Leads captured on YouTube are sent to Nimble CRM, but you can’t track them back to individual YouTube ads. The challenge continues when leads turn into customers, as there’s no method to trace them back to their original YouTube ad.
Not being able to track YouTube ads performance restricts your ability to see which ads are effective at attracting leads and customers. As a consequence, you invest in multiple ads without clarity on their impact.
Fortunately, it’s simple to attribute each lead to the particular YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad that captured it.
Let’s take this step by step!
How to Track YouTube Ads in Nimble CRM
Step 1: Add Leadsources in the head tag of your website
Leadsources simplifies lead source tracking. Add it to your site, and it will gather up to 7 pieces of data 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
Use UTM parameters in your ad URL to capture information about YouTube ads, including campaign, ad group, and ad. Try the following setup:
UTM_source=YouTubeUTM_campaign=campaign-nameUTM_term=ad-group-nameUTM_content=ad-name
Your final URL should be formatted as shown below:
https://www.yourdomain.com/?&UTM_source=youtube&UTM_campaign=campaign-name&UTM_term=ad-group-name&UTM_content=ad-nameJust a reminder: Leadsources ensures full lead tracking by capturing source data even without UTM parameters.
Step 3: Add the hidden fields in your form
These hidden fields are form fields that aren’t visible to the user but contain essential data that gets submitted along with the form.
The lead source information is saved in hidden fields by Leadsources. Upon form submission, these fields are automatically populated with YouTube Ads data.
Step 4: Capture the YouTube Ads data in Nimble CRM
Leadsources fetches the YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad data whenever users click your ads and come to your website.
The YouTube ad data is entered into the hidden fields of your form by Leadsources.
When you submit the form, the YouTube ad data will be shown alongside the lead details in Nimble CRM (ensure your form is connected to Nimble CRM).
How does Leadsources work?
As soon as a user enters your site, Leadsources fetches YouTube ad data and populates it into the hidden fields on your form. Once submitted, this data, including lead details like name and email, is sent to Nimble CRM.
All the lead source data is tracked by Leadsources for every lead you capture:
| 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 presented in the table above, when UTM parameters can’t be used—like with organic sources such as Google search or when your website is included in an article—Leadsources still tracks the following lead source data:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Unlike competitors, Leadsources tracks lead sources for all marketing activities, including both organic and paid channels.
Select a marketing channel to see what lead source data is populated by Leadsources in your form.
Performance reports: Lead, sales, and revenue by source
Tracking YouTube Ads data in Nimble CRM allows you to generate reports that show 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)
This allows you to optimize your YouTube Ads spending by focusing on the campaigns, ad groups, and ads that provide the best returns in leads, sales, and revenue.
Take a look at some of the reports that can be generated!
1. Lead source reports
Create reports that capture the number of leads driven by:
- 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 assess which channel is generating the most leads.
Example #2: Leads by YouTube campaign
Now, you can concentrate on one specific lead source (e.g., YouTube) and monitor the number of leads generated by each YouTube campaign.
Example #3: Leads by YouTube ad
After determining the YouTube campaign that drives the most leads, you can explore the specific ad group or ad responsible for that performance.
2. Sales and revenue source reports
Once you have data on which YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad are generating leads, the next step is to check whether these leads are converting into sales and revenue.
By connecting your leads to a CRM like Nimble CRM, you’ll gain visibility into sales and revenue across channels, sources, YouTube campaigns, ad groups, ads, landing pages, and subfolders.
With this data, you can adjust your YouTube Ads strategy to target the channels, sources, campaigns, ad groups, and ads that deliver the highest sales and revenue.
You can generate multiple 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 |
Following the launch of YouTube and Google ads, the first “Leads by Channel” report showed that YouTube’s Social Paid ads were more effective in generating leads than Google’s Search Paid ads.
Upon reviewing your sales and revenue data in Nimble CRM, you found that the Search Paid channel was generating more revenue with fewer leads than the Social Paid channel. With this insight, you reallocated your budget to prioritize the Search Paid channel.