Google Ads is a powerful online advertising program designed to help you reach new customers and increase sales for your business through ads on Google Search and across Google's network of partner websites. By helping you drive more traffic to your site from visitors who are likely to be interested in what your business has to offer, Google Ads helps you capture more qualified leads for a better return on your online marketing investment (ROI). Google Ads' flexible online marketing platform includes comprehensive analytics and reporting tools, giving you easy access to the data you need to make strategic marketing decisions for your business.

If you use Google Ads to drive potential customers to your website and a customer relationship management system (CRM) to track offline sales made through phone calls, emails, or direct sales, it can be difficult for your business to determine how your online campaign investments lead to offline conversion data stored in the CRM.

With the CRM for Google Ads, you can now import your Google Ads marketing investments into the CRM so you can see which keywords and campaigns are responsible for each offline sale. Plus, you can also export the CRM sales data into Google Ads so you can better optimise your bids and budgets to yield maximum revenue and profits. Once you merge your Google online marketing with offline sales data, both sales and advertising teams can learn which marketing strategies are driving the best return on investment.

By importing your Google Ads data into the CRM, you’re now able to see how your marketing investment and strategy led to offline sales tracked in the CRM. Now you can:

• Directly attribute the source of leads and opportunities generated from Google Ads.
  
• View and manage a set of reports on sales that were initiated through Google Ads.
  

By exporting your the CRM conversions into Google Ads, you can better optimise your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords by seeing precisely how your online investment in Google Ads led to offline sales revenue and profit:

• See how clicks on your ads led to sales made in the offline world, e.g., over the phone or via a sales rep.
  
• Understand which clicks drive the most profitable sales.
  
  

Integration Settings in the CRM

First, you need to set up the integration. Only users with administrative permission can enable and set up the integration. Setting up this integration involves the following steps:

1. Authentication - Enable this feature and authorise your CRM account to access your Google Ads account.
   
2. Configuration - Configure Google Ads account and specify what data you want to push to Google Ads for offline conversions.
   
3. Auto-tagging - Enable auto-tagging, a feature that automatically creates a custom destination URL to help you track your ad's performance.
   
4. Packaging - Take a look at the new reports and dashboards that will be added after this integration is set up.
   
5. Tracking - Add code snippets in your website and web form to capture the click details of Google Ad in the CRM. This is an important step to track your Google Ads campaigns' data in the CRM. (Refer to the steps given below.)
   

Once you have configured the settings, you need to make changes in your web form and all the web pages. 

1. Add a code snippet in the web form’s HTML code - This code helps you extract the data that GCLID captures when a visitor clicks on an advertisement.
   GCLID refer to Google Click ID. Google Ads provides unique GCLID for every click that comes to your website from an Google Ads ad. The GCLID gives you information such as the ad campaign, adgroup, keyword, etc. This information needs to be passed on to your customer database (the CRM) along with the lead information that you collect from the visitor who fills up the web form.
2. Add tracking code in all the web pages in your website. When a visitor clicks on your advertisement and comes to your landing page, there are chances the visitor navigates to other pages before filling up the web form. In such cases, this tracking code keeps record of the GCLID that was generated on clicking the advertisement.
   

What is GCLID?

GCLID refer to Google Click ID. Google Ads provides unique GCLID for every click that comes to your website from an Google Ads ad. The GCLID gives you information such as the ad campaign, ad group, keyword, and more. This information needs to be passed on to your CRM account along with the lead information that you collect from the visitor who fills up the web form.

Understanding the GCLID Mapping in CRM

For every ad click, Google generates a Google Click ID (GCLID). This ID processes information related to the campaign, keyword, ad group, etc. of the Ad. So how is this data captured within the CRM?

We know that when an ad is clicked, GCLID is created. If the person fills the web form that the ad is connected to, then both the GCLID and the web form details are pushed to the CRM database. At this point, the leads/contacts are created with the details provided in the form but the details from the GCLID is not mapped to these leads/contacts. Google Ads requires 4-6 hours after the ad click to process the details of the click. So every 24 hours, the GCLIDs generated on ad click and the leads added in CRM are mapped and only then the Google Ads data is added to the respective records in the CRM.

How the Integration Works

A visitor searches a keyword and Google Ads displays your ad in Google Search.

The Visitor clicks on the Ad and reads content on your landing page or destination URL and fills up the enquiry form. At this point, GCLID is created and passed to the landing page URL. This GCLID is used as a link between Google Ads and the CRM, is is also passed to the landing page URL.

When the form is filled and submitted, the GCLID details are passed on to the CRM along with the lead information collected through the web form. You are able to identify all such leads that are generated via Google Ads.

In the lead's details page, other Google Ads information will be available. Please note, these details will be updated approximately 24 hours from the lead creation time.

The lead creation data is pushed to Google Ads as a Unique Conversion. This is based on the Offline Conversion Setting.

New Elements Added in the CRM

Google Ads Tab - A new tab will be added in the CRM that lists the details of the Campaigns, AdGroups, Keywords, Account Summary and Conversion Import Failures for your Google Ads accounts. It captures information that includes clicks, impressions, average position, lead's and contact's names, spending, revenue, etc.

Leads/Contacts generated via Google Ads - Whenever a visitor fills out the details in the web form (Web-to-Lead/Contact), they will be automatically routed to the CRM. A new lead/contact is created with a GCLID. 24 hours after the record is created in the CRM, the details in Google Ads Information section for the lead/contact will be updated.

Google Ads Information Section - A new section will be added for the leads, contacts and potentials that are generated via Google Ads. It captures details such as Ad Network, Keyword, Search query, Device Type, Cost per Click, Cost per Conversion, etc.

List View - A new list view namely Google Ads Conversion Export is added in Leads,Contacts, and Potentials.

Google Ads Reports - A variety of standard reports will be available such as Leads by Google Campaign, Potential by Keywords, and Top 10 Customers from Google Ads. These standard reports help you track various parameters and the performance of your Google Ads.

Note

• You must be running online marketing campaigns using Google Ads.
  
• You must have access to organisation-wide MCC accounts in Google Ads.
  
• You must use the Web Forms (powered by the CRM or any 3rd party applications) to generate leads for your organisation.
  
• There shouldn’t be domain mismatch, if you embed Web forms as an iFrame in landing pages.
  
• Auto-tagging is mandatory to retrieve GCLID from destination URL.
  
• JavaScript provided by the CRM should not be removed by users or Content Management Systems (CMS).
  
• You must have Administrator profile in the CRM to set up integration.
  

Next Steps

• Configure Google Ads Integration
  
• Set Up Web Form for Tracking
  
• Track Google Ads Data in the CRM
  
• Push Data to Google Ads