The simplest method for tracking Google Ad campaigns in Close CRM
Know which of your Google Ads campaigns attract leads, opportunities and customers by tracking Google Ad campaigns in Close CRM.
Understanding which of your Google Ad campaigns are raking in most of your revenue, leads and opportunities will help you make informed decisions about which campaigns to keep and which ones to switch off.
With Google Ads data inside Close CRM, you can see the campaigns from which all your leads, customers and opportunities have come. You can also create reports in Close CRM that provide information as to which of your campaigns are bringing a positive ROI and which ones aren’t.
In this article, we will help you use Attributer to send Google Ads data to Close CRM with every lead. You can also use it to track how each of your Google Ads campaigns is performing.
What is Attributer?
Attributer, in its rawest form, is a piece of code that needs to be placed on your website. Whenever a user visits your site, it looks at technical data to determine where the visitor came from.
After determining, Attributer then groups each visitor into a series of channels like paid search, paid social, organic search, etc., and stores this information as a cookie in the visitor’s browser. Once that visitor submits a lead form on your site, Attributer sends the channel information into Close CRM along with the lead’s information provided in the form.
Every time a new lead comes into Close CRM from one of your Google Ad campaigns, it may look a bit like this:
As shown in the image above, Attributer has provided the data that the visitor came from ‘paid search’ as well as the campaign name, ad group name and the visitor’s landing page.
4 simple steps to track your Google Ads campaigns in Close CRM
Attributer makes it easy to track Google Ads campaigns in Close CRM. Here’s how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your Google Ads campaigns
To start tracking your Google Ad campaigns in Close CRM, you must first add UTM parameters to each ad.
UTM parameters are extra bits of text that you add at 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 may look like this:
https:// attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&
You can structure the UTM parameters however you want, but the time-proven best practices for Google Ads are the following:
- 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
Tagging your URLs with UTM parameters is simple, and free online tools can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Next is to add a number of hidden fields to your lead capture forms. These fields are called hidden because they’re invisible to the end-user but work behind the scenes where tools like Attributer can interact with them without the users knowing.
The hidden fields that need to be added are:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Almost all form-building tools like Gravity Forms and Jotform make adding hidden fields simple and easy. You simply drag and drop the ‘hidden’ field type into your form, and instructions on how to do this for different form builders can be seen here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
When the hidden fields are finished being set up, Attributer will record where your visitors are coming from. Attributer auto-populates the hidden fields with the values you specified in your UTM parameters when they submit a form on your site.
For instance, if I was a marketer at Dropbox, and a user came to my website 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
Aside from the values from the UTM parameters, it would also secure the data on 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 sent to Close CRM
Last but not least, every time a visitor submits a form on your website, all of the Google Ads data, landing page data, and the lead’s name, email, phone, etc., are passed into Close CRM.
When the data arrives in Close CRM, you can build a report on it using native reporting tools or a BI tool like Looker or Tableau to run more advanced reports.
Example reports you can create with Google Ads data in Close CRM
You can run reports like the ones below when you follow the 4 steps mentioned above and use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Close CRM:
1. Leads by campaign, ad group or ad
This report provides information on the number of monthly generated leads from your Google Ads, broken down by the Google Ads campaign where they originally came from.
When looked back and reviewed after some time, you can observe the breakdown of leads by campaign each month and the changes that occurred over time. You can also see the impact of your optimizations on the generated leads.
2. Customers by campaign, ad group or ad
This chart shows the number of newly generated customers per month from your Google Ads, sorted according to the channel they arrived from.
Interesting facts can be revealed when this graph is compared to the leads chart, such as seeing that there are campaigns that bring in leads that never convert to customers. When this happens, it can mean it’s not worth continuing to invest in these campaigns.
3. Revenue by campaign, ad group or ad
This document exhibits the generated revenue each month, categorized by the channel the customer came from.
This data can be beneficial for measuring the overall ROI of your marketing efforts. For example, in the above chart, we can see that $236,156 in new revenue was generated from paid social ads in March. If the customer spent less than this on the ads, it's worth continuing because it’s a positive ROI.
Why using Attributer is better than capturing raw UTM parameters
There are other systems for capturing UTM parameters and tracking your Google Ads in Close CRM, so why use Attributer?
Here's why:
1. Captures all traffic
Attributer is a tried-and-tested tool for capturing UTM parameters and sending them to Close CRM so you can track your Google Ads campaigns.
Attributer also sends data on visitors that arrive through other channels like referral, direct, organic social, organic paid, etc.
With this, you will be able to see where ALL your leads and customers originate from by simply running reports in your CRM.
This can also help you when your SEO efforts are the ones generating most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns, which will let you invest accordingly.
2. Remembers the data
A lot of the tools and methods for capturing UTM parameters expect the UTM parameter to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This can be an issue when visitors submit a form on a different page than where they first landed on your site.
For instance, if someone clicks on one of your Google Ads and is then led to a landing page for this campaign. Once they decide they like your product and service, they click on the ‘Get A Quote’ button and are taken to a different page to complete your request form. This means that the page they submit a form on isn’t the same as the one they initially landed on, so the UTM parameters are lost.
Attributer works differently 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 sent through.
In the end, this means that no matter how many pages the visitor decides to see before they submit your form, you’ll always be able to track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the dilemmas when you use other raw UTM capturing tools is that you end up with messy data, making it challenging to run accurate reports.
For example, some of your Google Ads campaigns may be tagged with UTM_Source= Google.com (capital T), others with UTM_Source= google (lowercase, no domain), and others with UTM_Source= adwords.
If you pass this raw UTM data into Close CRM and use it to see the number of leads your Google Ads generated, the results will yield three different sources you would need to stitch together manually.
You won’t need to deal with this with Attributer because it can recognize inconsistencies like the possibility of capitalization and would appoint the leads to the correct channel regardless.
4. Records landing page data
Do you want to understand how your blog is performing? How about those comprehensive content pieces you spent hours on?
Attributer capture the channel data, landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data, you can view how certain sections on your site are performing (e.g., your blog) in generating leads, customers, and revenue.
And since both the landing page and landing page group are captured, you can see your blog is performing as a whole as well as individual blog post's performance when it comes to driving most leads, customers, and revenue.
Wrap up
If you think monitoring your Google Ads' success in Close CRM can help your business, then Attributer can be an excellent tool for this.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns and send them to Close CRM, which lets you run reports that exhibit the campaigns each of your leads and customers have come from.
It will also give you information on the leads that come from other channels so that you can track the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from Google Ads. Ultimately, it'll help you know where to invest in optimizing your business.
Best of all, it's free to get started, so start 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.