How to set up a Salesforce integration

Before getting started, you’ll want to make sure your Salesforce account is set up in the following way. If someone else manages the Salesforce account for your business, they can help you with this step.

1. Update the Opportunity object with the following changes:
   • Create a custom field with the Field Name "GCLID" (in all capital letters, without the quotes). The “Field Label” can be anything you want. Set the field length to 255 characters. Make this field read-only so your users don't accidentally alter it.
   • Enable field history tracking for the "Stage" field.
2. Update your Lead object with the following changes:
   • Create a custom field with the Field Name"GCLID" (in all capital letters, without the quotes). The “Field Label” can be anything you want. Set the field length to 255 characters. Make this field read-only so your users don't accidentally alter it.
   • Enable field history tracking for the "Lead status" field.
   • Map your new Lead.GCLID field to the new Opportunity.GCLID field.

To store the GCLID with your lead's information, you’ll need to modify your web-to-lead submission form(s) so all new leads will include the GCLID value. You may need help from a web developer and Salesforce admin to complete this step.

The following explains how to add the GCLID field to your existing web-to-lead forms.

1. Generate a standard web-to-lead form and include all fields you want your prospects to submit. Also include the lead field "GCLID" as a 'hidden' field. Your Salesforce admin or web developer will know how to make this change.
2. Your web developer will need to note the new GCLID input field's ID, as this is needed for the next step where they implement the JavaScript on your site.
3. Your web developer will then take this new form HTML code and update your existing forms. This means that your forms will now pass the GCLID value along with the lead's information into Sales Cloud.

Salesforce and your web pages are now ready to gather all the data. In the next step, your web developer will update your site so the GCLID value is automatically passed to the new GCLID form field

Keep in mind: your web-to-lead form needs to be located in the same domain as the rest of your web pages, so the JavaScript can properly transfer the GCLID value to the form.

When a visitor clicks on your ad, Google Ads will append a "gclid" URL parameter to the URL that leads to your landing page.

Your site will need to capture and store this parameter's value so it can retrieve it later when a prospective customer enters data into the lead form. If you have a web developer, they can help you edit your website code to do this.

We recommend you accomplish this by modifying and embedding the following JavaScript code. Before you embed the code, be sure to update the 'var gclidFormFields' line to include the field IDs of the new fields you added in the previous step. This is how the JavaScript knows which field or fields should contain the GCLID value. When this modification is complete, you should embed this code immediately before the closing tag of all your pages.

It is strongly recommended that you insert this code on every web page on your site. This way, you won't need to add it every time you create new ads with new landing pages. You also won't have to worry about losing GCLIDs if you start driving ads traffic to different landing pages. So, consider adding this code to your web page template (or a shared page element like the footer) so that all your new pages will automatically include the code.

1. Visit your website, adding the parameter ?gclid="test" to your URL.
   • Example: http://www.example.com?gclid="test"
2. Navigate to your lead form and submit a test lead.
3. Sign in to Salesforce, find this new test lead, and check if your custom GCLID field shows the value "test."
4. Convert the test lead to an opportunity. The new opportunity's custom GCLID field should also show "test."
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 for all your lead forms to make sure that each is configured properly.
   • If a test appears in the GCLID field for leads and opportunities that originated from all of your lead forms, then you’re ready to link your accounts.

You can edit your conversion actions based on changes to values in your data source, such as when a lead becomes verified or qualified. To get started, set up a suggestion or add a custom event.

Open Tools > Data manager. Select the connection you just made from Connected products and under Usage, click + Add conversion action.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon .
2. Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Summary.
4. Click New Conversion Action.
5. Select Import in the new “Conversion action” page.
6. Select CRMs, files, or other data sources and then Track conversions from clicks.
7. In the “Data Source” section, choose to either “Connect a new data source”. Click Continue.
8. Select Salesforce from the dropdown.
9. If you have an existing Salesforce link already, choose Direct connection. To connect to your data source, you'll need to log in to authorize the account to share data with Google. You can manage the connection at any time in Connected products tab of Data manager. If not, choose Third-party integration by Zapier. To connect using a third-party integration provided by Zapier, additional steps are required, and Zapier may charge a fee.
10. Click Authorize to set up a link between Salesforce and Google Ads.
11. Salesforce authorization flow opens up. Provide your Salesforce credentials in your Salesforce account. If you’re unable to view the login window, make sure pop-ups are allowed for ads.google.com. Click Log in.
12. Click Done, then click Continue.
13. You’ll notice a table with a list of suggested events and an option to add custom event.
14. If you want to choose any of the suggested conversion events, you may click Set up option corresponding to that event. However, if you want to set up a custom event, define the event condition below and click Set up. To define a new custom event, follow the below mentioned steps:
    1. Select a conversion goal, then click Set up.
    2. Select the Salesforce object your event will use.
    3. In the filter tab, define the conditions for when an event has occurred.
    4. Click Continue.
15. To map Salesforce fields, select the fields that you use in your data source and add any additional fields that you want to import. Some fields would be automatically mapped based on your data source.
    • Note: In the mapping screen you can see “GCLID” mentioned in the Google Ads fields. Also note that the "conversion time" field doesn’t need to be manually mapped. The value is automatically determined by the timestamp of the corresponding Lead or Opportunity field change that met the event condition for the import, pulled from the history.
16. Click Continue.
17. You can revise the default data integration name and the data integration setup one last time and click Done. You’ll now be able to view the newly defined event. For the Salesforce integration for offline conversions import, the conversion source column would read “Website (Import from clicks)”. The conversion action name will reflect the event condition specified (for example “When the Opportunity field "Stage" becomes "Closed Won" “).
18. Optional: Add a conversion action to your connection.
    Open Tools > Data manager. Select the connection you just made from Connected products and under Usage, click + Add conversion action.

Learn more about how to Create a conversion.