November 8th, 2007 by Christian Vanek

Google + SurveyGizmo, Part 1: Adwords

In the past two months we have received a huge number of questions concerning Google and SurveyGizmo integration. We’ve gotten so many, in fact, that we decided to write a three-part article that shows everyone how to do just that.

This week: Part 1 - Tracking Keywords and Ad Type from Adwords
Next week: Part 2 - Using the A/B/C Splitter to Test Landing Page Variations
Finally: Part 3 - Hooking Your Survey up with Google Analytics & Conversion Funnels

This week we are going to show you how to link a landing page in SurveyGizmo to a Google Adword’s campaign and how to pass valuable information from Google into SurveyGizmo. The two pieces of information we are going to track are: 1) the keyword that triggered your Ad’s clickthrough and 2) whether your ad was shown on a search results page or on the content network.

Let’s leap right in:

Step 1 - Create your Offer Landing Page

Naturally, before we can go into Adwords and set up our campaign, we need to create a Landing Page for the offer. So, what exactly is a “landing page”?

Definition of a Landing Page

The destination web Page for people responding to an advertisement, designed specifically for that campaign and audience. The key difference between a home page and a landing page is that the former must be all things to all visitors, while the landing page should be narrowly designed to optimize conversion for a specific campaign.

The easiest way to create a landing page in SurveyGizmo is to create a new survey with our landing page template and then add your own text and images. Remember, with SurveyGizmo you can brand your landing page any way you want; our templates are just starting points.

Here are some tips for your landing page:

  • Don’t ask for more information than you need. Each ‘extra’ field you ask for might cost you valuable leads.
  • If you have a complicated qualification process, break it up into a few pages.
  • Remember, you have all of SurveyGizmo’s features at your disposal. You can ask qualification questions or make your landing page interactive with Show/Hide logic!

Step 2 - Linking Google to your Landing Page

After you create your landing page, you need to setup your AdWord’s campaign to link to it. So, from your Adword’s control panel, copy the Survey Link that we provide you and paste it into the Adwords destination URL box.

Now here is the cool trick!

We want to track which keywords are generating conversions. To do that, we tag a little extra line after our survey url, like this:

http://survey.12342-21.sgizmo.com/?keyword={keyword}&from={ifsearch:search}{ifcontent:content}

This works becuase SurveyGizmo will automatically track data sent through the URL!

Now that we have keyword and ad type tied to every response, we can look at conversion as a whole, as in the report below. Just make sure to check off “Include URL Tokens in Summary report” for your report options:

SurveyGizmo Keyword Report

Or, to get a more in-depth look, we can create a report that filters based on keyword and ad type.

If you are a Free user, you’ll have to export your data into Excel to see these keywords, but at the Pro level you get access to filtering so you can create reports right in SurveyGizmo.

That’s it for this week. If you have questions feel free to post them in the comments for this blog post. I’ll answer them as soon as I can.

Next week: We will show you how to perform A/B split tests on your landing page to see which version and offer text work best!

Christian Vanek
Was this article/answer/blog helpful? Let us know! Christian is a founding partner of SurveyGizmo, CTO, and the lead software engineer. He comes from an 11-year consulting background focusing on marketing and content management tools. Christian is based out of Cambridge, MA.

3 Comments

Sun, Nov 04 5:00 pm Comment by simonsopinion

This is very timely information. I was just thinking along these lines after conducting my first 2 surveys.

Can’t wait for you to complete your series.


Fri, Dec 28 10:15 am Comment by Brian Hawkins

This is great! Say, does anyone have any suggestions for learning more about Adwords (strategies and use) in general? Is there a resource out there that covers all the angles in an easy-to-understand way?
Thanks


Tue, Jan 01 1:03 pm Comment by Howie Jacobson

Great stuff! I’m recommending SurveyGizmo to my readers. (A little self-promotion: I’m the author of AdWords For Dummies, which covers all the AdWords angles in an extremely easy-to-understand way. (In case Brian is checking for answers to his questions.)

I’m a little confused about the tracking campaign feature. Is there a way to track lead sources from JV partners to an embedded survey on my website?

Thanks,
Howie


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