A simple way to capture Google Ads data in Formlets
Here's a simple method to capture Google Ads data in Formlets so you’re informed about the campaigns producing leads, revenue and customers.
Are you encountering difficulties in knowing which of your Google Ads campaigns are generating customers and revenue?
Just think if you could see exactly where each lead has come from, even down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If this is doable, you’d be informed which campaigns and ads are producing customers and revenue, which would let you invest in more of the worthwhile ones.
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Formlets along with every lead that arrives. Ultimately, you can use it to track the performance of your Google Ads.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s pretend you operate a business that sells and installs pool equipment. To spread the word about your business, you run ads on Google targeting the products you sell, such as Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you were using a tool like Google Analytics to quantify visitors and form completions, you’d probably get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If all the data you have is on visitors and leads from spend, it would make it appear that the Pool Pumps campaign is performing better than your Pool Cleaners campaign, which would urge you to put more of your budget into the former.
But what if you could see the results down to the number of customers and amount of revenue generated?
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 campaign’s effectiveness through to customers and revenue, you can see the complete and accurate story.
In this situation, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is doing 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 of acquiring a customer is lower through the Pool Cleaners Campaign: $400 vs. $1,000
- Your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is three times higher in the Pool Cleaners Campaign
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Formlets
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Formlets. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM variables to your ads
The first thing to do to capture Google Ads data in Formlets is to add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If you don’t know what UTM parameters are, they’re essentially extra text that you add at the end of the URL 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 final URL with parameters may be turn out to be like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Even though you can structure the UTM parameters however you want, the general best practice for Google Ads is something like this:
- 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 there are free tools online that can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Next task is to add a number of hidden fields to your lead capture forms (i.e., the forms used to collect the information from site visitors). Below 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 in Formlets is straightforward. You just need to drag and drop a ‘Hidden’ field type into the form. If you need further instructions, check here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
When the hidden fields are finished being set up, Attributer will scan where your visitors are coming from. Whenever they submit a form on your site, Attributer fills out the hidden fields with the values you specified in your UTM parameters.
As an example, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and a person 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 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 Formlets
Finally, when a visitor completes a form, the Google Ads data is captured alongside the information the lead enter into the form, like their name, phone, email, company, etc.
You can then do a lot with this information, like:
- Add it to all new lead notification emails so you can instantly see where each lead came from
- Send it to your CRM so the rest of the team is also in the loop regarding where each lead has come from
- Use it to build reports showing which Google Ads campaigns generate leads, revenue and customers.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Formlets
There may be other ways to place UTM parameters behind your Google Ads and capture data in Formlets, but what makes Attributer the best option?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Apart from being an efficient method for capturing Google Ads data in Formlets, Attributer can also monitor all the sources of leads(Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, etc.)
This means that when you run 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 your Google Ads campaigns.
This data can be essential, especially when your SEO efforts generate most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns. This way, you’ll know where to invest so that you won’t waste resources.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
Many other tools and ways to capture UTM parameters require the UTM parameters to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This requirement can cause a problem when the page a visitor completes your form on differs from the page they landed on from your ad.
As an example, pretend someone clicks on your Google Ads and is then led to a landing page for this campaign. After some deliberation, the user decides they like your service or product, so they click the ‘Get A Quote’ button which takes them to a different page to complete 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, as it keeps the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser. This way, the UTM parameters will always be sent through, no matter what page the user completes a form on.
In the end, this means that no matter the user’s navigation activity on your site before submitting your form, you’ll always be able to track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the common issues when using other tools that capture raw UTM parameters is that your data gets messed up, making it challenging to create accurate reports.
As an example, let’s pretend 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 Formlets and use them to determine the number of leads from your Google Ads campaigns, it will give you three different sources you need to stitch together manually.
You don’t have to put up with this with Attributer because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies. Ultimately, it would appoint the leads to the right channel.
4. Attributer captures landing page data
Have you ever wondered about the number of leads and customers that come from your blog and other in-depth content pieces you’ve worked on?
Attributer can help you with this as it captures all the needed data, such as the channel data, the landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this information available, you can view how well certain sections on your site are performing (e.g., your blog) in terms of lead, customer and revenue generation.
And since it captures both the landing page and the landing page group, you can also view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole section and zoom into individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you want to track the number of leads and customers you get from your Google Ads, then Attributer can be a superb solution.
It will capture the UTM parameters in your Google Ad campaigns, which lets you create reports that display the campaigns each of your leads and customers have come from.
Moreover, it will also give you data on leads that arrive from other channels. This way, you can track the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from Google Ads. In the end, this data can help you know where to invest to grow your business.
Have we mentioned that it’s free to get started? What are you waiting for? Start your free trial today.
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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.