Don’t Trust Users (When Measuring)
There are various techniques for determining the source of leads. Although it may seem like the easiest method, asking the customer is one of the worst. Some people will know how they first heard of your company, product, or service. Others won’t remember at all. Most will provide incomplete or incorrect information.
The most common error made by customers who find your website on a search engine is to confuse natural listings with PPC advertisements. Usually they assume that they clicked on a free search engine result instead of an ad, almost never the other way around. This can have a huge impact on the perceived value of search engine advertising, diminishing its apparent effectiveness and return on investment. It can also inflate the effectiveness of search engine ranking, which can result in missed opportunities for SEO improvement and long-term ad cost reductions.
Typical website analytics tools provide aggregate views of where users come from, such as what search engine sends visitors to your site, or how many come from paid listings versus natural search engine results. However, this data is typically not associated with actual sales. This means that you know where people come from, but you may get little or not insight into which sources deserve more or less investment.
The best way to analyze lead sources is to implement a tracking code that you can collect from prospective customers. For online sources, it’s relatively straightforward to include Javascript or server-side code that detects the source and discreetly displays a corresponding code on the web page. If a user fills out an online form, the code can be sent along with their information, and if they contact you over the phone you can ask for the code explicitly.
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