Tracking Google Adwords with non Marketo signup form

[Anonymous]

Hello, I have a question about tracking Google Adwords when using a non Marketo signup form.  We have a couple Marketo landing pages with our own signup form as a snippet on the page.  When a lead visits the ad they are directed to the landing page and can signup for a free trial of our software.  The form that is our own custom html snippet on the landing page.  We also have a custom line of code that Google Adwords looks for on our site once the lead actually fills out the form.  In the form we have a couple hidden fields that pass information into Marketo in the lead record.  Also on the Marketo side we are tracking with page visits and UTM's.  The problem we are noticing is Google Adwords will give us a number that should have signed up but Marketo is giving us a different number.  My theory is when the lead goes from anonymous to known we are loosing tracking information in the lead record.  Does anyone have any experience with this situation?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[SanfordWhiteman]

If you're not backing your form with

(a) a Marketo Forms API submit (highly recommended)

(b) a Munchkin associateLead call

(c) a REST API associateLead or pushLead

(d) a SOAP syncLead

Then you're not converting sessions from anonymous to known.

Also bear in mind that LP impressions are counted at the pure HTTP level, not via JS. Thus you can't expect symmetrical numbers.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Sanford for your reply.  To be honest I don't grasp exactly everything that you are suggesting however the good news is I work in an office with a development team and I will pass this on to them to help solve the problem.

Thanks again!

[Jessica_Kao3]

Hi Andy,

The way that Marketo counts and the way Google counts is different, therefore we wouldn't expect the numbers to be the same. Its not that one is right or wrong, just they count differently. 

The way that Marketo counts people is a unique person or email address.  Google only counts number of hits to a particular website.  It won't know if you are the same person because the data is anonymous to my understanding.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The way that Marketo counts people is a unique person or email address. Google only counts number of hits to a particular website. It won't know if you are the same person because the data is anonymous to my understanding.

Actually, that isn't the issue here.  Both Marketo and GA assume, until signaled otherwise, that all navigation from the same browser profile is performed by the same human. GA has the concept of session expiration and renewal within the navigation history, while Marketo treats the entire navigation history as one continuous session.  But whether that human has a friendly name or not isn't really relevant to the core assumption about a browser profile (i.e. a cookie or LocalStorage entry) representing the same human over time.

According to Andy, he isn't associating sessions/profiles with known leads, so he's comparing Marketo anonymous with GA anonymous. And the raw Marketo impression counters (on the LP status page in the UI) can sharply diverge from GA counters for the same exact page. The main reasons are [1] GA requires JavaScript to log a hit, and [2] GA is unparalleled at excluding bot traffic. In contrast, Marketo counts every low-level page impression -- including from crawlers that can't or won't execute GA's or Munchkin's JavaScript-based tracking -- and isn't as good at detecting bots (which in turn is related to not requiring JS).