You acquire leads on YouTube and move them to ACT CRM, but it’s not feasible to link each lead to its specific YouTube ad. This disconnect continues when leads convert into customers, as there is no method to trace them back to their YouTube source.
Without tracking capabilities, you can't determine your YouTube ads performance, which leaves you guessing which ads drive leads and customers. This leads to spending on ads without insight into their effectiveness.
Thankfully, there's a simple solution to associate each lead with the specific YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad that led to its capture.
Let's take it from the top, step by step!
How to Track YouTube Ads in ACT CRM
Step 1: Add Leadsources in the head tag of your website
Leadsources provides a simple way to monitor lead origins. When installed on your site, it tracks up to 7 details about each lead’s source.
➡️ Sign up to Leadsources.io for free
➡️ Add the Leadsources tracking code to your site
Step 2: Add the UTM parameters to your YouTube Ads
In your ad URL, add UTM parameters to capture important YouTube ad data, like campaign, ad group, and ad. Here's a setup you could use:
UTM_source=YouTubeUTM_campaign=campaign-nameUTM_term=ad-group-nameUTM_content=ad-name
This is how the URL should appear at the end:
https://www.yourdomain.com/?&UTM_source=youtube&UTM_campaign=campaign-name&UTM_term=ad-group-name&UTM_content=ad-namePlease be aware: Leadsources captures all lead source data, even if UTM parameters aren’t included, providing full tracking.
Step 3: Add the hidden fields in your form
Hidden fields are fields within a form that remain unseen by the user, yet they hold crucial data that gets submitted.
Hidden fields are used by Leadsources to store lead source data. When the lead submits the form, Leadsources automatically populates them with YouTube Ads details.
Step 4: Capture the YouTube Ads data in ACT CRM
As users click your ads and come to your site, Leadsources fetches the YouTube campaign, ad group, ad data, and other relevant data.
Leadsources proceeds to fill in the hidden fields with the YouTube ad data.
After submitting the form, you’ll be able to see the YouTube ad data and lead details in ACT CRM (link your form to ACT CRM for this).
How does Leadsources work?
Whenever a visitor lands on your site, Leadsources fetches YouTube ad data and populates it into your form’s hidden fields. After submission, the data, including lead details such as name and email, is sent to ACT CRM.
Leadsources tracks the complete lead source data for every new lead:
| Lead source data | Fetched automatically |
| Channel | ✅ |
| Source | ✅ |
| Campaign | ✅ OR use UTM_campaign |
| Content | UTM_content parameter is required |
| Term | UTM_term parameter is required |
| Landing page | ✅ |
| Landing page subfolder | ✅ |
As noted in the table above, when UTM parameters aren’t applicable—like with organic sources such as Google search or your website appearing in an article—Leadsources still captures the following lead source data:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Leadsources excels by tracking lead sources across all marketing channels, including both organic and paid sources.
Select a channel to view the specific lead source data that Leadsources places in your form.
Performance reports: Lead, sales, and revenue by source
Using ACT CRM to track YouTube Ads data allows you to produce reports on performance, such as:
- Leads, sales, and revenue by channel
- Leads, sales, and revenue by source
- Leads, sales, and revenue by campaign (aka. YouTube campaign)
- Leads, sales, and revenue by term (aka. YouTube ad group)
- Leads, sales, and revenue by content (aka. YouTube ad)
With this data, you can adjust your YouTube Ads budget to favor the campaigns, ad groups, and ads that are producing the greatest leads, sales, and revenue.
Let’s look at a few reports you can generate to measure your success!
1. Lead source reports
Track the number of leads produced through customized reports:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign (aka. YouTube campaign)
- Term (aka. YouTube ad group)
- Content (aka. YouTube ad)
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Example #1: Leads by channel
This report enables you to see which channel generates the largest amount of leads.
Example #2: Leads by YouTube campaign
You can now focus on a particular lead source (e.g., YouTube) and track how many leads each campaign brings in.
Example #3: Leads by YouTube ad
Once you recognize the most successful YouTube campaign in terms of leads, you can analyze the ad group or ad that’s contributing the most.
2. Sales and revenue source reports
Once we know which YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad generate our leads, we must analyze if these leads are converting into sales and revenue.
Integrate your leads with a CRM like ACT CRM to track sales and revenue across various channels, sources, YouTube campaigns, ad groups, ads, landing pages, and subfolders.
By using this data, you can adjust your YouTube Ads approach to prioritize the channels, sources, campaigns, ad groups, and ads that deliver the most sales and revenue.
You can create various sales and revenue reports to analyze data, such as:
- Sales and revenue by channel
- Sales and revenue by source
- Sales and revenue by campaign
- Sales and revenue by term (e.g., YouTube ad group)
- Sales and revenue by content (e.g., YouTube ad)
- Sales and revenue by landing page
- Sales and revenue by landing page subfolder
Example Scenario:
| Channel | Search Paid | Social Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Leads | 50 | 75 |
| Sales | 5 | 6 |
| Average Order Value | $150 | $100 |
| Revenue | $750 | $600 |
After launching ads on both Google and YouTube, the initial "Leads by Channel" report indicated that YouTube’s Social Paid ads were more effective than Google’s Search Paid ads at generating leads.
Upon reviewing the sales and revenue data in ACT CRM, you saw that the Search Paid channel brought in more revenue with fewer leads than the Social Paid channel. You then decided to reallocate your budget to prioritize the Search Paid channel.
