The simplest method to track Google Ad campaigns in Hubspot CRM
Know which of your Google Ads campaigns attract leads, opportunities and customers by tracking Google Ad campaigns in Hubspot CRM.
Knowing which of your Google Ad campaigns are producing the majority of your leads, customers, and opportunities can help you decide which campaign to keep and which ones to let go of.
When you send Google Ads data into Hubspot CRM, you can view the campaigns where each o your leads, opportunities, and customers came from. You can also create reports in Hubspot CRM that display the campaigns generating a positive ROI.
We’ll walk you through how to use Attributer to send Google Ads data and leads into Hubspot CRM. Ultimately, you can use Attributer to track how your Google Ads campaigns are performing.
What is Attributer?
Attributer can be described as a piece of code you place on your website. Whenever a visitor arrives at your website, Attributer scans some technical data to identify where the visitor came from.
Attributer then groups each visitor into a series of channels like paid search, paid social, organic search, etc., and stores this as a cookie in the visitor’s browser. And whenever that visitor submits a form on your site, it passes the channel information into Hubspot CRM alongside the lead’s other data entered in the form.
So when a new lead arrives into Hubspot CRM from one of your Google Ad campaigns, they may look a bit like this:
As shown in the image above, Attributer has sent the ‘paid search’ channel data, campaign name, ad group name and the visitor’s landing page data.
4 simple steps to monitor your Google Ads campaigns in Hubspot CRM
Attributer makes it easy to track Google Ads campaigns in Hubspot CRM. Here’s how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your Google Ads campaigns
The first step in tracking your Google Ad campaigns in Hubspot CRM is adding UTM parameters to each ad.
UTM parameters are bits of text you add at the tail-end of the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
Let’s pretend that the page you’re sending someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, and then your final URL may look like this:
https:/ /attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&
You can build the UTM parameter according to your liking, but these are the proven best practices for Google Ads:
- 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 tools are available for free online to help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The second thing to do is add a number of hidden fields to your lead capture forms. The end-users can't see these fields but rest assured that it's doing its work behind the screen, which also means tools like Attributer can interact with them without visitors knowing.
The hidden fields that need to be added to your forms are:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Almost all form-building tools like Wix Forms and Gravity Forms make adding hidden fields simple. You usually only need to drag and drop a 'hidden' field type into your form. Documentation on how to do this in various form-builders can be seen here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Since the hidden fields are now set up, Attributer will track where your visitors are coming from and when they submit a form on your site, Attributer auto-fills the hidden fields with the values you specified in your UTM parameters.
As an example, let’s pretend I was a marketer at Dropbox, and a person 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
On top of the values from the UTM parameters, it would also secure the visitor’s 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 Hubspot CRM
Finally, once a visitor submits a form on your site, all the Google Ads data, landing page data, and the lead’s information are passed into Hubspot CRM.
Once the data has reached Hubspot CRM, you can create reports on it using native reporting tools, or you can opt for a BI tool like Tableau or Looker to build more advanced reports there.
Example reports you can create with Google Ads data in Hubspot CRM
When you follow the 4 steps mentioned above and use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Hubspot CRM, you can run reports like the following:
1. Leads by campaign, ad group or ad
This report shows the number of leads generated each month from your Google Ads, broken down by the campaign from which they initially came.
When studied over time, you can see the detailed breakdown of leads by campaign each month and its changes. By extension, you’ll also see the impact of the optimization and changes on lead generation.
2. Customers by campaign, ad group or ad
This assessment exhibits how many new customers were generated each month from your Google Ads, categorized by their channel.
Interesting facts can be discovered when this graph is compared to the lead one. One example is when you find out that campaigns are bringing in leads that never actually convert to customers. When this happens, it can signify that it's not worth continuing to invest in those campaigns.
3. Revenue by campaign, ad group or ad
This document shows how much revenue was generated each month, broken down by the channel the customer came from.
This report can be helpful for measuring the overall ROI of your marketing efforts. For example, in the above graph, 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 a positive ROI and worth continuing.
Why using Attributer is better than capturing raw UTM parameters
There may be other ways to capture UTM parameters and use them to track your Google Ads in Hubspot CRM, but why use Attributer?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Attributer is a tool for capturing UTM parameters and passing them into Hubspot CRM so you can monitor your Google Ads campaigns.
It also sends information about visitors who came through other channels like organic social, organic search, direct, referral, etc.
With this information, you can create reports in your CRM to see where your leads and customers originate from, and you can determine the source of ALL your leads, not just those from your Google Ads campaigns.
This data can be essential when your SEO efforts generate more leads and customers than your Google Ads campaigns, which can help you pivot accordingly.
2. Remembers the data
It's common for most UTM capturing tools and methods to require the UTM parameter to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This becomes a problem when the page on which a visitor submits a form differs from the page they first landed on.
For example, somebody clicks on one of your Google Ads and is then taken to the landing page for that campaign. Once they know they want your product or service, they click on the 'Get A Quote' button and are then led to a different page to complete your request form. This means that the page they complete a form on isn't the exact page they first landed on your site; hence, the UTM parameters are lost.
It's different with Attributer because it stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user's browser, meaning that no matter the number of pages the visitors go on before submitting the form, the UTM parameters will always be sent through.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the problems with using other raw UTM capturing tools is that your data can get messy over time, which makes it challenging to run accurate reports.
For instance, some 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 send this raw UTM data into Hubspot CRM and use it to view the number of leads your Google Ads have generated, the results will show three different sources that you’d need to stitch manually together.
You don’t have to deal with this with Attributer because it can consider the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies. Ultimately, it would appoint the leads to the correct channel regardless.
4. Records landing page data
Have you ever wondered how your blog is performing when attracting leads and customers? How about the comprehensive content you spend hours working on?
Since Attributer secures the channel data, landing page data (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog), it means you can see how certain sections on your site are performing (e.g., your blog.)
And since data on both the landing page and landing page group are also captured, you can view the performance of your blog section as a whole as well as zoom into each blog post.
Wrap up
If you think tracking the success of your Google Ads in Hubspot can help optimize your business, then Attributer can help you.
It will capture the UTM parameters you use in your Google Ad campaigns and send them to Hubspot CRM, where you can build reports that show the campaigns where your leads and customers have come from.
Moreover, it will also provide you with data on leads from other channels. This way, you can track the source of ALL your leads, not just those from Google Ads. Ultimately, these data can help you invest wisely to grow your business.
Best of all, Attributer is free to get started. 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.