You gather leads from YouTube and add them to ActiveCampaign CRM, but there’s no way to identify the YouTube ad for each lead. Once these leads turn into customers, connecting them to their originating YouTube ad remains impossible.
The lack of tracking limits your ability to measure your YouTube ads success, keeping you unaware of which ads generate leads and customers. Consequently, you spend on ads without understanding their impact.
Luckily, there is a simple solution to link each lead with the exact YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad that generated it.
Let's handle each step as we go!
How to Track YouTube Ads in ActiveCampaign CRM
Step 1: Add Leadsources in the head tag of your website
Leadsources is a tool to track the origin of your leads. Place it on your site, and it collects up to 7 data points on 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
Include UTM parameters in your ad URL to capture YouTube ad information, such as campaign, ad group, and specific ad. Here’s a setup you could use:
UTM_source=YouTubeUTM_campaign=campaign-nameUTM_term=ad-group-nameUTM_content=ad-name
The final link will appear as shown here:
https://www.yourdomain.com/?&UTM_source=youtube&UTM_campaign=campaign-name&UTM_term=ad-group-name&UTM_content=ad-nameNote: Leadsources ensures full lead source tracking, even without relying on UTM parameters.
Step 3: Add the hidden fields in your form
Hidden fields in forms are used to store information that isn't visible to the user but gets submitted with the form.
Leadsources captures the lead source information in hidden fields. Upon form submission, these fields are filled with YouTube Ads data automatically.
Step 4: Capture the YouTube Ads data in ActiveCampaign CRM
As users click on your ads and land on your site, Leadsources fetches YouTube campaign, ad group, ad data, and other important data.
Leadsources ensures the YouTube ad data is placed in the hidden fields of your form.
Once you submit the form, the YouTube ad data will be displayed along with the lead details in ActiveCampaign CRM (connect your form to ActiveCampaign CRM).
How does Leadsources work?
Each time someone comes to your site, Leadsources fetches YouTube ad data and populates it into the hidden fields of your form. After the form is submitted, this data, along with the lead's name and email, is transmitted to ActiveCampaign CRM.
Leadsources keeps a track of the source data for every individual 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 reflected in the table above, when UTM parameters can’t be applied—such as with organic sources like Google search or when your website is published in an article—Leadsources still records the following lead source data:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Leadsources offers comprehensive lead source tracking across all channels, both organic and paid, unlike other tools.
Select a marketing channel to view the lead source data that Leadsources fills into your form.
Performance reports: Lead, sales, and revenue by source
By using ActiveCampaign CRM to track YouTube Ads data, you can create performance reports that evaluate:
- 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)
By tracking this data, you can more effectively adjust your YouTube Ads budget based on the campaigns, ad groups, and ads that are most successful in generating leads, sales, and revenue.
Here are some reports you can create to gain insights into your performance!
1. Lead source reports
Produce reports showing the number of leads acquired through:
- 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 helps you determine which marketing channel produces the most leads.
Example #2: Leads by YouTube campaign
This allows you to focus on one lead source (e.g., YouTube) and track how many leads each campaign generates.
Example #3: Leads by YouTube ad
After identifying the most effective YouTube campaign, you can dive deeper into which ad group or ad is driving those results.
2. Sales and revenue source reports
Now that we know which YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad generate our leads, we need to track whether those leads are turning into sales and revenue.
To track your sales and revenue more effectively, integrate your leads into a CRM like ActiveCampaign CRM. This enables you to track all your channels, sources, YouTube campaigns, ad groups, ads, landing pages, and subfolders.
With this data, you can realign your YouTube Ads strategy to prioritize the channels, sources, campaigns, ad groups, and ads that lead to the highest sales and revenue.
You can generate different types of sales and revenue reports, 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 |
The first "Leads by Channel" report, following the launch of ads on Google and YouTube, showed that YouTube’s Social Paid ads generated more leads than Google’s Search Paid ads.
After reviewing the sales and revenue data in ActiveCampaign CRM, you realized that the Search Paid channel delivered more revenue with fewer leads than the Social Paid channel. This has led you to allocate more of your budget to the Search Paid channel.
