Learn how to connect Google Ads to Sitecore. We’ll take you through how to create a campaign in Sitecore and how to link it to your Google Ads campaign. This way, you’ll be best placed to measure your campaign success in Sitecore Experience Analytics (xAnalytics).
Connect Google Ads to Sitecore
First you’ll need to set up your campaign in Sitecore. To create an online campaign:
1. Open the Marketing Center
2. Select Campaigns in the left dropdown
3. In the Insert group, click on Campaign Category
4. Name your campaign category, for example, Google Ads
5. Select your new campaign category Google Ads, in the Insert group, click Campaign to create a new campaign item
6. Name your campaign item, for example, Monthly Offer Online Campaign
7. Complete the rest of the campaign fields
| Field | Details |
| Title | Monthly Offer Online Campaign |
| Type | Online |
| Organic | Change the traffic type if the campaign is triggered at any time during the visit. Or you can leave this unchanged. |
| Traffic Type | Paid |
| Enroll in Engagement Plan | You can select an existing engagement plan to use with this Google Ads campaign. For example, you may want to trigger an email campaign when a visitor comes to this campaign. |
For more information on completing campaign fields, see the OMS Cookbook.
8. Click Save
9. Deploy your campaign in the Sitecore workflow and click to publish. It is now available in the Marketing Center.
Associate Your Campaign with a Landing Page
Next, you’ll want to associate your campaign with a landing page. To do this:
1. In the sample page, select your campaign
2. In the ribbon, Analyze tab, Attributes group, in the Campaigns tab click the checkbox next to your campaign
3. Click Save
Note:
You can use search forms to find the products you want to associate with your campaign or you can copy in each product manually so they show under the correct product category.
Create a Campaign Event
You’ll also want to create a campaign event. To do so:
1. Open the Marketing Center and select your campaign. In the Home tab, in the Insert group, click on Campaign Event
2. Give your event a name, for example, Award Winning Campaign and click OK
3. In the new item, enter the field values, including the name of the event and campaign link
The Campaign Link field contains a query string. For example sc_camp=E0E6A1A02F1BC30DABCC3670A20. This query string will need to be appended to the link to your campaign (website) in Google Ads.
Note:
If your website link for the campaign already includes a query string, you can prefix the campaign link query string in Sitecore with an ampersand (&). If the link does not already include an existing query string, prefix the text with a question mark (?). This will ensure that site visits generated by the campaign are recorded in xAnalytics.
4. Click Save
5. Publish the campaign event item. In the publishing wizard, select the Smart Publish option.
How to Connect Google Ads to Sitecore
Now that you’ve created and published your campaign and associated campaign event in Sitecore, you can connect your campaign to a Google Ad. First, you’ll need to copy the query string.
1. Open the Marketing Center
2. Under Campaigns, click on the campaign event
3. In the Campaign Link field, copy the query string
Set up Google Ads
1. In Google Ads select New Campaign
2. Select the goal that matches your campaign
3. Put in your website address and click next
4. Enter your campaign name (it’s a good idea to make it the same or similar to your campaign name in Sitecore)
5. Select the rest of your campaign settings and continue
6. Set up your ad groups
7. Under Create ads enter your Final URL in the top field using the URL of your webpage and including your Campaign Link query string
It should look something like this:
https://www.inmarketingwetrust.com.au/connect-google-ads-to-sitecore/?sc_camp=E0E6A1A02F1BC30DABCC3670A20
8. To make your link look neater you can also add the query string to the Final URL suffix section
9. Test your link
10. Click Save and Continue
11. Review and publish your Google Ad
Once you have configured and deployed your campaign in Sitecore and Google Ads, visitors coming to your page from the Google Ad will trigger the campaign in Engagement Analytics. You can view the campaign charts in the Executive Insight Dashboard to analyse the campaign’s performance in more detail.
Learn more about tracking your Google Ads campaign in Sitecore Experience Analytics in Walkthrough: Analyzing Campaign Efficiency.
Need help with Google Ads? Get a free consultation.
