Testing a Search Query Token

Hey Craig, I may not fully understand your question -- are you trying to use a marketo token to dynamically alter landing page text based on the user's search query? 

I'm not sure this will work since the visitor is still anonymous before they convert, so the token would not have a value until the user becomes known and the field is populated. 

However, I have successfully done this outside of Marketo. 

If you are passing the search keyword as a parameter in your URL and using wordpress, you can use a plugin like Cookie Monster (https://wordpress.org/plugins/cookiemonster/) to grab URL parameters and store them as variables which you can include in your page. 

Once you have it set up I would test it using an incognito browser and click on one of your own PPC ads and see if it renders as you expect. 

To be quite specific, don't waste your time trying to capture the query. Since Google isn't providing it anymore you can only realistically get it in 20% of the visits (I just checked my GA stats & I get query 20% of the time)

http://searchengineland.com/official-google-brings-provided-ads-will-withhold-search-query-data-paid-clicks-188750

What you can spend time trying to get is keyword. And I know this seems silly, aren't keywords and queries the same thing? They are not. The keyword is the term that you bid on. A shorter keyword such as marketing could pick up the query marketing automation and the query marketing technology.

The keyword is what you bid on. The query is what the visitor types to get to your site. 

Queries are gone (for the most part). Keywords can be captured by URL Parameters via Cookies or Formfill. 

But along with Justin, I question why. What is it about the keyword that you're going to do differently. Are you going to dynamically alter the content of your page per the intent of the keyword? Perhaps you should instead be creating more specific keyword campaigns & redirecting them to more targeted landing pages. This in turn increases the Quality Score of the ad & the likelihood it will be shown (and clicked). 

http://searchengineland.com/hate-provided-fast-may-blessing-disguise-210652

Is it only for reporting & optimization? Then ask if it really even matters at all. Instead spend your time looking at the adwords reports in analytics that show queries & click/conversions to optimize LPs & keywords further.

I've done what you're trying to do. I spent a lot of time trying to get the data all in one place. And I never did anything with it once it was there. So ask yourself what the end game really is. :)
 

Justin and Adam:

I tailor quite a few pages to tightly-themed AdWords campaigns. In some cases, I have such high-volume and high-converting keywords that I often make a landing page based around one single keyword.

My goal is to stop wasting time manually creating landing page headlines tailored to specific keywords and dynamically inserting the paid keyword that I'm bidding on as part of the headline, done so using the token:

{{lead.Google Campaign Term:default=Headline}}

Having attached parameters to my landing page URL, I want to test to make sure it's working before I set it live. I may have to just test it live and click on the ad myself after triggering the ad searching for my bid keywords, but I was wondering if there was a way to verify other than that.

Adam: I'm not trying to dynamically insert organic queries. As a previous SEO specialist, I know that Google witholds a lot of that information.

Thanks,

Craig

All excellent points to consider.

If the intent behind the keywords is vastly different I agree that distinct landing pages makes more sense.

For reporting, we have found a lot of value in knowing which keywords are driving more long term repeat business so capturing this at the lead level in SFDC is important for us -- but the caution against accumulating ultimately useless data would apply to many things I've done :). 

Regarding dynamically modifying the page, one use case where this technique has made sense for us: 

We have a lot of keywords that are very similar in terms of searching for something but vary in terms of one dimension. 

Example (not the real thing but you get the point), 

where to find blue widgets
where to find red widgets
where to find yellow widgets

and so on for 1,000 more colours :) 

In this case it didn't make sense to make and maintain landing pages that are different in this minor way and where there are so many variations. So we just substituted the colour word in the headline, e.g., 

"The best place to buy [colour] widgets" 

This added some relevancy in a very easy way and we saw a lift in conversion from doing that. 

 

Justin N:

That's the same situation that I'm trying to accomplish. Can you tell me how you did that?

var querystring = document.location.search, queryitems = querystring.split(/^\?|&|=|#/i), keywords_index = queryitems.indexOf('keywords')+1, keywords = queryitems[keywords_index].split(',');

// if query string was '?keywords=apple,pie&utm_campaign=blahblah'
// the variable `keywords` is now array ['apple','pie']

This is simple JavaScript, i.e. parsing completely in the browser for DOM updating. Of course you have not specified what language or framework you are using, or whether you want to generate personalizations on the server.

Thanks Sanford for posting that!

Craig, Sanford's method is platform agnostic so may work best for your needs. We used a method that is specific to the Wordpress platform. 

1) Tag your links

E.g., ?widgetcolour=blue

2) Install the "Cookie Monster" plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/cookiemonster/

This plugin will grab URL parameters and convert them into cookies which can then be displayed in pages/posts using shortcodes as well as allow you to specify a default text and duration.  

e.g., param: widgetcolour, default: "all your", duration: 30 days

3) Deploy the shortcode in your landing pages

E.g., 

"The best place to buy [widgetcolour] widgets!"  

So if someone visits www.yourlandingpage.com?widgetcolour=blue, the onsscreen text will display: 

"The best place to buy blue widgets!" 

otherwise if no cookie is set, will fall back to: 

"The best place to buy all your widgets!" 

Caveats:

- The plugin has not been updated in some time but has worked quite well for us. 

- This method requires you to manually tag all your links with the text you want to display specific to the keyword and ad. This required a particular Adwords account structure for us that had single-keyword ad groups so we could have more granular control over the links and ensure the text displayed always made sense. 

Depending on your Adwords structure, this may be a bummer to implement. 

Thanks @Justin.  I know there are some purpose-built plugins out there, but since I don't use a CMS I only know the generic ways.

@Craig if you are using something other than WP or just want to see this in its simplest form: