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How to Track Leads in Google Analytics

Cody Schneider•

A website getting plenty of traffic is great, but are those visitors actually turning into business leads? Without a way to measure this, you're flying blind, unable to see which marketing efforts are truly paying off. This guide will show you exactly how to track form submissions, clicks, and other lead-generating actions as conversions in Google Analytics 4.

Why Bother Tracking Leads in Google Analytics?

Tracking leads is more than just counting submissions, it’s about connecting your marketing activities to tangible business outcomes. When you have this data at your fingertips, you can finally tie marketing efforts and spending to real results. This is crucial for proving ROI, getting budget approvals, and making smarter decisions about where to invest your time and money.

Here’s what you can achieve by setting this up correctly:

  • Identify Your Top-Performing Channels: Pinpoint exactly where your best leads are coming from - whether it's organic search, a specific social media campaign, or your paid ads. This lets you double down on what’s working.

  • Optimize Your Website: Understand which landing pages, blog posts, and calls-to-action are most effective at converting visitors into leads. You can then use these insights to improve underperforming pages.

  • Make Data-Driven Decisions: Stop guessing which campaigns are driving value. With conversion tracking, you can confidently allocate your budget to the channels and campaigns that generate the most leads for your business.

Understanding Conversions in Google Analytics 4

Before jumping into the setup, it's important to understand a key concept in Google Analytics 4. In the older version (Universal Analytics), you set up “Goals” to track leads. In GA4, an equivalent action is called a “Conversion.”

The workflow is simple: any important interaction a user takes on your site, like watching a video or filling out a form, is recorded as an event. To track a lead, you first need to configure a custom event for that specific action. Once GA4 recognizes that event, you simply flip a switch to tell it, "Hey, this specific event is important - count it as a conversion."

Method 1: Track Forms with a "Thank You" Page (The Easiest Way)

The most straightforward way to track a lead is by redirecting users to a dedicated "thank you" or confirmation page after they successfully submit a form. This method is reliable and easy to set up directly within the GA4 interface, no special tools needed.

Step 1: Create a Dedicated “Thank You” Page

First, ensure your website form is set up to redirect users upon successful submission. For example, after someone fills out your contact form, they should be taken to a unique page like yourwebsite.com/thank-you. It’s crucial that this page isn’t linked anywhere else on your site and can't be found through Google, ensuring that a visit to this page almost always indicates a successful form submission.

Step 2: Create a Custom Event in GA4 for the Page View

Now, you need to tell GA4 to create a special event whenever someone lands on your new "thank you" page.

  1. In your GA4 property, navigate to the Admin section (look for the gear icon in the bottom-left).

  2. Under the Data display column, click on Events.

  3. Click the blue Create event button and then click Create again.

  4. In the Custom event name field, give your event a descriptive name. It’s best practice to use underscores instead of spaces, like generate_lead or contact_form_submission.

  5. Now, set the Matching Conditions that will trigger this event. You will set two conditions:

    • Condition 1: Set event_name | equals | page_view

    • Condition 2: Click "Add condition" and set page_location | contains | /thank-you (or whatever your unique URL path is).

  6. Click Create in the top right.

With this rule, GA4 will now generate a generate_lead event every time a user views a page with /thank-you in the URL.

Step 3: Mark Your New Event as a Conversion

The final step is to tell GA4 that this new custom event is a conversion. It may take up to 24 hours for your new event to appear in the list, but you can speed this up by visiting your "thank you" page yourself to trigger the event.

  1. Go back to Admin, and under the Data display column, click on Conversions.

  2. Click the New conversion event button.

  3. In the panel that opens, enter the exact name you gave your event in the previous step (e.g., generate_lead).

  4. Click Save.

That's it! Your generate_lead event will now appear in the list of Conversion Events, and GA4 will begin counting every new submission as a conversion.

Method 2: Track Forms Without a "Thank You" Page (Using Google Tag Manager)

What if your form doesn’t redirect to a "thank you" page? Many modern forms simply display a success message without a page reload. In this case, you’ll need to use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to detect the form submission click itself.

Step 1: Enable Form Variables in Google Tag Manager

First, you need to make sure GTM is listening for form-related actions. In your GTM container:

  1. Go to Variables from the left-hand menu.

  2. Under Built-In Variables, click Configure.

  3. Scroll down to the Forms section and check the boxes for all the form-related variables (Form ID, Form Classes, etc.). This gives you more options for identifying your specific form later.

Step 2: Create a Form Submission Trigger

Next, you’ll create a trigger that fires only when your specific contact form is submitted.

  1. Go to Triggers and click New.

  2. Give your trigger a name, like "Contact Form Submission."

  3. For the Trigger Configuration, choose the Form Submission trigger type.

  4. Leave the Wait for Tags and Check Validation boxes checked. They improve tracking accuracy.

  5. Under This trigger fires on, select Some Forms.

  6. Now, you need to set a condition to distinguish this form from others. The most reliable way is often by using the Form ID. Right-click on your live contact form and select "Inspect" to find its ID. Then finish the rule like this:

    Form ID | equals | contact-form-7821 (replace with your actual form ID).

  7. Save the trigger.

Step 3: Create a GA4 Event Tag

This tag sends the event data to Google Analytics when the trigger you just created fires.

  1. Go to Tags and click New.

  2. Name your tag something like "GA4 Event - Generate Lead."

  3. For Tag Configuration, choose Google Analytics: GA4 Event.

  4. Select your main GA4 configuration tag from the dropdown list.

  5. In the Event Name field, enter a name that GA4 will recognize, such as generate_lead.

  6. Under Firing Triggers, select the "Contact Form Submission" trigger you created in the last step.

  7. Save the tag.

Finally, click the Submit button in GTM to publish your changes. Just as in the previous method, you'll need to go into GA4 and mark the generate_lead event as a conversion once it starts collecting data.

How to Track Clicks on Emails and Phone Numbers

Not all leads come from forms. A potential customer might click your email address or phone number directly. You can track these valuable interactions as conversions, too, using Google Tag Manager.

Tracking Mailto Link Clicks

Here’s how to set up an event for someone clicking a mailto: email link:

  1. In GTM, create a new Trigger.

  2. Choose the Click - Just Links trigger type.

  3. Set the trigger to fire on Some Link Clicks.

  4. Set the condition to Click URL | starts with | mailto:.

  5. Save the trigger.

  6. Create a new GA4 Event Tag named email_click and attach it to the trigger you just made.

  7. Publish your changes and mark email_click as a conversion in GA4.

Tracking Phone Link Clicks

The process is nearly identical for tel: links on mobile devices:

  1. In GTM, create a new Trigger of the type Click - Just Links.

  2. Set it to fire on Some Link Clicks.

  3. Set the condition to Click URL | starts with | tel:.

  4. Save the trigger.

  5. Create a new GA4 Event Tag named phone_call_click and attach this trigger.

  6. Publish your changes and mark phone_call_click as a conversion in GA4.

How to Find and Analyze Your Lead Data

Once you’ve set everything up and data has started to flow, you can find your conversion data in several key GA4 reports:

  • Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition: This is arguably the most valuable report. You can see your conversions broken down by channel - like Organic Search, Direct, and Paid Social - to understand where your best leads come from.

  • Reports > Engagement > Conversions: This gives you a high-level summary of all the conversion events that have occurred on your site.

  • Reports > Engagement > Landing Pages: Add a conversions column to this report to see which of your website's pages are doing the heavy lifting in generating leads.

By regularly digging into these reports, you change from simply tracking traffic to truly understanding your customers and optimizing your business for growth.

Final Thoughts

Setting up lead tracking in Google Analytics 4 is a foundational step toward making sense of your marketing efforts. By defining key actions like form submissions or phone clicks as conversion events, you connect website activity to real business results and gain the clarity needed to grow more efficiently.

While having this data in GA4 is a huge win, the next step is often stitching it together with data from your ads platforms and CRM to see the full picture. That’s why we built Graphed. We connect directly to tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Shopify, and Salesforce, so all your data is in one place. Instead of cross-referencing spreadsheets, you can just ask a question in plain English, like "Show me a dashboard of my marketing funnel from ad click to lead to closed deal," and get an instant, real-time answer.