How to connect Google Ads data with Instapage
Discover a method for capturing Google Ads data in Instapage, so you can figure out which campaigns are producing your leads, customers and revenue.
Have you scoured all your resources to figure out which of your Google Ads campaigns are producing customers and revenue, just to be let down?
Just imagine if you could see where all your leads are coming from, right down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If this is available to you, you’d know which campaigns and ads are producing customers and revenue, and you’d be able to invest more in the effective ones.
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Instapage with every lead you receive. Ultimately, you’ll also know how to use it to track your Google Ads campaigns’ performance.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Say you run a business that sells and installs pool equipment. To promote your business, you run ads on Google targeting different types of products you offer, like Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you were using a tool like Google Analytics to know the number of visitors and form completions, you’d get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If all you had information on was “visitors and leads from spend,” it would appear that your Pool Pumps campaign outperformed your Pool Cleaners campaign, so you’d naturally 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 |
You can see the real story when you have a way to monitor campaign efficiency down to customers and revenue.
In this scenario, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is performing better because:
- You received more customers from the Pool Cleaners Campaign (5) than the Pool Pumps Campaign (2)
- Your lead-to-customer conversion rate is five times higher for the Pool Cleaners Campaign (50% vs. 10%)
- Your average customer value is greater 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
As displayed above, when you can capture the source of every lead and track it all the way through to customers and revenue, you get a much better understanding of what’s working and what isn’t.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Instapage
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Instapage. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM variables to your ads
To capture Google Ads data in Instapage, you must first add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If you’re unfamiliar with UTM parameters, they’re simply extra bits of text that you add to the end of the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
Hence, if the page you want to send someone isattributer.io/integrations/salesforce, the final 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 your UTM parameters however you want, following the general best practice for Google Ads is recommended. Here they are:
- 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 URLs with UTM parameters is simple, and free tools on the web can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The second step is to add several hidden fields to your lead capture forms (i.e., the forms used to collect information from site visitors). The hidden fields you need to add to your forms are the following:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Adding hidden fields to Instapage is super easy. You must simply drag and drop a ‘hidden’ field type into the form. Check further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Attributer will check where your visitors are coming from when the hidden fields have been added. Whenever they submit a form on your site, it will populate the hidden fields with the values specified in your UTM parameters.
For example, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and an individual arrived at my website from one of my brand campaigns in paid search, Attributer would populate the hidden fields as follows:
- Channel = Paid search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drildown 2 = Brand campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Free account ad
More than the values from the UTM parameters, Attributer also captures 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 Instapage
Finally, once a user completes the form, the Google Ads data is captured alongside the information the lead entered, such as their name, company, email, phone, etc.
You can then do a lot of things with this information, such as:
- Add it to each new lead notification email so you can instantly know where each lead came from
- Send it to your CRM so your sales team can also see where each lead has come from
- Use it to build reports that tell you the Google Ads campaigns generating you leads, customers, and revenue
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Instapage
What makes Attributer the best option for placing UTM parameters behind your Google Ads and capturing data in Instapage?
1. Captures all traffic
More than Attributer being an excellent method for capturing Google Ads data in Instapage, it can also determine all the other sources of leads (Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, etc.)
This means that when you create reports to check the origin of your leads and customers, you can also determine the source of ALL your leads, not just those from your Google Ads campaigns.
This information is critical, especially if your SEO efforts are the ones producing most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns. You’d want to know this so you can invest accordingly.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
Most other tools and methods for capturing UTM parameters require the UTM parameter to be present on the page where the form is completed. This becomes a problem when the page the visitor completes a form on differs from the one they first landed on from your ad.
For instance, say someone clicks your Google Ads and is led to the landing page for it. Once they’ve decided they want your product or service, they click the ‘Get A Quote’ button and are taken to a different page to complete your quote request form. This would mean that the page they completed a form on wasn’t the exact page they initially landed on, so the UTM parameters are lost.
This doesn’t happen with Attributer because it stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser, so regardless of the page on which the user completes a form, the UTM parameters will always be passed through.
All in all, this means that no matter what the user’s navigation activity is on your site before submitting a form, you can always track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the issues encountered when using other raw UTM capturing tools is that your data gets messed up, making it challenging to run accurate reports.
For instance, 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 Instapage and use them to find out how many leads you got from your Google Ads, it will give you three different sources you need to stitch together manually.
You don’t have to deal with this with Attributer because it recognizes the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would put the leads to the correct regardless.
4. Attributer captures landing page data
Have you ever been curious about how many leads and customers your blog and other in-depth content pieces you’ve produced?
Attributer can assist with this because, in addition to capturing channel data, it also captures the landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters) and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data, you can observe the performance of specific sections on your site (e.g., your blog) in producing leads, customers and revenue.
And since it captures both the landing page and landing page group, you can also view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole section and as individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you’ve been looking for a way to monitor the 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 lets you build reports that display the campaigns where your leads and customers have come from.
More than this, Attributer will also provide you with data on leads that come from other channels. This way, you can monitor the source of ALL your leads, not just those from your Google Ads. Ultimately, this will help you know where to invest in optimizing your business.
The best part is it’s free to get started! Begin your free trial today and find out what Attributer can do for your business.
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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.