The easiest way to capture LinkedIn Ads data in Contact Form 7
Are you using LinkedIn Ads to generate leads for your business? If so, we'll show you how to capture LinkedIn Ads data in your Contact Form 7 forms so you can track how many leads you are getting.
Are you using LinkedIn Ads to generate leads for your business?
If so, you've probably realised how important it is to be able to track how effective they are. And while tools like Google Analytics can help you track how many website visitors you get, to really understand the ROI you need to be able to see how many leads & customers your ads are driving.
Fortunately, there's a solution.
In this post, we’ll show you how to use a tool called Attributer to capture LinkedIn Ads data in Contact Form 7 and send it to your CRM and other tools, so you can ultimately track how many leads & customers you get from your LinkedIn Ads.
4 steps for capturing LinkedIn Ads data in Contact Form 7
Follow these 4 simple steps to capture LinkedIn Ads data with each submission of your Contact Form 7 forms:
1. Add UTM parameters behind your ads
To get started, you first need to add UTM parameters behind the LinkedIn Ads you're running.
If you're not familiar with them UTM parameters are extra bit of information you put in the URL you send people to from your ads (see image to the left).
It's up to you what information to include in your UTM's, but we recommend something like this:
- UTM_Medium=paidsocial
- UTM_Source=linkedIn
- UTM_Campaign= [campaign name]
- UTM_Term= [ad name]
If you need help creating UTM parameters for your LinkedIn Ads, then free tools are available around the web to help you create them.
2. Install Attributer on your website
The next step is to install Attributer on your website.
If you haven't heard of Attributer before, it's basically a bit of code that you place on your website.
It monitors how visitors arrive on your website and categorizes them into Channels (the same one;s you see in Google Analytics, like Paid Search, Paid Social, etc) before storing the information in a cookie in the user's browser.
Finally, when the visitor submits completes a form on your website, Attributer writes the attribution information into hidden fields you add to your forms and it is captured by Contact Form 7.
Setting up Attributer only takes about 15 minutes and step-by-step instructions on how to install it can be found on our help site.
3. LinkedIn Ads data is captured by Contact Form 7
With everything setup, the magic starts to happen.
Whenever someone completes a form on your website, you'll receive information on how they found you (I.e. which LinkedIn Ads campaign they came from, which ad they clicked, etc).
You can then use various WordPress plugins that work with Contact Form 7 to send this data to your CRM & other tools.
4. See how your ads are performing
Finally, once the LinkedIn Ads data has been captured in Contact Form 7 and sent to your CRM, you can use this data to run reports that show how your LinkedIn Ads are performing.
Reports you can run include:
- Number of leads from LinkedIn Ads
- Number of leads from each campaign you are running
- Number of customers generated
- Amount of revenue generated from LinkedIn Ads
- And much more!
Why Attributer is the best way to track LinkedIn Ads in Contact Form 7
Attributer is the best way to capture the UTM parameters you place behind your LinkedIn ads. Here's why:
1. Captures the source of all leads
Not only does Attributer capture information on leads that come from your LinkedIn Ads, it will also send through attribution information on leads that come from other channels (including Organic Search, Organic Social, Paid Search, etc).
This allows you to see where ALL your leads are coming from, and helps you make better decisions about how to spend your marketing budget.
2. Remembers the data
Other methods of capturing the UTM parameters you put behind your LinkedIn Ads only work if the lead completes a form on the same page they landed.
So if someone clicks a LinkedIn Ad, lands on your homepage, clicks the ‘Contact Us’ button and completes a form on your Contact Us page (which is different to their initial landing page), no information would be captured.
Attributer works differently though. It stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser, so regardless of which page they complete a form on the information will be passed through.
3. Captures landing page data as well
On top of capturing information on how the lead arrived at your site, Attributer also captures the landing page data (I.e. attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters) and the landing page category (I.e. /blog).
This means you can run reports that show how well the various sections of your website perform (I.e. your blog) in terms of generating leads, customers and revenue, as well as understand which individual blog posts are the best performing.
3 reports you can run when you capture LinkedIn Ads data in Contact Form 7
If you are using Attributer to capture LinkedIn Ads data in Contact Form 7 and sending it to your CRM or other reporting tools, then it's easy to build reports that show you how your LinkedIn Ads are performing.
As someone who has run hundreds of these kinds of reports over 15+ years working in marketing & analytics, these are a few of my favourites:
1. Leads by channel
Because Attributer captures information on the source of ALL your leads, you can build charts like the one above that show how many leads you're getting from the various channels you are using (I.e. Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, etc).
This provides an overview of what channels are generating your leads and helps you to better allocate your time and money to the things that are getting results.
2. Customers by campaign
When you run multiple LinkedIn Ad campaigns, this chart can be useful for showing how many customers you've generated from your LinkedIn Ads, broken down by the campaigns they came from.
The chart above helps you understand which campaigns are working and which ones to invest more in (or stop if they aren't delivering customers).
3. Revenue by ad type
LinkedIn offers several various ad types including sponsored content (I.e. the ones in the newsfeed), sponsored messaging (i.e. InMail Ads), and text ads (I.e. the ads in the sidebar).
If you’re using a mix of the ad types then the chart above (which shows revenue broken down by the ad type the customer came from) helps you to better understand what’s working and what isn’t.
This can help you focus your budget on the best-performing ad types and ultimately get more leads for a lower cost-per-lead.
Wrap up
If you're searching for a way to track the number of leads and customers you're getting from your LinkedIn Ads, then Attributer and Contact Form 7 could be a good solution.
With the tools working together you can see exactly where each of your leads comes from and you can send the data to your CRM (and other tools) to run reports that show which campaigns, ad types, etc are performing the best.
Setting all this up only takes about 10 minutes and you can get started with a 14-day free trial. So get started 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.