4 steps for capturing Google Ads data in Contact Form 7
Know how to capture Google Ads data in Contact Form 7 to gain information on which campaigns are producing leads, customers and revenue for you.
Do you know which of your Google Ads campaigns are producing customers and revenue?
Just think of the possibilities if you could see exactly where each lead came from, even down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If this is doable, you can know the campaigns and ads generating customers and revenue and, in turn, invest in the correct ones.
In this article, we’ll show you how to use Attributer in capturing Google Ads data in Contact Form 7, along with every lead that comes through. You will also know how to use it to track each of your Google Ads campaign’s performance.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s pretend you operate a pool equipment business that sells and installs pool-related products. To make your business known, you run ads on Google focusing on your products, such as Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you were just using a tool like Google Analytics to count visitors and form completion, you’d probably get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If “visitors and leads from spend” are the only data you have, it would appear that your Pool Pumps campaign surpasses your Pool Cleaners campaign, which would make you put more of your budget into the former.
But what if data all the way through the number of customers and revenue made is available to you?
Then you’d have something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Leads | 20 | 10 |
| Customers | 2 | 5 |
| Revenue | $8,000 | $25,000 |
When you can monitor your campaign’s efficiency all the way down to customers and revenue, you know the whole and accurate story.
In this scenario, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is performing better because:
- More customers were received from the Pool Cleaners Campaign (5) than the Pool Pumps Campaign (2)
- The lead-to-customer conversion rate is five times greater in the Pool Cleaners Campaign (50% vs. 10%)
- The average customer value is higher for the Pool Cleaner Campaign: $5,000 per customer vs. $4,000 per customer from the Pool Pumps Campaign.
- The cost of getting a customer is lower in the Pool Cleaners Campaign: $400 vs. $1,000
- Your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is three times higher in the Pool Cleaners Campaign
As shown in the analysis above, you can get a much better grasp of what’s working and what isn’t when you can capture the source of every lead and track it all the way through to customers and revenue.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Contact Form 7
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Contact Form 7. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM variables to your ads
To start capturing Google Ads data in Contact Form 7, you need to add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
UTM parameters are essentially extra bits of text that you add at the end of the URL you want to send to people from your campaigns.
Say, if the page you are sending someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with UTM parameters may look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
While you can structure the UTM parameters however you want, there are proven general best practices for Google Ads. Check them out below:
- 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
Putting UTM parameters to your URLs is easy, and there are free tools offered on the web that can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The next step is to add a number of hidden fields to your lead capture forms (i.e., the forms you use to gather data from site visitors). Here are the hidden fields that you need to add:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Adding hidden fields to a contact form is super simple. You must simply drag and drop a ‘Hidden’ field type into the form. Find further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Since the hidden fields are now up and running, Attributer will scan the origins of your visitors. Also, Attributer populates the hidden fields with the values specified in your UTM parameters whenever a user submits a form.
For instance, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and a user came to my site 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
Aside from the UTM parameters, Attributer would also capture the user’s 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 Contact Form 7
Finally, every time a user completes a form, the Google Ads data is captured along with the information the lead entered in the form, like their name, company, phone, email, etc.
This data can help you accomplish a variety of things, including:
- Add it to each new lead notification email so you can instantly view where each lead came from
- Send it to your CRM (including Salesforce, Pipedrive, Hubspot, etc) so the rest of your team can see where each lead has come from
- Use it to run reports that provide data on which Google Ads campaigns are actually bringing in leads, customers and revenue.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Contact Form 7
If there are other ways to place UTM parameters behind your Google and capture data in Contact Form 7, why do we dare say Attributer is the best option?
Here are the reasons:
1. Captures all traffic
Aside from Attributer being an efficient tool for capturing Google Ads data in Contact Form 7, it can also monitor and track all the other sources of leads (Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, etc.)
With this feature available, you can build reports anytime to check where your leads and customers are coming from and identify the source of ALL your leads, not just those from your Google Ads campaigns.
Having this data is essential, especially if your SEO efforts produce most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns. If this happens, you’d want to know so you can invest in the correct channels and avenues.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
It’s been a practice for most other UTM capturing tools and methods to require the UTM parameters to be present on the page where the form is completed. This requirement poses a problem when the visitor completes your form on a different page than the one they first landed on from your ad.
For example, pretend someone clicks on one of your Google Ads and is taken to a landing page for this campaign. After some reading and evaluation, the user has now decided that they want your product or service, so they click the ‘Get A Quote’ button, which then takes them to a different page where they will complete your request form. This situation means that the page they complete a form on isn’t the exact page they initially landed on. Hence, the UTM parameters are lost.
This won’t happen with Attributer because it stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser, so no matter what page the user submits a form on, the UTM parameters will always be passed on.
Ultimately, this means that regardless of the number of pages a user goes on your site before completing a form, you’ll always be able to track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the common problems with using other tools that capture raw UTM parameters is that you end up with messy data, which makes it challenging to run accurate reports.
For example, imagine 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 Contact Form 7 and use them to see the number of leads your Google Ads campaigns have made, you’ll get three different sources you need to stitch manually together.
You don’t have to deal with this with Attributer because it recognizes the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies. Ultimately, the leads would be appointed to the correct channel regardless.
4. Attributer captures landing page data too
Have you ever wanted to know the number of leads and customers coming from your blog? Or those in-depth content pieces you spent hours working on?
You can have answers to these questions because Attributer captures not only channel data but also 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.
Moreover, since it captures both the landing page and the landing page group, you can view your blog’s performance as a whole as well as zoom into individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you’re looking into how to track the number of leads and customers you get from your Google Ads, then Attributer is a superb solution.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns, which allows you to create reports that display which campaigns each of your leads and customers have come from.
In addition, it will also give you data on leads that come from other channels, so you can track the source of ALL your leads (not just the ones from Google Ads) and ultimately know where to invest your money to grow your business.
Did we mention that it’s free to get started? Begin your free trial today and see if it’s 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.