How to capture Google Ads data in Unbounce
Learn how to capture Google Ads data in Unbounce, so you’ll be informed which campaigns produce leads, customers, and revenue.
Do you know which of your Google Ads campaigns generate customers and revenue?
Imagine if you could see exactly where each lead came from, down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If this is doable for you, you’d know which campaigns and ads are producing customers and revenue, and you’d be able to put more of your resources there.
This article will teach you how to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Unbounce, along with every lead you receive. In the end, you’ll learn how you can use it to track your Google Ads campaigns’ performance.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Imagine you own a pool equipment business that sells and installs them. To spread the word about your business, you run ads on Google showcasing the products you sell, such as Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you were using a tool like Google Analytics to quantify visitors and from completions, you’d get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If you only had ‘visitors and leads from spend’ as information, it would appear as if your Pool Pumps campaign was outdoing your Pool Cleaners campaign, and you’d want to put more of your budget into the former.
However, consider 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 campaign performance all the way down to customers and revenue, you can witness the real and accurate story.
In this case, 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
As shown in the analysis above, you can better understand what’s working and what isn’t when you can capture 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 Unbounce
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Unbounce. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM variables to your ads
The first step to capture Google Ads data in Unbounce is to add UTM parameters to your campaign.
If the term UTM parameters are new to you, it’s just extra bits of text that you need to add to the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
For example, if the page you want to send someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with UTM parameters may turn out like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Though you can structure the UTM parameters in whichever way 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
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 thing to do is to add a number of hidden fields to your forms. These forms are the ones used to collect information from site visitors. Here are the hidden fields you need to add:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Adding hidden fields to Unbounce is straightforward. You need to simply drag and drop a ‘Hidden’ field type into the form. You can see further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Once the hidden fields work, Attributer will scan where your visitors are coming from. Whenever a visitor completes 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 for Dropbox and an individual clicked on my site and arrived from one of my brand campaigns in paid search, Attributer would fill out the hidden fields like so:
- Channel = Paid search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drildown 2 = Brand campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Free account ad
Aside from 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 Unbounce
Lastly, once a visitor completes the form, the Google Ads data is captured alongside the information the lead entered, such as their name, company, email, phone, etc.
With this information readily available, you can do a variety of things, like the following:
Add it to each new lead notification email so you can see where each lead came from
Send it to your CRM so the rest of your team can also see where each lead has come from
Use it to build reports telling you which Google Ads campaigns are producing leads, customers and revenue.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Unbounce
There may be several other methods for placing UTM parameters behind your Google Ads and capturing data in Unbounce, but here's what makes Attributer the best option:
1. Captures all traffic
Apart from Attributer being a proven tool for capturing Google Ads data in Unbounce, it can also track all the other sources of leads (Organic Social, Paid Social, Organic Search, etc.)
With this, you can build reports to check where your lead and customers originate and determine the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from your Google Ads campaigns.
This data is essential, especially when your SEO efforts produce more leads and customers than your Google Ads campaigns. You want to know that so you can invest accordingly.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
Most tools and methods for capturing UTM parameters require the UTM parameter to be on the page where the form is completed. This becomes an issue when the page a visitor completes your form is a different page than the one they landed on from your ad.
For instance, pretend someone clicks on one of your Google Ads and is taken to a landing page for this campaign. Once they’ve decided they want your product, they click on the ‘Get A Quote’ button and are taken to a different page to fill out your quote request form. In other words, the page they complete a form on is not the same page as the one 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. So regardless of the page, the user completes a form on, the UTM parameters will always be passed through.
In the end, this means that no matter what the user’s navigation activity is 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 common issues when using other tools to capture raw UTM parameters is that you can end up with messy data, making it challenging to create accurate reports.
As an example, imagine 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 were to capture these raw UTM parameters in Unbounce and try to use them to see how many leads your Google Ads campaigns have brought you, you'd get three different sources you would have to stitch together manually.
With Attributer, you don't have to deal with this because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would ascribe leads to the correct channel regardless.
4. Attributer captures landing page data
Are you updated on the number of leads and customers you get from your blog and other in-depth content pieces you’ve worked hard on?
Since Attributer captures the channel data, the landing page data (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog), it can help you gain answers to the question above.
Moreover, since it captures both the landing page and landing page group, you can view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole and as individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you’ve been looking for a way to track the leads and customers you get from your Google Ad campaigns, you may want to check out Attributer.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns, which lets you create reports that show which campaigns your leads and customers have come from.
In addition, it will also provide you with data on leads that come from other channels. This way, you can track the source of ALL your leads (not just from your Google Ads) and ultimately know where you need to invest in optimizing your business.
Best of all, it’s free to get started, so begin 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.