How to capture Google Ads data in Ninja Forms
Discover the easiest way to capture Google Ads data in Ninja Forms so you can understand which campaigns are bringing in leads, customers and revenue.
Do you have no way to know which of your Google Ads campaigns are actually working and are producing customers and revenue?
What if you found a way to see exactly where your leads have come from, down to the campaign and ad they clicked? If this is available to you, you'd be informed which campaigns and ads are bringing in customers and revenue, and you'd be able to invest more in these effective campaigns.
In this blog, we'll help you with how to use Attributer in capturing Google Ads data in Ninja Forms, along with every lead that comes in. In the end, you'll also know how to use it to monitor your Google Ads campaign's performance.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Pretend you operate a business that sells and installs pool equipment. To spread the word about your business, you run ads on Google showcasing your products, such as Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you were simply using a tool like Google Analytics to identify the number of visitors and form completions, you’d get results like the one below:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If all the information you have is on visitors and leads from spend, then it would appear that the Pool Pumps campaign is outshining the Pool Cleaners campaign, which would make you invest more in the former.
But what if you could get the results all the way through to the number of customers and amount of revenue produced?
You’d get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Leads | 20 | 10 |
| Customers | 2 | 5 |
| Revenue | $8,000 | $25,000 |
If you can monitor your campaigns’ effectiveness all the way down to customers and revenue, you can see the whole picture and the real story.
In this situation, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is performing better because:
- You made more customers from the Pool Cleaners Campaign (5) than the Pool Pumps Campaign (2)
- Your lead-to-customer rate is five times higher for the Pool Cleaners Campaign (50% vs. 10%)
- Your average customer value is more remarkable for the Pool Cleaners Campaign: $5,000 per customer vs. $4,000 per customer from the Pool Pumps Campaign.
- Your expense of acquiring a customer is cheaper in the Pool Cleaners Campaign: $400 vs. $1,000
- Your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is three times higher in the Pool Cleaner Campaign
As displayed in the analysis above, when you have the data on the source of every lead and trace it all the way through to customers and revenue, you get a much better idea of what’s working and what isn’t.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Ninja Forms
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Ninja Forms. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your ads
To begin capturing Google Ads data in Ninja Forms, you must add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If the term ‘UTM parameters’ is new to you, they’re just extra bits of text you add to the end of the URL that you send to people from your campaigns.
So let’s say the page you want to send someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your formal URL with UTM parameters may look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Even though you can build the UTM parameter however you want, below is the general best practice for Google Ads:
- UTM Medium = Paid search
- UTM Source = Google
- UTM Campaign = The name of your Google Ads campaign
- UTM Term = The name of the ad group the ad belongs to
- UTM Content = The specific ad
Tagging your URLs with UTM parameters is easy, and there are free tools on the web that can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Secondly, you must add a number of hidden fields to your lead capture forms. These forms are the ones used for collecting information from site visitors. The hidden fields you need to add are as follows:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Adding hidden fields to Ninja Forms is super easy. You must simply drag and drop a ‘Hidden’ field type into the form. If you need further assistance, check further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
When you’re done adding the hidden fields, Attributer will detect where your visitors are coming from. Plus, Attributer populates the hidden fields with the values you put in your UTM parameters whenever they submit a form on your site.
For instance, imagine I was a marketer at Dropbox, and a user came to my website from one of my brand campaigns in paid search. Attributer would populate the hidden fields like so:
- Channel = Paid search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drildown 2 = Brand campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Free account ad
In addition to the values from the UTM parameters, Attributer would also capture the visitor’s first landing page (e.g., dropbox.com/features/cloud-storage) and the first landing page group (e.g., features).
4. Google Ads data is captured in Ninja Forms
The last step is when a visitor submits the form. When this happens, the Google Ads data is captured together with the data the lead entered in the form. This includes their name, email, company, phone, etc.
You can do several things with this data, such as:
- Add it to all the new lead notification emails so you can see directly where each lead has come from
- Send it to your CRM (Salesforce, Pipedrive, Dynamics, etc) so your sales team can view where each lead has come from
- Use it to create reports that display which Google Ads campaigns are raking in leads, customers and revenue
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Ninja Forms
There are a range of options for putting UTM parameters behind your Google Ads and capturing the data in Ninja Forms, so what makes Attributer the best one?
1. Attributer captures all traffic
Apart from being an efficient tool in capturing Google Ads data in Ninja Forms, Attributer can also monitor and record all the other sources of leads (Paid Social, Organic Search, Organic Social, etc.)
With this feature, you can build reports to determine where your leads and customers originate, and you can know the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from your Google Ads campaigns.
This data can be necessary because if your SEO efforts are the ones bringing in most of your leads and customers than your Google Ads campaigns, you’d want to know so you can invest accordingly.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
The requirement of having UTM parameters present on the page where the form is submitted has been a common requirement for most other UTM parameter-capturing tools. This requirement poses a problem when the page a visitor lands on from your ad isn’t the same as the page they have to complete your form.
For instance, someone taps on one of your Google Ads and is then taken to a landing page for this ad. After some contemplation, they decide they want your product or service, so they click the ‘Get A Quote’ button. This leads them to a different page to complete your quote request form. The UTM parameters are lost with these differing pages between their landing page and form completion page.
Attributer works in another way. How, you ask? Well, it stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the visitor’s browser, so regardless of the page where the user has to complete a form, the UTM parameters will be passed through no matter what.
In conclusion, regardless of the user’s navigation activity on your site before submitting a form, you’ll always be able to track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Attributer provides cleaner data
A common dilemma encountered when using other tools that capture raw UTM parameters is that you can end up with messy data, making it challenging to run accurate reports.
For example, let’s say some of your Google Ads campaigns are tagged with UTM_Source= Google.com (capital G), others with UTM_Source= google (lowercase, no domain), and others with UTM_Source= adwords.
If you capture these raw UTM parameters in Ninja Forms and use them to find out the number of leads from your Google Ads campaigns, you’ll get three various sources that you’d need to stitch together manually.
This won’t happen with Attributer because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies. Ultimately, it would appoint the leads to the correct channel regardless.
4. Attributer captures landing page data as well
Have you ever contemplated how your blog and other in-depth content pieces perform regarding lead and customer generation?
If you want to know the answer to this, Attributer can help because it captures channel data, the landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data, you can see how well specific sections on your site (e.g., your blog) produce leads, customers, and revenue.
And since both the landing page and landing page group are also captured, you can view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole section and zoom in to individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you need to track how many leads and customers you get from your Google Ads, then Attributer is an excellent solution.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns, which allows you to build reports that provide data on which campaigns your leads and customers have come from.
Moreover, it gives you information on leads that come from other channels so you can monitor the source of ALL your leads, not just those from Google Ads. Ultimately, you’ll reach more informed decisions regarding where to invest in optimizing your business.
Best of all, it’s free to get started! Begin your free trial today and see what Attributer can do for you.
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About the Author
Aaron Beashel is the founder of Attributer and has over 15 years of experience in marketing & analytics. He is a recognized expert in the subject and has written articles for leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Search Engine Journal, Buffer, Unbounce & more. Learn more about Aaron here.