Easily capture Google Ads data in Zoho Forms
An easy method to capture Google Ads data in Zoho Form, so you stay up-to-date on which campaigns are delivering leads, customers and revenue.
Are you stumped in your quest to know which of your Google Ads campaigns are actually producing customers and revenue?
Just think if you could look at the source of each lead, right down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If you could do this, you'd understand which campaigns and ads are actually creating customers and revenue, and you'd be able to invest more in those.
In this blog, we'll walk you through how you can use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Zoho Forms with every lead that arrives. You can also ultimately use it to track your Google Ads campaigns' performance.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Imagine you run a business that sells and installs pool equipment. To promote your business, you run ads on Google spotlighting the products you sell, like Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you were just using a tool like Google Analytics to count visitors and form completion, you’d receive results like the following:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If the only data you have is on visitors and leads from spend, then it would seem like the Pool Pumps campaign was doing better than your Pool Cleaners campaign and would cause you to put more of your budget into the former.
On the contrary, what if you could see the results through 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 |
Having the means to monitor and track your campaign’s efficiency down to the customer and revenue can help you see the whole story.
In this situation, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is performing better because:
- You got more customers from the Pool Cleaners Campaign (5) compared to the Pool Pumps Campaign (2)
- Your conversion rate from lead-to-customer is five times higher in 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 greater in the Pool Cleaners Campaign
As shown above, you get a much better grasp of what’s working and what isn’t when you 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 Zoho Forms
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Zoho Forms. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your ads
To start capturing Google Ads data in Zoho Forms, add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If you don’t know what UTM parameters are, 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 UTM parameters) may look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Even though you can structure the UTM parameters 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 on your URLs is relatively easy. Plus, there are free tools offered online that can assist you in building them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Secondly, you need to add several hidden fields to your lead capture forms (these are the forms used to collect data from site visitors). Below are the hidden fields you need to add:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Zoho Forms makes adding hidden fields simple and easy. You need to 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 are added, Attributer will track the origins of your visitors. Attributer auto-fills the hidden fields with the values you put in your UTM parameters whenever a visitor completes a form on your site.
For example, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and a visitor arrived at 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
Moreover, Attributer would also capture the visitor’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 Zoho Forms
The last step is the Google Ads data alongside the lead’s entered information (like their name, company, email, phone, etc.) are captured whenever a visitor completes a form.
There are a few things you can do with this data, such as:
- Add it to all the new lead notification emails so you can instantly see where each lead came from
- Send it to your CRM (including Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, etc) so your sales team can see where each lead has originated from
- Use it to create reports that state which Google Ads campaigns are bringing in leads, customers and revenue.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Zoho Forms
There are different ways to place UTM parameters to your Google Ads and capture the data in Zoho Forms, so why should you opt for Attributer?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Besides Attributer being an excellent tool for capturing Google Ads data in Zoho Forms, it can also trace all the other sources of leads (Paid Social, Organic Social, Organic Search, etc.)
With this feature, you can build reports to check where your leads and customers are coming from and identify the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from your Google Ads campaigns.
Having this data is essential, primarily when your SEO efforts produce most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns. You would want to know this so you can invest correctly.
2. Remembers the data as visitors browse your site
UTM parameters are required by most capturing tools and methods to be present on the page where the form is submitted. However, this can cause trouble when a user completes a form on a different page than the one they first landed on from your ad.
For instance, let’s pretend someone clicks on your Google Ads and is led to a landing page for this campaign. Once they’ve decided that they want your product or service, they click on the ‘Get A Quote’ button and are then taken to a different page to complete your quote request form. This means that the page they complete a form on isn’t the same page they initially landed on. Hence the UTM parameters are lost.
This won’t happen with Attributer because it keeps the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser, so no matter what page the user submits a form on, the UTM parameters are always sent through.
This means that regardless of the user’s navigation activity around your site before completing a form, you’ll always be able to trace them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the common issues encountered while using other raw UTM capturing tools is that you usually end up with messy data, which makes it hard to create accurate reports.
For example, say 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 Zoho Form and use them to figure out the number of leads from your Google Ads campaigns, you’ll get three different sources that you have to stitch together manually.
This won’t come up with Attributer because it can recognize the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and ultimately assign the leads to the correct channel regardless.
4. Captures landing page data as well
It’s natural for creators and business owners to want to know the results of their efforts, so if you’ve wanted to see the number of leads and customers behind your blog and other in-depth content pieces you’ve done, then you’re not alone.
Attributer can help with this because aside from capturing channel data (such as the fact they came from your Google Ads campaigns), 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’ll be able to see the performance of specific sections on your site (e.g., your blog) when it comes to producing leads, revenue and customers.
And since it captures both the landing page and landing page group, you can see how your blog is performing as a whole section and which individual blog posts are driving the most leads, customers and revenue.
Wrap up
Wanting to track how many leads and customers are coming from your Google Ads? Attributer as it is an excellent solution which does just that.
You can run reports that provide data on which campaigns your leads and customers have come from because Attributer captures the UTM parameters behind your Google Ads campaigns.
In addition, it will also provide you with data on leads that come from other channels. This way, you can determine the source of ALL your leads, not just those from Google Ads. Ultimately, it can help you reach an informed decision regarding where to invest best to grow your business.
And have we mentioned that it’s free to get started? Begin your free trial today and experience what Attributer can do for you and 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.