How can I integrate Salesforce.com with AdWords to track keyword ROI in terms of revenues from closed deals?

Disclaimer:  I am the CEO of Bizible. Bizible has a solution that adds the campaign, search phrase, keyword, ad text, and ad group to the lead and opportunity.  It also works for non-AdWords traffic, like Facebook, Twitter, SEO, etc.  It completely replaces the legacy Salesforce for Google AdWords product and is super easy to setup. Check it out here: http://www.bizible.com/salesforce-for-google-adwords/

Full disclosure: I am the Chief Optimizer @http://www.closedopp.com - the only Salesforce focused PPC agency, so I've either used or vetted all of the integrations mentioned in this post. Integrating AdWords with Salesforce to learn what marketing tactics drive revenue may be one of the most important tasks a marketer will do in 2015-2016. There are multiple companies to choose from. To keep this simple: I will talk about the methods that are already established: Bizible, Daddy Analytics, Google Offline Tracking (Do-it-yourself), and CloudAmp. I will cover what is currently the best integration tool and where I think the market is headed. I will review both the Pros and Cons of each product. I will give my recommendation for what I recommend based on your company's needs and goals. Bizible: If Gartner had a category for Salesforce Attribution, Bizible would be in the top right quadrant. For those that don't know Gartner, that means they are the best integration tool on the market at this time. They track all of your online leads via First Touch, Conversion Touch (the visit that they user gave you their name), and every touch in between and after. They track everything. They have all of this data in Salesforce and their own web application. Pros: Bizible tracks everything correctly. Bizible's CEO Aaron Bird and his team of ex-Microsoft developers has done a great job getting attribution data inside Salesforce and attaching it to the lead records, opportunity records, account records, and contact records. If you have the budget and you spend more than $10,000 per month on PPC and other marketing, Bizible is a no-brainer. They have an incredible support team. If you have a question about whether or not a lead should have attribution data, Kelsey or Hillary will review the data on their servers with their developers to make sure that you get an answer. Cons: They've grown fast over the years and with any company that has a good product, you'll see price increases over the years as new features are added. Bizible has a hard time figuring out a pricing model that works. This shouldn't take away from their product, which is currently the best Salesforce attribution tool on the market. Bizible also needs to improve their web application. It lacks UI design elements and isn't very functional. For a company charging the prices they do, one would expect more from the UI. I don't know if this is a pro or con, but it needs to be said. Bizible provides a lot of great data. You need experience with Salesforce to fully maximize the tool. That's not a problem for companies that use ClosedOpp, because we have filled that gap, but I can see how a company without ClosedOpp or in-house Salesforce experience could struggle fully maximizing the Bizible data. This goes for all of the integrations though, not just Bizible. Daddy Analytics: This company has built the second best Salesforce attribution tool. It may prove to be Bizible's largest competitor over the next couple years, as I have spoken to their CEO Stony Grunow in depth about their roadmap, and they have a lot of plans to add value to the integration over the next 12 months. This is not a winner takes all market, so I'm interested to watch them develop. Pros: Daddy Analytics is currently $320 per month. Compared to Bizible, which is $800-$300o per month, DA is a decent option for a company that just wants a little clarity into what marketing tactics are working, but doesn't care to be 100% certain. Daddy Analytics is currently building out features such as: Account based attribution, API connection with AdWords, and multiple click attribution. Cons: They track AdWords via UTM parameters.  This means that it's not tracking directly from the AdWords API. That means the data you're getting into Salesforce is less quality. Why is UTM tracking not ideal? UTMs are ok if you just want to track campaigns and agroups but if you want to track keywords, you would need a different URL for each keyword. If you wanted to track ads, you would need a different URL for each as. If you wanted to track landing pages, you would need a different URL for each landing page. There are just too many overlapping items to track and that's what makes UTM tracking ineffective. Daddy Analyitics is however rebuilding their tracking to be more effective. Like I said above, look for lots of changes with them over the coming year. There sweet-spot client is roughly $5,000 in AdWords spend. These are clients that may not be able to afford Bizible's lowest plan at $800 per month. Google Offline Tracking: Companies such as Marketo, Pardot, and Sugar CRM have used "GCLID" to track offline conversions. Originally it was used to track offline conversions back into AdWords, but now companies are using the tracking to get AdWords data into CRMs and marketing automation platforms. Cons: At a very high level (executive level), it only tracks 75%-80% of your opportunities. - It only tracks for 90 days. - It doesn't track multiple clicks - It's not tracking all PPC visits (Do you want to look at PPC as a whole or segment branded vs a specific campaign, AdGroup, or keyword. - It's not a custom attribution solution built for a specific CRM. All CRMs are different. The tracking was NOT built for Salesforce. CloudAmp: Nice try guys, but you stopped before you completed an attribution tool. I used this integration for three months, but something just didn't feel right. I thought there had to be a better tool. I was right. There are a couple. Pros: Cheap - Attribution for the price of dinner. Cons: Uses custom UTM URLS - This means it takes a lot of time to manage, you can't trust the data, you won't get attribution down to the ad, targeted keyword, location, device, and a bunch of other cool things that Bizible offers. It only tracks first click or conversion click, which every one it was led me to look for other options. It doesn't track multiple click. If you spend more than $3,000 per month on PPC, don't buy it. Choose Daddy Analytics for $320 or Bizible's lowest cost product at $800. Again, I've either used or talked to the CEO of all of these products. They all have good and bad things about them. I gave you my fair and honest opinion about each of them. If you have more questions about Salesforce attribution or want to learn about Salesforce Focused PPC, please feel free to connect with me at ClosedOpp - The first Salesforce focused PPC agency.

If you're already using Google Analytics, the best way to track keyword ROI in terms of revenues is to http://zuev.software/crm-and-google-analytics-integration/.Here is a sample report that uses sales data automatically imported from CRM to Google Analytics: Columns highlighted with yellow were generated using offline data.ComparisonThis approach is better than just saving keywords to CRM.A user may see your banner ad, and in 20 days find you again with Google and make a purchase: If all you do is save the UTM parameters of the last visit to your CRM, you might think that banner ads are not effective, while in reality they may be the reason for 80% of your conversions. - The user might have never searched for your product on Google if it wasn't for your banner ads.To integrate your Salesforce with Google Analytics, http://zuev.software/crm-and-google-analytics-integration/.

AdWords released a new Conversion Import feature yesterday (https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2998031) that enables advertisers to import offline conversions from any CRM system, including Salesforce. The release includes instructions on how to integrate specifically with Salesforce's Sales Cloud (https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3285060)

(Proper Disclosure - I work at SiSense) We created two sample dashboards doing exactly this a while ago. You can see them here: 1. Lead to Opportunity Analysis http://maestro-demo.sisense.com/dashboards/#f=375&d=1155 2. Campaign Funnel Analysis http://maestro-demo.sisense.com/dashboards/#f=375&d=1156 You can mash up almost any datasource you have in your organization with SiSense, including SalesForce and Google Adwords/Analytics. We use it ourselves to analyze ROI just like you described.

As Salesforce for Google AdWords will be retired for all customers in May of 2013, third party partners are a great source for analytics tying ad spend to Salesforce leads and opportunities.  You can learn more about 3 partners working on solutions for AdWords integration here: Pardot - http://www.pardot.com/pardot-for-google-adwords.html Marketo - http://pages2.marketo.com/marketing-automation-sfga.html Eloqua - http://www.eloqua.com/google-ad-words For existing customers using Salesforce for Google AdWords, here's a more detailed FAQ on the product retirement: https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?language=en_US&urlname=Salesforce-for-Google-AdWords-End-of-Life-Information

(Caveat - I helped develop the solution below) We've got a great solution, and unlike Pardot, Marketo and Eloqua which start at over a thousand dollars moth, our solution starts at less than a hundred dollars a month. It's called Daddy Analytics, and it replaces and enhances the features of the retired Salesforce for Google Adwords. http://daddyanalytics.com

Try http://daddyanalytics.com/