Track your Google Ads campaigns in Stripe in 4 simple steps
Learn how to capture Google Ads data and send it into your Stripe account alongside each customer, so you can see which campaigns are actually generating your customers & revenue.
Are you struggling to know which of your Google Ads campaigns are actually generating customers & revenue?
Imagine if you could see exactly where each individual customer came from, right down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If you could do that, you’d know which campaigns and ads are actually generating customers & revenue and you’d be able to invest more in those.
In this article, we’ll show you how you can use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Stripe so you can run reports that show exactly where your customers & revenue are coming from.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s imagine you run a SaaS business that sells project management software. In order to promote your product you run ads on Google targeting different types of terms people might search for, such as ‘Project management software’ and ‘Task management software’
If you were just using a tool like Google Analytics to measure visitors and form completions, you’d probably get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If this was the only information you had access to—visitors and leads from spend—then it would look like your Task Management campaign was far outperforming your Project Management campaign and you’d like direct more of your budget to that.
However, imagine if you could see the results all the way through to the number of customers and amount of revenue generated.
You’d have something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Leads | 20 | 10 |
| Customers | 2 | 5 |
| Revenue | $8,000 | $25,000 |
When you’re able to track campaign effectiveness all the way through to customers and revenue, you can see the real story.
In this case, 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 you can see from the above analysis, when you can capture the source of every free trial and customer, you get a much better understanding of what’s working and what isn’t.
So how do you do it?
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Stripe
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Stripe. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your ads
The first thing you need to do is add UTM parameters behind your Google Ads.
In case you're not familiar with them, UTM parameters are basically extra bits of text that you add at the end of the URL you want to send to people from your campaigns. They tell analytics tools like Attributer where a person has come from.
Let’s say the page you want to send someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with UTM parameters may look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Although you can structure the UTM parameters however you want, the general best practice for Google Ads is something like:
- 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 you have implemented the Attributer script on your site, Attributer will monitor your visitors for the presence of the UTM parameters that you added to your campaigns in step 1.
If it finds them, it will attribute this particular visitor to ‘Paid Search’ and then store this attribution information in a cookie in the user’s browser so that it’s always available for 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 Stripe
When a visitor fills out a form on your site (like the signup form for your product or service), the Google Ads data is passed into Stripe with all the other data that has been inputted by that user, like, their name, email address, company, etc.
This information can be sent to Stripe in two ways:
- Hidden fields in forms - You can add a series of hidden fields to your forms and Attributer will automatically write the necessary data to them. Once the form is submitted, this data is passed to Stripe with any other information submitted in the form.
- Retrieved from the cookie - A simple line of javascript can be added to your registration process so that the UTM parameters are captured from the Attributer cookie and then passed into Stripe. This is helpful if you give your users the option to sign up for your product or service by signing into their Google or Facebook account (for instance) as that removes the need for the user to complete a form.
4. Run reports in Stripe (and other tools)
With the Google Ads data (E.g.. the campaign they came from, ad group, keyword, etc) now in Stripe alongside every customer, you caan use it to run reports.
Example reports you can run 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!
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 Stripe
There are some other ways to send Google Ads data into Stripe (you could code something yourself for instance), so why choose Attributer?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Not only can Attributer pass Google Ads data into Stripe, but it can 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
Most other tools and methods for sending Google Ads data into Stripe require the UTM parameter to actually be present on the page where the form is completed. This is a problem because the page a visitor completes your form on may not be the same page they landed on from your ad.
As an example, imagine someone clicks one of your Google Ads and goes to a landing page you created for that campaign. They then click the ‘Start Free Trial’ button and are taken to a different page to complete a form and signup for your product or service. This would mean that the page they complete a form on is not the same page they originally landed on, so the UTM parameters you added behind your ads are lost.
Attributer works differently. It stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser, meaning that regardless of what page the user completes a form on the UTM parameters will always be passed through.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the problems with using other tools that capture raw UTM parameters is your data can get messed up, making it challenging to run 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 Stripe and use them to report on the number of sign-ups and customers your Google Ads campaigns have generated, you’ll get three different sources you’d need to stitch together manually.
With Attributer, you don't have to deal with this because it takes the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies into account, and would ascribe leads to the Paid Search channel regardless.
4. Captures landing page data
Ever wanted to know how many leads and customers come from your blog? Or those in-depth content pieces you spent hours writing?
Attributer not only captures channel data (such as the fact they came from your Google Ads campaigns), but it also captures the landing page (I.e. attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters) and the landing page category (I.e. /blog).
This means that you can see how well certain sections of your website are performing (e.g: your blog) in terms of generating leads, customers and revenue.
And because it captures both the landing page and the landing page group, you can look at how your blog is performing as a whole as well as what individual blog posts are driving the most leads, customers and revenue.
Wrap up
Attributer makes it easy to track your Google Ads campaigns in Stripe. It will capture the UTM parameters you use behind your Google Ads campaigns and send them into Stripe alongside every customer, which allows you to build reports that provide insight into which campaigns are customers and revenue.
On top of that though, it will also give you data on signups & customers that come from other channels. This means you can identify the source of ALL your customers and ultimately allow you to see what's working and what isn't beyond just Google Ads.
If you're interested in trying it, you can get started today with a 14 day free trial.
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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.