Capture Google Ads data in Paperform in 4 steps
Learn which campaigns are producing leads, customers and revenue by knowing how to capture Google Ads data in Paperform.
Have you done everything you can to know which of your Google Ads campaigns are actually bringing in customers and revenue?
Just think of the possibilities if you could look at the origin of each of your leads, as well as the campaign and ad they clicked. If this happens, you’d be informed about the campaigns and ads that are actually working to generate customers and revenue. With this information, you’d be able to invest more in the correct categories.
In this article, we’ll show you how Attributer can be used to capture Google Ads data in Paperform along with every lead that you receive. You can also use it to track the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Say you own a business that offers and installs pool equipment. You run ads on Google to promote your business, and these ads focus on your products, like Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you were simply using a tool like Google Analytics to know the volume of visitors and form completions, you’d get results like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
It’s natural to think that your Pool Pumps campaign is outperforming your Pool Cleaners campaign when the only data you have is on visitors and leads from spend.
But if you have further information all the way through to the number of customers and amount of revenue created, 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 campaign efficiency all the way through to customers and revenue, you can understand the real and whole story.
In this situation, the Pool Cleaners 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 greater 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 fee for acquiring a customer is lower in the Pool Cleaner 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 get a much better picture and understanding of what’s working and what doesn’t when you have the data on every lead’s source and trace it all the way through to customers and revenue.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Paperform
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Paperform. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM variables to your ads
The first thing to do to start capturing Google Ads data in Paperform is to add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
UTM parameters are extra bits of text you add to the end of the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
So, for example, if the page you want to someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL looks something like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Yes, you may structure the UTM parameters whichever way you want, but 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
Putting UTM parameters on your URLs is simple, and free tools on the web can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The second step is adding some hidden fields to your lead capture forms (i.e., these are the forms used to collect data from site visitors). The hidden fields that you need to add are the following:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Paperform makes adding hidden fields super easy, and you simply must drag and drop a ‘Hidden’ field type into the form. Check further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Once the hidden fields have been set up, Attributer will monitor your visitors’ origins. When they submit a form on your site, Attributer fills out the hidden fields with the values you put in your UTM parameters.
For instance, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and an individual arrived on 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 Paperform
Lastly, every time a user completeness a form, the Google Ads data is captured along with the information the lead entered in the form, like their name, company, email, phone, etc.
You can accomplish different things with this data, such as:
- Add it to each new lead notification email so you can readily see the origin of each lead.
- Send it to your CRM (including Salesforce, Hubspot, Dynamics, etc) so the rest of your team can also view where each lead has come from
- Use it to run reports that provide data on which Google Ads campaigns are producing most of your leads, customers and revenue.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Paperform
Why is Attributer the best option when there are alternative ways to place UTM parameters behind your Google Ads and capture data in Paperform?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Apart from Attributer being an excellent tool for capturing Google Ads data in Paperform, it can monitor all the other sources of leads too (Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, etc.)
With this, you can create reports to check where your leads and customers originate from, and you can know the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from your Google Ads campaigns.
This information is necessary, especially when your SEO efforts generate most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns. When you’re informed about this, you can invest accordingly.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
Most UTM capturing tools and methods require the UTM parameters to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This becomes a problem when the page a visitor submits a form on isn’t the exact page they first landed on from your ad.
For example, a person clicks on one of your Google Ads and is then led to a landing page you created for this campaign. Once they’ve decided that they want your service or product, they click on 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 submit a form on isn’t the same one 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, so no matter what page the user completes a form on, the UTM parameters will always be passed through.
All in all, this entails that no matter what the user’s navigation activity is on your site before they complete your form, you’ll always be able to track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the issues in using other raw UTM capturing tools is that your data gets messed up, making it challenging to create 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.
Suppose you capture these raw UTM parameters in Paperform and use them to determine how many leads your Google Ads campaigns have made. You’ll receive three different sources you need to stitch together manually in that case.
You don’t have to deal with this with Attributer because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would sort the leads to the correct channel regardless.
4. Attributer captures landing page data as well
Have you ever done the guesswork regarding how your blog and other in-depth content pieces are doing when it comes to lead and customer generation?
Attributer can help you reach answers as, aside from 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 provided, you will be able to see the performance of specific sections on your site (e.g., your blog) in generating leads, revenue, and customers.
And since it captures both the landing page and the landing page group, you can view the performance of your blog as a whole as well as zoom into individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you’ve been meaning to know and monitor how many leads and customers you’re getting 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 tell you which campaigns your leads and customers originate from.
Moreover, it will also provide you with information 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 you need to invest in optimizing your business.
Best of all, it’s free to get started! Begin your free trial today and see if it fits your needs.
Get Started For Free
Start your 14-day free trial of Attributer today!
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.