How to get LinkedIn Ads data in Sugar CRM
Do you know whether your LinkedIn ads are generating leads and customers? I'll show you how you how to get your LinkedIn data into Sugar CRM so you can find out.
If you're looking for a way to promote your business, its products or services, Linkedin is a platform many marketers like. This is largely because of the specific targeting options available where you can segment audiences by industry, job title, seniority and more.
However, the cost of ads can quickly ad up so it's important to know whether your ads are delivering leads, opportunities and customers - not just clicks or site visits.
In this post, I'll walk you through 4 quick steps so you can use a tool called Attributer to track the number of leads and customers you get from your LinkedIn Ads from inside Sugar.
The best way to track LinkedIn Ads in Sugar CRM
4 steps to know how many leads and customers are generated by your LinkedIn ads in Sugar CRM:
1. Install Attributer on your website
Attributer was built to track where your leads and customers are coming from. It's a simple piece of code that you add to your company's website that passes marketing attribution information through to Sugar CRM when a visitor completes a form on your website.
Adding Attributer on your website is easy. After you sign up for a free 14-day trial we'll give you a small piece of code which you need to install on your website. You'll find instructions on how to add it here.
Once you've added the code to your website, you need to add hidden fields to your forms, these include:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Channel Drilldown 4
Attributer works with a bunch of form builders (including Gravity Forms, Webflow Forms, Typeform and more). Instructions for adding hidden fields to dozens of form builders can also be found here.
2. Add UTM parameters to your ads
Next up you need to add UTM parameters to your LinkedIn Ads.
UTM parameters are pieces of text that you add to the end of the URL you are sending people to from your campaigns.
If the page you are sending someone to is attributer.io/integrations/sugar-crm then your final URL (with UTM parameters) could look like this:
attributer.io/integrations/sugar-crm?utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
UTM parameters help analytics tools like Attributer see where your leads are coming from, which campaign they interacted with, what ad they clicked on, etc.
3. LinkedIn Ads data is available in Sugar CRM
Once Attributer is installed and UTM parameters are added to your ads, Attributer starts looking at where your website visitors come from (including those from your LinkedIn ads and other campaigns).
Attributer then categorizes each visitor into the appropriate channel (including Paid Social, Paid Search, Organic Search, etc) and stores the information in a cookie in the visitor's browser.
When a visitor completes your form, Attributer populates its hidden fields with the information on where that lead originated from.
The data is then sent to Sugar CRM along with the lead's name, email, company and any the other information you capture in your lead form.
4. Run reports to see if your ads are performing
Once you have LinkedIn Ads data flowing into Sugar CRM you can use it to run reports to see which campaigns are generating the highest ROI. You can do this using either Sugar's native reporting tools, or any of the reporting tools you have linked to your CRM (eg: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, etc.)
When you have this data available, you can run reports that show you how many leads you're receiving from your LinkedIn ads, which campaigns are generating the highest number of leads, what the conversion rate from lead to opportunity is, what the close rate is, and how much revenue is being generated, etc.
What is Attributer and why use it?
Attributer is a tool that helps solve your marketing attribution issues by tracking where your leads and customers are coming from. It then fills out your form's hidden fields with the data. Once a form is submitted, the marketing attribution data is captured by your form tool and sent to Sugar CRM.
This is the information you need if you want to know whether your marketing activities are delivering leads and customers - not just visitors or clicks.
For example, if you're running marketing campaigns for a company that provides kitchens and someone clicks on one of your ads, it would pass through the following information (depending on what you put in the UTM parameters):
- Channel: Paid Social
- Channel Drilldown 1: LinkedIn
- Channel Drilldown 2: Kitchen Campaign (or the specific campaign name)
- Channel Drilldown 3: Renovation Ad (or whatever ad creative they clicked on)
Attributer is the easiest way to track your LinkedIn Ads in Sugar CRM because it:
- Captures marketing attribution information - Attributer captures information on each lead that lands on your website through channels like Paid Search, Organic Search, Organic Social, Referral, or Direct.
- Remembers the data - Attributer stores the UTM parameters in a cookie within the user’s browser, so if that visitor leaves your site and returns or navigates around, the UTM parameters are sent through.
- Cleans the data - Attributer handles data inconsistencies in UTM usage. For example if you're using utm_source=linkedin in some campaigns and utm_source=LinkedIn in others. It knows how to categorize these leads to the correct channel (Paid Social in this case) regardless of the discrepancies.
4 reports you can run when you track LinkedIn Ads data in Sugar
After running into marketing attribution issues at every company we worked with over the past 15 years, we decided to launch Attributer to help others solve the problem.
Below are a some example reports I've found useful to make better marketing decisions:
1. Leads by channel
The chart above shows you where the majority of your leads are coming from, broken down by channel, and can help support or drive your strategy decisions.
2. Opportunities by network
This chart helps you understand the number of customers you get from your ads based on each network and is important to make smart budget and resourcing decisions.
3. Customers by campaign
Understanding which campaigns are delivering the most customers (like in the chart above) helps you to better understand which campaigns deliver customers to your business (as opposed to just delivering visitors or leads that don't convert).
4. Revenue by ad
The chart above shows you how much revenue is coming from each of your specific ads.
Knowing this helps you to better understand which of your creatives are attracting the types of leads that convert into customers, and can also help make your ad creative more effective.
Wrap up
Truly knowing the number of leads and customers you receive from your LinkedIn Ads (and other marketing campaigns) is what Attributer was built to do.
Attributer helps you see the source of your leads, right down to the exact campaign, ad set, or ad they clicked. It also lets you see the data in your existing tools (I.e. Sugar CRM).
It's free to get started and only takes about 10 minutes to set up. So start a free 14-day trial of Attributer today to see how it can help you!
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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.