Track your Google Ads campaigns in FastSpring in 4 easy steps
Learn how to capture Google Ads data and send it into your FastSrping account alongside each customer, so you can see which campaigns are actually generating your customers & revenue.
Do you want to know which of your Google Ads campaigns are generating customers and revenue but can’t find a way to do so?
Imagine if you could see the exact origins of every customer, down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If you could do this, you’d be in the know about the campaigns and ads that are producing customers and revenue, and you’d be able to invest more in those.
In this post, we’ll help you learn how to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in FastSpring so you can run reports that display the origins of your customers and revenue.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s say you operate a B2B SaaS business that offers project management software. To promote your business, you run ads on Google targeting different terms people might be after, such as ‘Project management software’ and ‘Task management software.’
If you’re using a tool similar to Google Analytics to count visitors and form completions, you’d probably get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If ‘visitors and leads from spend’ are the only information you have, it would seem like your Task Management campaign was more efficient than your Project Management campaign, and you’d put more of your budget into that.
But think of it if you could see the results all the way 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 |
When you have the means to monitor campaign performance all the way to customers and revenue, you can understand the real story.
In this situation, the Task Management Campaign is far better 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 shown in the analysis above, you get a much better idea of what’s working and what isn’t because we captured the source of every free trial and customer.
So how do you do it?
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in FastSpring
If you want to capture Google Ads data in FastSpring, Attributer can make it easy for you. Here’s how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your ads
The first thing to do to start capturing Google Ads data in FastSpring is to add UTM parameters to every campaign.
UTM parameters are 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 may look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Yes, you can structure the UTM parameters however you want, but following 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
Appending UTM parameters to your URLs is easy, and there are free tools online that can help you.
2. Attributer stores the Google Ads data in a cookie
When the Attributer code is up and running on your site, Attributer will scan your visitors for UTM parameters, which you added to your campaigns in step 1.
If it finds the right UTM parameters, Attributer will appoint this visitor to ‘Paid Search’ and then store this information in a cookie in the user’s browser. This way, it’s always available when the user completes a form (i.e., starts a free trial of your SaaS product or purchases your subscription offering).
3. Google Ads data is sent to FastSpring
Once a user fills out a form on your site, the Google Ads data is sent into FastSpring and the other data entered in the form, such as their name, company, email address, etc.
The data can be sent to FastSpring in two ways:
- Hidden fields in forms - If you add several hidden fields to your forms, Attributer can have a place to write essential data into automatically. When the form is submitted, this data is sent to FastSpring along with the other information in the form.
- Retrieve from cookie - By adding a simple line of javascript to your registration process, the UTM parameters can be captured from the Attributer cookie and passed into FastSpring. This method is helpful if you allow users to sign up for your product or service via their Google or Facebook account, which removes the need for the user to complete a form.
4. Run reports in Stripe (and other tools)
Now that the Google Ads data (e.g., the campaign they came from, ad group, keyword, etc.) is inside FastSpring alongside every customer, you can use the data to build reports.
Here are some of the reports you can run:
- 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!
You can run these reports inside Stripe itself, or sync your Stripe 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 FastSpring
Yes, other methods for capturing Google Ads data and sending them to FastSpring are available, so why choose Attributer?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
On top of sending Google Ads data into FastSpring, Attributer can actually send through the source of every signup and customer, including those from organic sources (like Organic Search, Organic Social, etc)
This allows you to see where ALL your sign-ups and customers have come from, not just those from your Google Ads campaigns.
2. Remembers the data as visitors browse your site
For most other tools and methods of sending Google Ads data to FastSpring, UTM parameters are required to be present on the page where the form is completed. This becomes an issue when the page the visitor completes a form on differs from the one they first landed on.
For example, say someone clicks on your Google Ads and is led to a landing page for this campaign. After some thinking, they click the ‘Start Free Trial’ button, which takes them to your signup page to complete a form. This then means that the UTM parameters are lost as they're not present on the page where the form is completed.
Attributer solves this problem though. It stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser, which means the UTM parameters will always be sent no matter what page the user completes a form on.
3. Provides cleaner data
It’s common for your data to become messy when using other tools that capture raw UTM parameters, making it challenging to run accurate reports.
For instance, pretend 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 pass these raw UTM parameters to FastSpring and use them to determine the number of sign-ups and customers from your Google Ads campaigns, you’ll get three different sources you need to stitch together manually.
You don’t have to go through this with Attributer because it recognizes the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would ascribe these leads to the Paid Search channel regardless.
4. Captures landing page data
Have you ever wanted to know how your blog and other in-depth content pieces are doing when it comes to lead and customer generation?
Attributer can lead you to answers here as well, because it also captured landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data, you can view the performance of specific sections on your site (e.g., your blog).
And since it captures both the landing page and landing page group, you can view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole section or as individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you need to know how many sign-ups and customers you get from your Google Ads, you should check out Attributer.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns and send them into FastSpring, allowing you to create reports telling you which campaigns produce sign-ups and customers for your business.
On top of all this, it will also provide data on leads from other channels. This way, you can track the source of ALL your leads, not just those from Google Ads.
All in all, it will help you know where to best invest to your resources to optimize customer acquisition and grow your business.
Have we mentioned that it’s free to get started? What are your waiting for? Start your free trial today!
Get Started For Free
Start your 14-day free trial of Attributer today!
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.