If you are familiar with Salesforce, you’ve probably heard about lead source. As a default, Salesforce will have lead sources like:
- Advertisement
- Employee Referral
- External Referral
- Partner
- Public Relations
- Seminar Internal
- Seminar Partner
- Trade Show
- Web
- Word of Mouth
- Other
However, digital marketers tend to add the medium here, meaning they will populate the field with LinkedIn, AdWords, Bing Ads, SEO etc. I’ve seen many companies and even very experienced digital marketers making this mistake.
Lead Source in Salesforce was not meant to capture the information where the lead came from (traffic source). It was meant to capture, how the lead converted from a “random person” to a lead. What was the source, when this random person gave up his or her information, like name, email and phone, and became a record to your CRM. When you look at the Salesforce lead object’s view, it just says “lead source” – it does not say lead traffic source, or first or last click!
Another important reason why lead source should not be confused with the medium or traffic source, is because in reality, conversions are based on several mediums or channels and they are not mutually exclusive! You might have an Google AdWords ad, which generates both, phone calls and chats. What would you put in to the lead source field in this case?
It would be technically possible to combine the previous information within one field, like “Adwords-chat” or “Adwords-call”. However, this will lead to another problem.
Leads won’t come to your website or trade show once and then immediately purchase your product or service. They come multiple times, online and offline. They will signup to your newsletter, they will meet you at the trade fair, they will join your LinkedIn conversations, see your ads on newspapers and click your AdWords ads. Which one you would choose for a lead source now?
Another reason, why you should not combine the traffic source and source into a one field, is that the pick list for lead source will get too long. If your sales is creating opportunities manually, they don’t have time to find the correct choice from a list, that is has over 50 items. You should keep the pick list around 10 to 15 items tops.
Let’s imagine the following situation (which is from Google Analytics site)
A customer finds your site by clicking one of your Google Ads ads. She returns one week later by clicking over from a social network. That same day, she comes back a third time via one of your email campaigns, and a few hours later, she returns again directly and makes a purchase.
The conversion (purchase) required multiple mediums and steps. Different marketing channels intersect to assist conversions. Despite of this fact, many companies will be crediting the last click. This way the most last interaction will get too much credit. Also, if you are crediting the last click only, you might end up focusing too much on how to close the deal rather than finding ways to send more potential customers to the beginning of your sales funnel, meaning the other marketing channels, that assisted the conversions.
But comparing a purchase with filling in the lead form for Salesforce is not the same – or is it? Well, it depends on your business. Sometimes filling of the form is considered a purchase. Most of the time it is, however, considered as a conversion.
Correct attribution is the key here. For example, nowadays, Google Analytics has different options for attribution. Referring to our previous example, you can have:
Last Interaction attribution model, the last touchpoint—in this case, the Directc—would receive 100% of the credit for the sale.
Last Non-Direct Click attribution model, all direct traffic is ignored, and 100% of the credit for the sale goes to the last channel that the customer clicked through from before converting—in this case, the Email channel.
Last Google Ads Click attribution model, the last Google Ads click—in this case, the first and only click to the Paid Search channel —would receive 100% of the credit for the sale.
First Interaction attribution model, the first touchpoint—in this case, the Paid Search channel—would receive 100% of the credit for the sale.
Linear attribution model, each touchpoint in the conversion path—in this case the Paid Search, Social Network, Email, and Direct channels—would share equal credit (25% each) for the sale.
Time Decay attribution model, the touchpoints closest in time to the sale or conversion get most of the credit. In this particular sale, the Direct and Email channels would receive the most credit because the customer interacted with them within a few hours of conversion. The Social Network channel would receive less credit than either the Direct or Email channels. Since the Paid Search interaction occurred one week earlier, this channel would receive significantly less credit.
Position Based attribution model, 40% credit is assigned to each the first and last interaction, and the remaining 20% credit is distributed evenly to the middle interactions. In this example, the Paid Search and Direct channels would each receive 40% credit, while the Social Network and Email channels would each receive 10% credit.
Different business’ have different attribution logic. Purchasing a car differs from making a reservation to a restaurant. Both of them can be done online and offline. We can make the previous example even more interesting. Let’s imagine, that before a customer made the search on Google and clicked Google AdWords ad, he or she visited the trade show, where your sales-team were present. Would you still want to populate the lead source with “direct”?
Hopefully I’ve been able to assure you, that a lead source in Salesforce is not the correct place for traffic source. What should you then put to the Salesforce’s lead source field? In my opinion, the source, which was used, when the lead gave their information (name, phone number, email address, title, company etc ) to you. These would include: Trade show, client referral, Chat, Call, Quote Form, Outbound call, Form and other (and maybe some of your own).
If you have a form on your site and you are using Salesforce’s web-to-lead form collecting leads, you should choose “form” into the lead source field. That was the “source”, that created a lead object to your database. Also note, that your website might have different kind of forms, like “contact us” or “signup to a webinar”. What if someone calls you, asks a quote and you end up manually filling in the opportunity to Salesforce? What would you put to the lead source field now? I would put “call”.
Even if you could have the lead source populated automatically via hidden field in your web-to-lead form, you shouldn’t do this. Otherwise you are collecting the last traffic sources for conversions that happen via web-to-lead form. What about other “sources”? Digital marketers tend to forget, that conversions happen offline too or without a web site. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know, how the customer found you in the first place, before she or he picked up the phone and called you? There might be a “medium” or “traffic source” behind a phone call too.
Your salespersons might be creating leads or opportunities also manually, by filling in the information to the Salesforce. It’s very likely, that they don’t ask the lead, “how did you find us” or “what made you pick up the phone” and you end up filling the lead source with phone or trade show (which would be correct in this case). But if you are populating the lead source field for web-to-leads with medium at the same time, you are already damaging your data.
Any tracking that is built off wrong will lead to useless data or wrong conclusions.
Tools for tracking
How should you then track the medium or marketing ROI, if you are using Salesforce? There’s no one right answer to this. You have different options based on your budget. If you are using Pardot, you should keep in mind, that Pardot tracks the first touch that a prospect has with your online marketing activities. It does not support multi-touch. Salesforce campaigns are different. Prospects and contacts can be associated with multiple Salesforce campaigns. You should use them together to get insights.
If you are interested of using free tools, you should check a tool called getsetreff. You can add an extra field to Salesforce lead object and store the medium and traffic source information there with the help of getsetreff.
Getting attribution right requires thought and work, but it will pay off. As a result, you will be able to answer to the following:
- what keywords result in phone calls?
- what mediums and sources (together) caused most of the closed deals?
- what mediums are generating leads that never convert?
- what mediums are assisting the conversion?
- which generates more sales, AdWords ad that results a chat or AdWords ad that results a call?
After all, the purpose of marketing, is to generate sales and revenue.
Closing thoughs
Use different tools together and create a holistic picture of your sales funnel. Use different attribution models in Google Analytics to find out the best performing marketing actions at certain stage at your sales cycle. Keep your pick lists short enough and use campaigns in Salesforce to track more detailed information. Don’t forget the offline effect.