How And Why To Integrate Salesforce Data With Google Maps

Ever wondered where on earth your Leads are?

Or your customers and prospects for that matter?

Well here’s the way to find out. Display your salesforce data in Google Maps.

Here are two ways to do it.

The first is a cinch. A five minute job. But the results are hugely impressive. And nine times out of ten it’s all you’re going to need.

Simply follow the step by step instructions below. Or watch the video at the foot of this post to see examples of salesforce data displayed in Google Maps and a demonstration of how to achieve it.

The second way is to integrate salesforce and Google Maps using the API. Of course don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like our help with this.

8 reasons to display salesforce data in Google Maps

Here are 8 reasons to display Lead, Account and Contact data from salesforce in Google Maps.

Major trip planning. Identify the customers and prospects you can visit on a single trip. This was exactly the approach we used to plan our upcoming multi city US-trip.
Run an event. Plan an event or series of seminars based on the location of your customers and prospects.
Sales territory coverage. Understand whether you have the right level of sales person coverage in each territory based on the location of your customers and prospects.
Market penetration. Assess your market penetration by displaying your customers and prospects on a Google Map.
Day-to-day trip planning. Easily work out who else you can visit today. Or give telemarketing teams that make field appointments the information they need to maximize sales person efficiency.
Team meetings. Work out the best location to gather your team by displaying data about each salesforce user in Google Maps.
Field engineer coverage. Do the planning that helps locate your field support teams in the areas of greatest customer density.
Track competitor locations. Understand how close your competitors are to your customers. This is particularly important for a logistics company that we work with.

If you can think of any more let us know and send in a screenshot!

Types of salesforce data that can be displayed in Google Maps

Any record with an address in salesforce can be displayed on Google Maps. So in terms of standard objects that’s Leads, Accounts, Contacts and Users.

But here’s the wondrous thing. You can display related data along with the address information. And you can use different icons in Google Maps to add intelligence to the salesforce data that’s displayed on the map. That means you can create powerful maps that have practical value for decision making.

Here’s some examples of salesforce data displayed in Google Maps. The examples work in any country that is supported by Google Maps.

Display Customers and Prospects in Google Maps

This Google Map shows Accounts split by customers and prospects using the Type field in salesforce. The green icons are customers. The orange icons represent prospects.

Display customers and prospects using salesforce data displayed in a google map.

Display Accounts with and without Opportunities in Google Maps

In this Google Map we’re displaying salesforce Accounts. The red markers show Accounts without open Opportunities. The stars identify Accounts with open Opportunities in salesforce. If you look carefully you can see the Opportunity Amount displayed beneath the star.

Google Map showing salesforce accounts with and without opportunities

Clicking on an individual icon reveals more information about the Account and Opportunity in the left panel.

Google Map displaying salesforce data with additional information about a specific opportunity.

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Display Leads by Lead Score in Google Maps

This Google Map displays all open Leads along with the Lead Score. The Lead Score is an indicative ranking of the level of engagement by the Lead with your marketing emails and web site content. The Lead Score is an automated calculation that is pulled from the marketing automation application (Marketo in our case) and stored in salesforce.

In this Google Map the icons reflect different bands of Lead Score. Those with a score of 40 or more are show as stars.

Watch the video to see how we created this Google Map using Lead data from salesforce.

Lead score data from salesforce displayed in a Google Map

These examples illustrate the type of sophistication can be added when displaying salesforce data in Google Maps.

Easy Way To Display Salesforce Data On a Google Map

Here’s a really easy way that anyone can do to display salesforce data in Google Maps. All of the examples we show above can be done this way.

Create a report in salesforce that contains the data you’d like to show on the Google Map.

For example, to create the ‘Leads by Lead Score’ map we created a Lead report that included data (the lead score) that is passed from our marketing automation tool (Marketo) to salesforce.

The ‘Customers and Prospects’ map was created by building a report in salesforce that showed Accounts with the Type field. And the data for the Accounts and Opportunities map was created from a custom salesforce report type of ‘Accounts with and without Opportunities’.

Be sure to include the address information you want to use to locate the salesforce record on the Google Map. Typically that’s going to be Street, City, Zip / Postal Code and Country.

2. Export the salesforce report to Excel. Save the Excel file to your PC.If you want to use different icons in Google Maps to display different types of salesforce data then you need to repeat the report / export process. For example, create a report that shows all Accounts filtered by Type = Customer. Export this to Excel. Modify your report to Type = Prospect then export this into a second Excel file.

3. Create a new Google Map. To do this go to https://www.google.com/maps/d/ and click on Create New Map.

4. Click on ‘Untitled Map’ and give your map a name. “Leads by Lead Score” for example.

5. Click on “Import”. Follow the easy-to-use instructions to import your first Excel spreadsheet containing your salesforce data. For example import your Customer file.

6. Now click on Add Layer. Give it a name and import your Prospect data into this layer of the Google Map. Use the Options link to give this data a different icon or colour to the first layer.

It’s simple. We promise. We demonstrate the import process in the video. And for good measure here’s the official Google help page that describes the process https://support.google.com/mymaps/answer/3024836?hl=en

How to display real-time salesforce data in Google Maps

All of the maps we showed above were created by exporting data from salesforce using a report. Then importing the Excel file into Google Maps.

But sometimes it’s useful to have more up to date or even real-time salesforce data displayed in Google Maps.

For example, a field based sales person wants to see the latest leads and prospects in his territory without having to import the data to Google Maps each time. That way day-to-day visits can be planned using the very latest data held in salesforce.

To do this you need to use the Google API to generate the map in salesforce.

Displaying salesforce data in Google Maps brings your database to life. And using the methods we’ve explained in this blog post there’s nothing to stop you getting started today.