Learn how to capture Google Ads data in Formidable Forms
Understand how to capture Google Ads data in Formidable Forms, so you can understand which campaigns are generating your customers, leads and revenue.
Do you want to know which of your Google Ads campaigns are bringing in customers and revenue but have no way to do so?
What if you could view where each lead came from, right down to the campaign and ad they clicked? If this is doable for you, you’d know the campaigns and ads that produce customers and revenue, which would let you invest more in the correct ones.
In this entry, we’ll walk you through the steps to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Formidable Forms with all the leads that come through. Ultimately, you’ll know how you can use it to track the performance of each of your Google Ads campaigns.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s say you run a business that sells and installs pool equipment. To spread the word about your business, you run Google ads showcasing the products you sell, like Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you’re using a tool like Google Analytics to count the visitors and form completions you get, you will get results like the following:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If the only information you had access to is “visitors and leads from spend,” then it would seem like the Pool Pumps campaign was outshining your Pool Cleaners campaign’s performance. So you’d want to direct more of your budget to the former.
But what if you could see the results all the way down to the number of customers and the amount of revenue produced?
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 |
If you can monitor your campaign’s performance all the way through to customers and revenue, you can grasp the real and whole story.
In this context, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is performing better because:
- You got more customers from the Pool Cleaners Campaign (5) than the Pool Pumps Campaign (2)
- Your conversion rate from lead to customer is five times higher for the Pool Cleaners Campaign (50% vs. 10%)
- Your average customer value is higher for the Pool Cleaners Campaign: $5,000 per customer vs. $4,000 per customer from the Pool Pumps Campaign.
- Your cost per customer is lower in the Pool Cleaner Campaign: $400 vs. $1,000
- Your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is three times greater in the Pool Cleaner Campaign
As shown in the analysis above, you get a much better picture and understanding of what’s working and what isn’t when you can get the information on 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 Formidable Forms
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Formidable Forms. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your ads
To begin capturing Google Ads data in Formidable Forms, you must add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If you’re unfamiliar with UTM parameters, they’re simply bits of extra text that you put at the end of the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
So if the page you are sending someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with UTM parameters may turn out to be like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Even though you can add the UTM parameters however way you want, below are the time-tested 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
Adding UTM parameters to your URLs is simple and easy. Plus, free tools on the web can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The second task is to add several hidden fields to your lead capture forms. These forms are the ones used to collect information from site visitors. Here are the hidden fields you need to add to your forms:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Adding hidden fields to Formidable Forms is super easy. You simply drag and drop a hidden field type into the form. See further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
After setting up the hidden fields, Attributer will scan the origins of your visitors. Every time they submit a form on your site, Attributer populates the hidden fields with the values specified in your UTM parameters.
For instance, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and an individual came to my site from one of my brand campaigns in paid search, Attributer would fill out the hidden fields as follows:
- 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 Formidable Forms
As the last step, whenever a user completes a form, the Google Ads data is captured together with the lead’s information they entered in the form (their name, email, company, phone, etc.)
You can then proceed to do a variety of important things with this information, such as:
- Add it to each new lead’s notification email so you can view where each lead came from
- Send it to your CRM (including Salesforce, Pipedrive, Hubspot & more) so the rest of the team can also see where each lead originated from
- Use it to build reports that display data on which Google Ads campaigns are actually producing leads, customers and revenue.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Formidable Forms
Other ways of placing UTM parameters behind your Google Ads and capturing the data in Formidable Forms are available in the market, but why choose Attributer?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Aside from Attributer being a proven efficient tool for capturing Google Ads data in Formidable Forms, it can also monitor and track all the other sources of leads (Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, etc.)
With this, you can build reports to see where your leads and customers are coming from. You can determine the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from Google Ads campaigns.
This data can be beneficial when your SEO efforts are the ones that are raking in most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns. You’d want to be informed about this to invest in the correct channel.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
Having the UTM parameter present on the page where the form is completed is a common exercise for most other tools and methods of capturing UTM parameters. This becomes an issue when the page a visitor completes a form in isn’t the same page they first landed on from your ad.
To illustrate, imagine someone clicks on one of your Google Ads and is then led to a landing page you created for this campaign. After some deliberation, the user decides they want your product or service and proceeds to click the ‘Get A Quote’ button and are taken to a different page to fill out your quote request form. This means that the page they complete a form on isn’t the exact page they initially landed on, so the UTM parameters are lost.
This won’t happen with Attributer because it secures the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser. With this, the user’s activity on your site won’t matter because the UTM parameters will always be sent through.
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 campaigns.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the challenges of using other raw UTM capturing tools is that your data gets messy, making it challenging to create accurate reports.
To give an 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.
Suppose you capture these raw UTM parameters in Formidable Forms and use them to determine the number of leads made from your Google Ads campaigns. In that case, you’ll get three different sources you’d need to stitch together manually.
You won’t have to put up with this with Attributer because it can recognize the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies. It would also ultimately ascribe the leads to the correct channel.
4. Attributer captures landing page data too
Do you have no access to how many leads and customers your blog and other in-depth content pieces are making?
Attributer can help with this because it captures channel data, landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data, you’ll be able to see the performance of a specific section of your site (e.g., your blog) when it comes to lead, customer and revenue generation.
Moreover, since it also captures both the landing page and landing page group, you can see how your blog performs as a whole and zero in on specific blog posts.
Wrap up
If you want to monitor your Google Ads’ performance and efficiency in lead and customer generation, then Attributer is an excellent solution.
It will capture the UTM parameters you use behind your Google Ad campaigns, enabling you to run reports that tell which campaigns each of your leads and customers came from.
What’s more, it will also provide data on leads that come from other channels. This way, you can track the source of ALL your leads (not just those from Google Ads) and ultimately help you decide where to invest in growing your business.
Have we mentioned that it’s free to get started? Register for a free trial today and find out what Attributer offers.
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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.