Measurement. Reviewed October 29, 2026
Marketing attribution
Also called: Lead attribution, Source tracking
Marketing attribution is working out which ad, search, referral or page produced each lead and each job, so money moves toward what works.
In practice
The honest version for a contractor is simple: a tracking number per channel, a source field on every lead in the CRM, and a monthly table of leads, jobs and revenue by source. The complicated version, multi-touch models and dashboards, is for companies with a marketing department.
Ask every caller how they heard about you and write it down. It is wrong a third of the time and still the best data most companies have.
Related terms
- Call trackingCall tracking assigns a different phone number to each marketing source, or swaps the number shown on the website per visitor, so every call can be tied to the ad, search or page that produced it.
- Conversion trackingConversion tracking is the setup that tells an ad platform or analytics tool when a visitor did the thing that matters, such as calling, submitting a form or booking, so spend can be judged by results instead of clicks.
- UTM parametersUTM parameters are tags added to the end of a link, such as utm_source=google and utm_campaign=spring-tuneup, that tell analytics where a visitor came from.
- CRMA CRM, customer relationship management system, is the software that stores every lead and customer with their calls, texts, quotes and jobs, so nothing is lost in a text thread or a notebook.
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