The easiest way to track your Google Ads campaigns in Chargebee
Learn how to capture Google Ads data and send it into Chargebee so you know which campaigns are generating your customers & revenue.
Are you running Google Ads to attract new subscribers to your subscription product?
If so, do you know which campaigns are actually generating customers and revenue (as opposed to just clicks and visits to your website)?
If you don't, there's a pretty good chance you are wasting your valuable advertising budget on campaigns that aren't actually generating revenue.
Fortunately, there is a solution.
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Chargee so you can create reports that show what campaigns & ad groups are actually generating customers & revenue.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s say you operate a business that offers project management software. To spread the word about your business, you create ads on Google that target the different types of terms people may be searching for, such as ‘Project management software’ and ‘Task management software.’
If the only tool you have is something like Google Analytics to count visitors and form completions, you’d likely get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If the only data you have access to is on visitors and leads from spend, it would appear that your Task Management campaign was doing better than your Project Management campaign, so you’d want to put more of your budget into that.
But what if you can see the results all the way through to the number of customers and the amount of revenue you received?
Then, 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 have the means to track campaign efficiency all the way to customers and revenue, you’re able to understand the whole story.
In this scenario, the Task Management Campaign is outperforming the other because:
- More customers were generated from the Project Management Campaign (12) than the Task Management Campaign (2)
- The free trial-to-customer conversion rate is far higher for the Project Management Campaign (60%) than the Task Management Campaign (14%)
- The average customer value in the Project Management Campaign is $2,083 per customer vs. $1,142 per customer from the Task Management Campaign.
- The cost of getting a customer is lower in the Project Management Campaign: $416 vs. $714
As you can see from the analysis above, you can better understand what’s working and what isn’t when you can capture the source of every free trial and customer.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Chargebee
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Chargebee. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your ads
In order to capture Google Ads data in Chargebee, you must first add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If UTM parameters are something new to you, they’re extra bits of text that you add to the end of the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
Hence if the page you want to send someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with UTM parameters would look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Yes, you may structure the UTM parameters however 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 to your URLs is simple. Plus, there are free tools online that can help you build them.
2. Attributer stores the Google Ads data in a cookie
Once the Attributer code has been added to your site, Attributer will scan your visitors for the presence of the UTM parameters you’ve added to your campaigns in the previous step.
If some are present, Attributer will appoint this particular visitor to ‘Paid Search’ and then keep this information in a cookie in the user’s browser. This way, it’s always available when the user submits a form (i.e., starts a free trial of your SaaS product or purchases your subscription offering).
3. Google Ads data is sent to Chargebee
Every time a user completes a form on your site (like the signup form for your product or service), the Google Ads data is passed into Chargebee with the other data entered by the user, including their name, company, phone number, etc.
This data can be passed to Chargebee in two ways:
- Hidden fields in forms - By adding a series of hidden fields to your forms, Attributer can automatically write the necessary data to them. Once the form is submitted, all the data written by Attributer and inputted by the user are sent to Chargebee.
- Retrieved from the cookie - Through adding a simple line of javascript to your registration process, the UTM parameters are captured from the Attributer cookie and passed into Chargebee. This is beneficial if you allow users to sign up for your product by logging in to their Google or Facebook accounts, removing the need to fill out a form.
4. Run reports in Chargebee
With the Google Ads data (e.g., the campaign they came from, ad group, keyword, etc.) now inside Chargebee alongside every customer, you can start running reports. These include:
- New Customers added each month by Campaign
- New Revenue added each month by Ad Group
- Average Revenue Per Customer by Ad
- Customer Lifetime Value by Channel or Campaign
- Customer Churn Rate by Channel or Campaign
- And many more!
These reports can be created inside Chargebee, or you can sync your Chargebee data into other analytics tools (like Profitwell and Chartmogul) to run even more detailed reports.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Chargebee
There are limited options when it comes to sending Google Ads data into Chargebee, and here's why Attributer is your best bet:
1. Captures all traffic
Apart from being an excellent way to send Google Ads data into Chargebee, Attributer can also monitor other sources of leads (Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, etc.)
This means that when you create reports on the origins of your sign-ups and customers, you can point to the source of ALL your leads, not just those from your Google Ads campaigns.
Determining the source of all your leads is essential, as you might just find that your SEO efforts are actually generating more sign-ups and customers than your Google Ads campaigns. With this information, you'd be able to change your marketing mix to grow faster.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
It’s a common requirement for other tools and methods to have the UTM parameter on the page where the form is completed. This becomes a problem when the page a visitor completes a form on isn’t the exact page they first landed on.
For instance, pretend someone clicks on one of your Google Ads and is taken to a landing page for that campaign. Then they click the ‘Start Free Trial’ button and are taken to a different page to complete a form and sign-up for your product or service. This means that the page they complete a form on differs from the initial page they landed on, so the UTM parameters you added are lost.
This won’t happen with Attributer though. 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 sent through.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the common issues encountered when using other raw UTM capturing tools is that your data gets messed up, making it challenging to create accurate reports.
For 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 send these raw UTM parameters into Chargebee and use them to see how many sign-ups and customers your Google Ads campaigns have made, you’ll receive three different sources that you’d need to stitch together manually.
It’s different with Attributer because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would appoint the leads to the Paid Search channel regardless.
4. Attributer captures landing page data
Do you wish you could measure the number of leads and customers you get from your blog and the other in-depth content pieces you spent hours working on?
Attributer can help you with this because on top of capturing channel data, the landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog) is also captured and sent to Chargebee.
With this data available, you’ll be able to see how well specific sections on your site are performing (e.g., your blog) in terms of generating signups, customers, and revenue.
And since both the landing page and landing page group are captured, you can view the performance of your blog in two ways: as a whole section and as individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you're trying to understand how many sign-ups and customers you get from your Google Ads, then Attributer is a great tool.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns and send them into Chargebee, allowing you to create reports that show you which campaigns are producing customers & revenue and which one's aren't.
On top of that, it will also provide data on leads that come from other channels. This means you'll know the source of ALL your leads (not just the ones from Google Ads), which will ultimately help you understand where to best invest to grow your business.
Have we mentioned that it’s free to get started? What are your waiting for? 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.