You advertise on LinkedIn and collect leads in Sugar CRM, but identifying the specific LinkedIn ad that each lead came from is not possible.
When a lead is converted into a paying customer, it’s difficult to tie that customer back to a particular LinkedIn ad.
Because of this tracking hole, managing your LinkedIn ads is difficult, and you find yourself investing in several ads without understanding which one drives your leads and revenue.
A simple tool could connect each lead to the precise LinkedIn campaign group, campaign, ad, and audience that produced it.
Let's explore!
How to capture LinkedIn ads in Sugar CRM
Step 1: Add Leadsources in the head tag of your website
Leadsources is a specialized tool for tracking lead sources. Once installed on your website, it records up to 7 pieces of lead source information for every lead.
Create an account on Leadsources.io - it's free.
Insert the Leadsources tracking code into the head tag of your website by following this guide.
Step 2: Add the UTM parameters to your LinkedIn ads campaigns
Include the UTM parameters you aim to track as part of your LinkedIn advertising strategy.
For example, these UTM parameters allow you to monitor the campaign, ad, and audience:
- UTM_source=linkedin
- UTM_campaign=campaign-name
- UTM_term=audience-name
- UTM_content=ad-name
Even in the absence of UTM parameters, Leadsources collects a full range of lead source data—such as channel, landing page, and landing page subfolder—to guarantee complete tracking for each lead.
Step 3: Add the hidden fields in your form
Add hidden fields to your form so that Leadsources can store lead source data directly with every form submission.
When a new lead completes your form, Leadsources automatically populates the hidden fields with information related to LinkedIn ads.
For comprehensive details on adding hidden fields, review our guide.
Step 4: Capture the LinkedIn ads data in Sugar CRM
When users interact with your ads and reach your site, Leadsources monitors LinkedIn ads data, which includes campaign, audience, and ad details.
The hidden fields within your form are filled automatically by Leadsources using information from LinkedIn ads.
When the form is completed, connecting it to Sugar CRM lets you automatically send your leads and LinkedIn ads data.
How does Leadsources work?
After being added to your site, Leadsources captures LinkedIn ads information every time a visitor arrives.
LinkedIn ads data is kept in the hidden fields of your form, and it is sent to Sugar CRM together with lead details (name, email, etc.) upon submission.
Leadsources analyzes the following data for each visitor:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign
- Content
- Term
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Leadsources effectively tracks lead source data using the referrer, regardless of UTM parameter usage.
Occasionally, UTM parameters cannot be applied, especially when the traffic comes from organic channels:
- Google Search
- Instagram bio link
- Social media posts
- Etc.
In these situations, most lead source tracking tools cannot determine lead sources, as they rely exclusively on UTM parameters for gathering data. However, Leadsources continues to collect certain lead source information even when UTM parameters are unavailable:
- Channel
- Source
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Therefore, unlike many alternative tools, Leadsources ensures comprehensive lead data tracking across every channel:
- Organic Search
- Paid Search
- Organic Social
- Paid Social
- Referral
- Affiliate
- Display Advertising
- Direct Traffic
Also, Leadsources automatically categorizes your traffic by channel, resulting in a well-maintained dataset.
In summary, Leadsources is an efficient and simple tool that compiles comprehensive lead source data from various channels in a single space.
Performance reports: Lead, sales, and revenue by source
By capturing LinkedIn ads information in Sugar CRM, you can generate a variety of performance reports, such as:
- Leads, sales, and revenue by channel
- Leads, sales, and revenue by campaign
- Leads, sales, and revenue by ad
- Leads, sales, and revenue by audience
- Leads, sales, and revenue by landing page
- Leads, sales, and revenue by landing page subfolder
Thus, you can revise your LinkedIn budget in accordance with the channel, campaign, ad, and audience that contribute to your leads, sales, and revenue.
Let’s outline the different types of reports that can be created.
1. Lead source reports
These reports outline the leads generated from:
- Channel
- Campaign
- Ad
- Audience
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Example #1:
Start by evaluating the “Leads by Channel” report to uncover the channel that produces the majority of your leads.
Example #2:
By establishing the best-performing channel, like LinkedIn, you can focus on assessing leads from each campaign.
Example #3:
After determining which LinkedIn campaign results in the most leads, you can assess which audience or ad is linked to those leads.
2. Sales and revenue source reports
Even though identifying the LinkedIn ads that create the most leads is advantageous, we need to consider whether these ads affect our revenue.
Connect your leads to a CRM like Sugar CRM to distinguish those that have transformed into paying customers, enabling you to observe sales and revenue from different channels, sources, landing pages, and beyond.
This enables you to adjust your marketing strategy to focus on the channels, sources, campaigns, audiences, and ads that maximize revenue.
To illustrate this point, let’s evaluate the scenario below:
| Channels | Search Paid | Social Paid |
| Leads | 50 | 75 |
| Sales | 5 | 6 |
| Average order value | $150 | $100 |
| Revenue | $750 | $600 |
After starting advertising campaigns on Google and LinkedIn, the preliminary “Leads by Channel” report demonstrated that LinkedIn’s Social Paid ads produced more leads than Search Paid ads.
Nevertheless, after exporting your sales and revenue data from your CRM, you discovered that the Search Paid channel achieved greater revenue with fewer leads than the Social Paid channel, resulting in a decision to increase the budget for Search Paid.
Moreover, you are able to create different types of reports about sales and revenue:
- Sales and revenue by source
- Sales and revenue by campaign
- Sales and revenue by content (aka. ad)
- Sales and revenue by term (aka. audience)
- Sales and revenue by landing page
- Sales and revenue by landing page subfolder
