If you’ve never really dug into this – Google Ads isn’t just a system for running traffic and measuring clicks and leads.It’s also a platform you can feed with outside data – things that happen after the click, offline – and connect those back to what’s happening inside your campaigns.
Why does that matter?
Because in wholesaling and real estate investing, your business doesn’t all happen online. Sure, the campaign brings in the lead – but the actual deal, the contract, the close? That all happens in the real world, after the lead came in.
Unlike e-commerce, where someone just clicks and buys on the spot – here we’ve got calls, analysis, offers, negotiations… and only then a signed deal.
But what if I told you there’s a way to teach Google which leads actually turned into closed contracts?
And even better – get it to focus on people who are similar to the ones that actually brought in money?
Yep. That’s a real thing.
Inside Google Ads, under Goals > Conversions, you can set up something called Offline Conversions or Converted Leads.
To skip the jargon for a second – it basically means you manually upload real-world results (like signed contracts) back into Google, and Google treats them as conversions that matter.
Once you create that conversion type, there’s a section called Uploads – and that’s where you’ll add your actual deal data.
Google gives you a pre-made template (usually in Google Sheets), and all you really need to fill in is:
- GCLID – the unique ID from the ad click
- Conversion name – the name of the goal you set earlier
- Conversion time – when the deal closed
- Conversion value – the value of the deal (can be symbolic, doesn’t have to be exact)
- Currency – USD, for example
So what does this mean in practice?
You just give Google:
- The GCLID from the user who clicked the ad
- The date the deal closed
- And a value – even just “1” – so Google knows it’s a real conversion
Once you upload that file, Google connects the dots: the deal → the campaign → the ad → the keyword that got the click.
That’s how the algorithm learns and gets better at finding leads that actually convert into deals.
So wait – where do you even get the GCLID?
Here’s how:
When someone clicks your Google ad, Google adds a unique ID to the page URL – called a GCLID (Google Click Identifier).
It looks something like this:
gclid=Cj0KCQjw7JOpBhCfARIsAL3bobcZnexrSe8tNf7Jh9w94uBL56hOUYy-WrhUOiTwzjE-XZ8hMeVgW2waAqKQEALw_wcB
You need to make sure your site captures and stores this ID.
If you’re using a CRM (like GoHighLevel, HubSpot, Zoho, etc.), you can set it to automatically save the GCLID in a custom field every time someone submits a form.
If you’re using a form builder on your site (like Typeform, WordPress, or ClickFunnels), just pass the GCLID into a hidden field in the form.
The form grabs it from the page URL and saves it.
That way, when you do close a deal, you’ll have the GCLID that came with that lead – and you can upload it back into Google to track offline conversions.
Now you’re probably thinking – “Cool, I uploaded it, I can see the conversions – now what?”
That’s where what we built at our agency comes in:
We’ve set up a custom reporting field inside Google that shows, based on your uploads, how many contracts were actually signed – and just as important – which ad and which keyword brought them in.
To sum this all up….using this method gives you two major benefits:
- Business clarity – You can see which campaigns and keywords actually drive revenue, not just leads.
That means you know where to spend more and what’s really working. - Smarter optimization – And this is key:
You’re training Google to recognize the type of leads that turn into real money.
Once the algorithm learns that, it starts finding more users that match the pattern.
