A guide to capturing Google Ads data in Jotform
Discover how to capture Google Ads data in Jotform to learn which campaigns are raking in your leads, revenue and customers.
Do you have difficulty knowing which of your Google Ad campaigns are the ones generating revenue and customers?
Picture a scenario where you could see exactly where each lead has come from, down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If you have the means to do this, you’d quickly know which ads and campaigns are generating customers and revenue, and you’d be able to invest more in those.
In this article, we’ll demonstrate how you can use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Jotform with every lead that arrives and eventually use them to track each of your Google Ads campaign’s performance.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s imagine that you operate a business that offers and installs pool equipment. You create ads on Google that showcase the products that you sell to promote your business. These tools include pool pumps and pool cleaners.
If you were using a system like Google Analytics to measure visitors and form completions, you’d get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If the only data you have is visitors and leads from spend, then it would appear that the Pool Pumps campaign was performing better than the Pool Cleaners campaign, and as a result, you’d put more of your budget into the former.
On the contrary, consider if you can 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 |
When you’re able to trace every step of your campaign’s effectiveness all the way down to customers and revenue, you can see the whole and accurate story.
In this scenario, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is outperforming the other because:
- More customers were created from the Pool Cleaners Campaign (5) than the Pool Pumps Campaign (2).
- The conversion rate from lead to customer is five times bigger for the Pool Cleaners Campaign (50% vs. 10%)
- The average customer value is higher for the Pool Cleaners 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
- The Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is three times higher in the Pool Cleaners Campaign.
As apparent in the table above, when you can capture the source of every lead and trace them down to the customers and revenue, you get a clearer understanding of what’s working and what isn’t.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Jotform
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Jotform. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your ads
To start capturing Google Ads data in Jotform, you must add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If the term UTM parameters are new to you, they’re essentially extra text that you add to the end of the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
So if the page you want to send someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with parameters may look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
As much as you can structure the UTM parameters whichever way you want, following the general best practices for Google Ads have been proven and tested. Read them 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 simple, and there are free tools online that can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Next is to add a number of hidden fields to your lead capture forms (i.e., the forms used to collect data from your site visitors). The hidden fields you need to add are the following:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Adding hidden fields in Jotform is super easy; you simply need to drag and drop a ‘Hidden’ field type into the form. Find further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Attributer will determine where your visitors are coming from, assuming the hidden fields have been added. Every time they complete a form on your site, it fills out the hidden fields with the UTM parameter values you specified.
For example, 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 adAside from the UTM parameter values, Attributer would also record 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 Jotform
Last but not least, once a user submits the form, the Google Ads data is captured alongside the data entered, such as their name, email, company, phone, etc.
You’re able to do different things with this data, like:
- Add it to all the new lead notification emails so you can automatically see where the lead came from
- Send it to your CRM (including Salesforce, Pipedrive, Hubspot & more) so your sales team can see where each lead has come from
- Use it to build reports that provide data on which Google Ads campaigns are actually attracting leads, customers and revenue.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Wufoo Forms
Several ways to place UTM parameters in your Google Ads and to capture the data in Jotform are at your disposal, but why use Attributer?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Aside from Attributer being an efficient tool for capturing Google Ads data in Jotform, it can also trace ALL the other sources of leads (Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, etc.)
With this, whenever you create reports to see where your leads and customers have come from, you can determine the source of ALL your leads, not just those from your Google Ads campaigns.
This data is critical, especially when your SEO efforts generate most of your leads and customers compared to your Google Ads campaigns, which can help you direct your investment accordingly.
2. Remembers the data as visitors browse your site
It is standard for most UTM capturing tools and methods to require the UTM parameter to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This poses a problem when the page a visitor submits your form on isn’t the exact page they first landed on your site.
For example, someone clicks on one of your Google Ads and is led to a landing page for this campaign. Once they’ve decided they want your product or service, they click the ‘Get A Quote’ button and are then taken to a different page to fulfil 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 stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser. This way, regardless of the page on which the user completes a form, the UTM parameters are always passed through.
Basically, this means that no matter how many pages a visitor clicks on your site before completing your form, you’ll always be able to track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the typical hassles in using other raw UTM capturing tools is that you usually get messy data, making it challenging to create accurate reports.
For example, 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 Jotform and use them to determine the number of leads from your Google Ads campaigns. In that case, the report will display three different sources you’d need to stitch manually together.
You don’t have to experience this with Attributer because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would ascribe leads to the correct channel.
4. Captures landing page data as well
Do you want to know the number of leads and customers your blog has attracted? As well as your other in-depth content pieces you’ve worked hours on?
Aside from capturing channel data (such as the fact they came from your Google Ads campaigns), Attributer 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’ll see how certain sections on your site perform (e.g., your blog) when generating leads, customers, and revenue.
And since Attributer captures both the landing page and landing page group, you can check how your blog is performing as a whole and zero in on each blog post’s lead, customer, and revenue generation status.
Wrap up
If you need to monitor and know the number of leads and customers you’re getting from your Google Ads, then Attributer is an excellent solution.
It will capture the UTM parameters you use in your Google Ad campaigns, allowing you to build reports that display the campaigns each of your leads and customers has come from.
Aside from this, it will also provide data on leads that come from other channels so you can trace the source of ALL your leads (not just the ones from Google Ads) and ultimately help you reach an informed decision on where you need to invest to grow your business.
Have we mentioned that it’s free to start? Begin your free trial today and experience what Attributer can do for you and your company.
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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.