each connection a “bridge,” and you can run as many as your plan allows.
Watch how a LeadsBridge integration works
Pros:
- No code, no website edits
- Works both ways: leads into Salesforce, and Salesforce® data back to Google
- Syncs Google lead form leads into Salesforce® in real time, so sales can call them fast
- Builds Google Customer Match audiences straight from Salesforce® contacts. That’s something Google’s own Data Manager doesn’t support for Salesforce® right now
- Sends Salesforce® data to Google enhanced conversions
- Real people to help if something breaks
Cons:
- It’s another subscription to pay for
- One more tool in your stack to manage
- Your data passes through a third party, so loop in whoever handles security and privacy
Running ads on Meta? Learn how to connect Facebook and Salesforce® here.
Or take a look at this LinkedIn Salesforce® connection if you target more of B2B audiences.
Native vs. third-party vs. Salesforce® connectors at a glance
| Google Data Manager | Salesforce® connectors (Account Engagement, Data 360) | LeadsBridge | |
| Data direction | Salesforce® to Google Ads | Google Ads to Salesforce | Both ways |
| Extra cost | None | Needs the right Salesforce® edition or license | Paid subscription |
| Coding needed | Yes for GCLID; tag setup for enhanced conversions | No | No |
| Google lead form sync | No | No | Yes, real time |
| Customer Match audiences from Salesforce | Not supported | Data 360 only, with an add-on license | Yes |
| Conversions back to Google | Yes | No | Yes, through enhanced conversions |
| Best for | Teams with dev and admin help who only need conversion data | Reporting on ad performance inside Salesforce | Teams that want everything synced without the technical work |
Why use LeadsBridge for your Google Ads Salesforce® integration?
Because it’s built to sit right between the two. LeadsBridge is a Google Premier Partner and works as an official Salesforce® partner too. So the integrations follow the rules on both sides, and they stay current when Google or Salesforce® changes something.
And you don’t need a dev team to keep it running. Here are the three LeadsBridge integrations that matter most for Google Ads and Salesforce®.
1. Google lead form and Salesforce® integration
Google lead forms let people sign up right inside your ad. So far, so good. But those leads just sit in Google Ads until someone downloads a CSV and uploads it to Salesforce®.
By then, the lead has gone cold. Or filled out a competitor’s form.
LeadsBridge sends every new lead form submission to Salesforce® in near real time. You can create or update leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities, or cases, whatever fits your process.
You can use it to:
- Get demo requests to your sales reps within minutes
- Send off Salesforce® assignment rules and follow-up tasks automatically
- Keep lead source data clean, so you know which campaign each lead came from
2. Salesforce® and Google Customer Match integration
Your best audience data are in Salesforce®. But getting it into Google means exporting lists by hand. Those lists go stale quite quickly. And Google’s Data Manager doesn’t support importing Salesforce® audience data at all.
LeadsBridge keeps your Salesforce® contacts synced to Google Customer Match lists automatically. Customer Match lets you reach those people on Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and the Display Network.
Here’s what a Google Ads and Salesforce® integration helps you to do:
- Stop paying to show ads to people who already bought
- Retarget leads with open opportunities to help push them over the line
- Upsell or cross-sell to current customers
- Win back old leads that went quiet
3. Salesforce® and Google enhanced conversions integration
Connecting the platforms is great but the problem is that Google only knows about the form fill. It has no idea which leads became qualified or turned into paying customers. So it keeps bidding for more of the same, good or bad.
With the Google Enhanced Conversions integration, you can solve that problem by sending your Salesforce® updates to Google. When a lead hits a stage you care about, like qualified or closed-won, Google receives the signal.
Among others, here are more benefits of this Google Ads Salesforce® connection:
- Tell Google which leads actually turned into deals
- Train Smart Bidding to chase qualified leads, not just cheap ones
- Use deal values for value-based bidding like Target ROAS
- Measure the real return on your search campaigns
Final thoughts
Here’s a number worth sitting with. In Salesforce®’s 2026 State of Marketing report, only 56% of marketers said they have full access to sales data. Almost half are working without it.
And the teams that have unified their data? They’re 42% more likely to respond to customers regularly.
That’s the whole point of connecting Google Ads and Salesforce®. Your ad data and your sales data shouldn’t live in two separate worlds.
So which way should you go? If you’ve got developers and a Salesforce® admin, Google’s Data Manager gets conversions flowing back to Google. If you mostly want ad reporting inside Salesforce, the Account Engagement or Data 360 connectors do that.
But if you want leads, audiences, and conversions all synced, without touching code, a third-party tool makes life a lot easier.
Ready to stop guessing which ads make money? Try LeadsBridge for free and connect Google Ads and Salesforce® in minutes.
