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From Click to Close: The Open-Source Playbook for B2B Ad Attribution

Your B2B sales cycle is long and complex. You're spending heavily on Google Ads, but can't connect initial clicks to closed deals. This forces you to optimize for vanity metrics like 'leads,' wasting budget on campaigns that generate clicks but not customers. You're flying blind, unable to prove or improve the true ROI of your advertising.

This playbook details how to build 'The Open-Source Control Stack,' a powerful, low-cost solution for full-funnel attribution. By combining self-hosted Mautic for marketing automation with the flexible workflow tool n8n.io, you can finally close the attribution loop. As leads progress through your sales stages in Mautic, n8n automatically sends micro-conversion events to the Google Ads API. This trains Google's algorithm to optimize for what truly matters: prospects moving closer to a sale, not just filling out a form. Gain complete data ownership and make ad-spend decisions based on revenue, not just leads.

Expected Outcomes

  • Pinpoint the exact Google Ads campaigns, ad groups, and keywords that drive high-value, sales-ready leads.
  • Dramatically improve ad spend efficiency by shifting budget towards revenue-generating campaigns.
  • Gain 100% ownership and control over your customer and marketing attribution data.
  • Enable Google's Smart Bidding to optimize for bottom-of-funnel actions, leading to a lower Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) for actual customers.
  • Establish a clear, data-backed model to prove marketing's contribution to revenue.

Core Tools in This Stack

Mautic

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Mautic is the world's largest open-source marketing automation platform, providing detailed audience tracking and powerful tools to help businesses build and manage personalized customer journeys and marketing campaigns.

Key Features
  • Lead Nurturing & Tracking
  • Visual Campaign Builder
  • Contact Segmentation
  • Personalization & Dynamic Content
  • Email Marketing Automation
  • Landing Pages & Forms
  • Detailed Reporting & Analytics
  • Extensible via Plugins & API
Ideal For

Company Size: Micro, Small, Medium, Large

Industries: Technology & Software, Business & Professional Services, Retail & E-commerce, Creative & Media, Education & Non-Profit, Health & Wellness, Other

Pricing

Model: Open Source, Free

Tier: Free

Ease of Use

Moderate

Google Ads

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Google Ads is an online advertising platform that allows businesses to reach customers across Google Search, YouTube, and other websites. Advertisers pay to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users, and can target ads based on keywords, demographics, location, and user behavior to drive website traffic, leads, and sales.

Key Features
  • Search Ads on Google.com
  • Display Ads across the Google Display Network
  • Video Ads on YouTube
  • Shopping Ads for e-commerce
  • App promotion campaigns
  • Performance Max automated campaigns
  • Keyword and audience targeting
  • Remarketing to previous site visitors
  • Comprehensive performance reporting
  • Conversion tracking and optimization
  • Budget and bid management
Ideal For

Company Size: Micro, Small, Medium, Large

Industries: Technology & Software, Business & Professional Services, Retail & E-commerce, Creative & Media, Education & Non-Profit, Health & Wellness, Other

Pricing

Model: Pay-per-click, Pay-per-impression, Pay-per-conversion, Auction-based

Tier: Custom/Varies

Ease of Use

Medium

The Workflow

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Integration Logic

  • n8n.io

    This integration uses n8n.io as the middleware to connect Odoo and Nextcloud APIs. The connection is established by creating credentials for both Odoo (using a user API key) and Nextcloud (using an App Password) within n8n. Workflows are then built using a trigger-and-action model. For example, an event in Odoo, such as a new invoice being posted, can act as a trigger. This trigger initiates an n8n workflow that then executes a series of actions: first, it calls the Odoo API to download the specific invoice PDF, and second, it calls the Nextcloud API to upload that PDF into a dynamically named folder (e.g., /Invoices/CustomerName/). The data flow can also be reversed: a file uploaded to a specific Nextcloud folder can trigger a workflow that parses the file's contents and creates or updates records in Odoo, such as new customers or products.

Prove Your True Ad ROI

Get the playbook to connect ad clicks to closed deals and stop wasting your B2B marketing budget.