How to simply track Google Ad campaigns in Freshsales CRM
4 steps to measure if your Google Ads campaigns attract leads, opportunities and customers by tracking Google Ad campaigns in Freshsales CRM.
Do you have an idea which of your Google Ad campaigns are bringing most of your leads, customers, and opportunities? If your answer is no, how do you determine which campaigns to continue and which ones to drop?
When you pass Google Ads data into Freshsales CRM, you can view the campaign where your leads, opportunities, and customers have come from. You can also build reports in Freshsales CRM to display your campaigns with positive ROIs and the ones that don’t.
In this article, we’ll show you how to use Attributer to pass Google Ads data into Freshsales CRM with every lead. Ultimately, you can also use it to monitor the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.
What is Attributer?
The simplest way to describe Attributer is a piece of code you place on your website. However, its work behind the scenes is monumental.
Every time a visitor arrives at your site, Attributer looks at some technical data to identify where they came from. Each visitor is then categorized into a series of channels: paid search, paid social, organic search, etc. Attributer then stores this information as a cookie in the visitor’s browser.
And when that visitor submits a form on your site, Attributer passes the channel information into Freshsales CRM alongside the lead’s information that they entered in your form (e.g., name, email, company, etc.)
So whenever a new lead arrives in Freshsales CRM from one of your Google Ad campaigns, it might look like this:
As shown from the image above, the fact that they came from ‘paid search’ has been passed by Attributer. In addition, information such as campaign name, ad group name, and the visitor’s landing page is also displayed.
4 simple steps to track your Google Ads campaigns in Freshsales CRM
Attributer makes it easy to track Google Ads campaigns in Freshsales CRM. Here’s how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your Google Ads campaigns
To start, you need to add UTM parameters to every ad so your Google Ad campaigns can be tracked inside Freshsales CRM.
If you have no idea what UTM parameters are, it’s totally fine. They’re simply extra text that you add to the tail-end of the URL that you send to people from your campaigns.
Hence if the page you’re sending to someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL may look like this:
https://attributer.io/integrations /salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&
Although you can build the UTM parameters however you like, the general 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
Adding UTM parameters to URLs is simple, and free tools are available online if you need further help in building them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The second step is to add several hidden fields to your lead capture forms. The end-users won’t see these fields but they still do their work behind the scenes, meaning tools like Attributer can interact with them without the visitors ever knowing.
The hidden fields you need to add are the following:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
The majority of form-building tools like Jotform and Wix Forms make it simple to add hidden fields. You simply must drag and drop a ‘hidden’ field type into your form, and documentation on how to do this for different form builders can be seen here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Since the hidden fields are now sorted and set up, Attributer now has a space to place the values you specified in your UTM parameters. It will do this every time a visitor submits a form on your site.
For example, if I was a marketer at Zoho and an individual came to my website from one of my brand campaigns in paid search, Attributer would fill out the hidden fields like so:
- Channel = Paid search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drildown 2 = Brand campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Free account ad
In addition to the values from the UTM parameters, Attributer would also capture the visitor’s landing page (e.g., zoho.com/features/best-crm) and the first landing page group (e.g., features).
4. Google Ads data is sent to Freshsales CRM
Lastly, whenever a visitor completes a form on your site, all of the Google Ads data, landing page data, and the lead’s name, email, phone, etc., are passed into Freshsales CRM.
Once all the information is in Freshsales CRM, you can report on it using native reporting tools. If you have a BI tool like Tableau or Looker, you can use them to run more advanced reports.
Example reports you can create with Google Ads data in Freshsales CRM
When you follow the 4 steps above and use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Freshsales CRM, you’ll be able to build reports similar to the following:
1. Leads by campaign, ad group or ad
This report exhibits the number of monthly generated leads from your Google Ads, grouped by the campaign from which they initially came.
When studied over time, like in the above chart, you’ll be able to see both the breakdown of leads by campaign each month and the changes that happened over time. Ultimately, you can also see the impact on the number of leads of the changes and optimizations you applied to your Google Ads.
2. Customers by campaign, ad group or ad
This report displays the monthly new customers generated from your Google Ads, categorized by their channel.
Comparing this graph to the leads graph can reveal if there are campaigns that bring in leads that never convert into customers, which can signify that this particular campaign isn’t worth investing in anymore.
3. Revenue by campaign, ad group or ad
This chart shows how much the monthly generated revenue is, further broken down by the channel the customer came from.
This report can help compute the overall ROI of your marketing efforts. For example, the above chart states that $236,156 in new revenue came from paid social ads in March. If the customer spent less than this on the ads, it's a positive ROI and worth continuing.
Why using Attributer is better than capturing raw UTM parameters
Other systems for capturing UTM parameters and tracking Google Ads in Freshsales CRM may be available, but there are several reasons why you should opt for Attributer instead.
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
If you want to capture UTM parameters and send them to Freshsales CRM, where you can track your Google Ads campaigns, Attributer is an excellent system for this.
It also sends data on visitors who arrive at your site using other channels like organic search, referral, organic paid, direct, etc.
With this data, you can identify the source of ALL your leads and not just the ones from your Google Ads campaigns because you can run reports in your CRM regarding where your customers come from.
This can be especially important when your SEO efforts are the ones bringing in most of your leads instead of your Google Ads campaigns.
2. Remembers the data
Most UTM capturing tools require the UTM parameter to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This becomes a problem when the visitor completes a form on a page they didn’t initially land on from your ad.
For instance, someone clicks on your Google Ad and is taken to a landing page you created for that campaign. After some deliberation, they decide they want your product or service, so they click on the ‘Get A Quote’ button, which leads them to a different page to complete your form. This means that the page they complete a form on isn’t the exact page they initially landed on. Hence the UTM parameters are lost.
This won’t happen with Attributer because it stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser. So regardless of the page on which they complete a form, Attributer will always send the UTM parameters through.
In the end, regardless of the user’s navigation activity on your site 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 troubles people can encounter while using other UTM capturing tools is that you can end up with messy data, which makes generating accurate reports difficult.
For instance, imagine several of your Google Ads campaigns are 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 UTM data into Freshsales CRM and use it to see how many leads your Google Ads campaigns have generated, you’ll receive three different sources you need to stitch together manually.
You don’t have to put up with this with Attributer because it can recognize the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would appoint the leads to the Paid Search channel no matter what.
4. Records landing page data
Want to have your hands on the data regarding your blog’s generated leads and customers? How about those in-depth content pieces you’ve worked hard on?
With Attributer’s feature of capturing channel data, landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this information, you will see how sections on your site are performing in terms of leads, customers, and revenue generation.
And since Attributer captures both landing page data and landing page group, you can find out how your blog section is performing in its entirety and focus in on each blog post’s performance.
Wrap up
If you’ve been wondering how to monitor your Google Ads’ success in Freshsales CRM, then Attributer is an excellent solution.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns and send them to Freshsales CRM, where you can create reports that reveal the campaigns where your leads and customers have come from.
In addition, Attributer also provides data on leads that come from other channels. This way, you can track the source of ALL your leads, not just those from Google Ads. Ultimately, you’ll make an informed decision about where to invest in growing your business.
Best of all, Attributer’s free to get started. So what are you waiting for? 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.