Attribution Without the Guesswork

Marketing spend gets defended with impressions and clicks because closed revenue is harder to trace. It is not as hard as it looks, provided the plumbing is put in early.

Capture the source at the point of enquiry

Tag campaigns consistently, capture the tags into hidden form fields, and store them on the lead record in the CRM. Attribution that starts at the enquiry and follows the record through to closed-won is worth more than any modelling applied afterwards.

Offline touches have to be recorded

Phone calls, walk-ins and referrals will otherwise show as direct and make your best channels look worthless. Call tracking numbers per campaign, and a mandatory source field on manually created leads, close most of the gap.

Pick a model and be consistent

First touch credits discovery, last touch credits closing, and neither is correct. What matters more than the choice is applying the same rule every month so trends are comparable. Report both if the team argues about it.

Then judge channels on cost per closed deal and on deal size, not on cost per lead. Channels that produce cheap leads and no revenue survive for years in cost-per-lead reporting.