How To Analyze Your Lead Sources For Your Year-end Review

By Author: Yair Ahron
Total Articles: 1
Comment this article

As the year comes to an end, it's time to review your marketing performance and plan for the next year. One of the most important reports to look at is your lead sources report. This report shows you how potential customers discover your business and what channels are most effective for generating leads and conversions.

Why is this report important? Because it can help you optimize your marketing strategy, allocate your budget more efficiently, and improve your customer experience. By understanding where your leads come from, you can focus on the channels that work best for your business and eliminate or improve the ones that don't.

In this article, we'll show you how to use UTM parameters, Google Analytics, and CRM software to track and analyze your lead sources. We'll also give you some tips on how to customize your lead sources to match your business goals and processes. Finally, we'll share some best practices on how to use your lead sources report to make data-driven decisions for the next year.

How to Track Your Lead Sources
There are different ways to track where your leads ...
... come from, depending on the type of channel and the tools you use. Here are some of the most common methods:

- UTM parameters: These are tags that you add to the end of a URL to track the source, medium, campaign, term, and content of a web page. For example, if you run a Facebook ad campaign for a new product launch, you can add UTM parameters like this: https://www.yourwebsite.com/product?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=product_launch. This way, you can see how many people clicked on your ad and landed on your product page. You can use tools like Google's Campaign URL Builder or UTM.io to create UTM parameters easily.
- Google Analytics: This is a free tool that allows you to measure and analyze your website traffic. You can see how many visitors come from different sources, such as organic search, social media, email, referral, direct, etc. You can also see how they behave on your website, such as what pages they visit, how long they stay, what actions they take, etc. You can use Google Analytics to track UTM parameters as well as other metrics related to your lead generation.
- CRM software: This is a tool that helps you manage your customer relationships and sales pipeline. You can use CRM software to store and organize information about your leads and customers, such as their name, email address, phone number, company name, industry, etc. You can also use CRM software to track where each lead came from and how they interacted with your business, such as what emails they opened, what calls they answered, what online invoices they paid or online contracts they signed etc.

How to Customize Your Lead Sources
One of the benefits of using CRM software is that you can customize your lead sources according to your business needs. For example, if you run a B2B business that sells software solutions, you might want to segment your leads by industry or company size. If you run a B2C business that sells physical products, you might want to segment your leads by location or purchase history.

To customize your lead sources, you need to define the criteria that are relevant for your business and create categories or labels for them. For example, you can create categories like:

- Word-of-mouth: Leads that come from referrals or recommendations from existing customers, partners, or influencers.
- Blog: Leads that come from reading your blog posts or subscribing to your newsletter.
- Landing page: Leads that come from visiting a specific web page that offers a lead magnet, such as a free ebook, a webinar, a trial, etc.
- Social media: Leads that come from following your social media accounts or engaging with your posts or ads.
- Email: Leads that come from opening or clicking on your email campaigns or newsletters.
- SEO: Leads that come from searching for keywords related to your business on search engines and clicking on your website.
- PPC: Leads that come from clicking on your paid ads on search engines or other platforms.
- Events: Leads that come from attending or hosting events, such as trade shows, conferences, workshops, etc.

You can also create subcategories for each category to make your analysis more granular. For example, you can create subcategories for social media like:

- Facebook
- Twitter
- Instagram
- LinkedIn
- YouTube
- TikTok
- etc.

You can use CRM software to assign each lead to one or more categories and subcategories based on the information you have about them. You can also use CRM software to automate this process by using rules or workflows. For example, you can set up a rule that automatically assigns a lead to the social media category and the Facebook subcategory if they fill out a contact form on your Facebook page.

How to Use Your Lead Sources Report
Once you have tracked and customized your lead sources, you can use CRM software to generate a report that shows you how each source performs in terms of generating leads and conversions. You can also use CRM software to filter and sort the report by different criteria, such as date range, industry, location, etc.

The report will help you answer questions like:

- What are the top sources of leads for your business?
- What are the top sources of conversions for your business?
- What is the conversion rate for each source?
- What is the cost per lead and cost per conversion for each source?
- What is the return on investment (ROI) for each source?
- How do different sources compare in terms of quality and quantity of leads?

By answering these questions, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing strategy and make adjustments accordingly. Here are some tips on how to use your lead sources report to improve your marketing performance:

- Focus on the sources that generate the most leads and conversions. These are the channels that are working well for your business and deserve more attention and resources. For example, if you find out that SEO is your best source of leads and conversions, you might want to invest more in creating high-quality content, optimizing your website for keywords, building backlinks, etc.
- Improve or eliminate the sources that generate the least leads and conversions. These are the channels that are not working well for your business and need improvement or removal. For example, if you find out that PPC is your worst source of leads and conversions, you might want to optimize your ad campaigns, target better keywords, improve your landing pages, etc. Or you might want to stop spending money on PPC altogether and allocate your budget to other channels.
- Test and experiment with new sources. These are the channels that you haven't tried yet or haven't explored enough. You might want to test new platforms, formats, audiences, offers, etc. to see if they can generate more leads and conversions for your business. For example, if you haven't used video marketing yet, you might want to create some videos and post them on YouTube or TikTok to see how they perform.
- Track and measure everything. The key to using your lead sources report effectively is to track and measure everything you do. You need to set clear goals and metrics for each channel and campaign and monitor them regularly. You also need to use tools like UTM parameters, Google Analytics, and CRM software to collect and analyze data accurately. This way, you can see what works and what doesn't and make data-driven decisions.

Conclusion
Your lead sources report is one of the most valuable reports for your marketing strategy. It shows you how leads and customers find your business and what channels are most effective for generating leads and conversions.

To use this report effectively, you need to track and customize your lead sources according to your business needs. You also need to use CRM software to generate and analyze the report. Finally, you need to use the report to optimize your marketing performance by focusing on the best sources, improving or eliminating the worst sources, testing new sources, and tracking everything.

By following these steps, you can make sure that your marketing strategy is aligned with your business goals and processes. You can also make sure