Lead Source
Lead Source is the captured origin of a lead — paid ad campaign, organic search, referral, conference, outbound, partner — used to attribute pipeline and revenue back to the marketing or sales motion that created it.
What is Lead Source?
Lead Source is foundational to attribution but notoriously messy in practice. Same lead arrives through multiple touchpoints, click-tracking gets dropped, dark-social referrals don't carry UTM parameters. Robust Lead Source capture combines structured tracking (UTM parameters, referrer headers, first-touch and last-touch capture) with self-reported attribution (a 'how did you hear about us?' field on key forms). The goal isn't perfect attribution — it's good-enough attribution to inform budget allocation.
Why it matters
- Lead Source attribution drives marketing budget allocation across channels.
- Self-reported source captures dark-social and word-of-mouth that tracking misses.
- First-touch and last-touch tell different stories — capture both.
Use cases
- Channel-level reporting. Pipeline contribution per channel, calibrated by spend.
- Campaign-level attribution. A specific campaign tracked from click to revenue.
- Dark-social attribution. Self-reported source captures referrals tracking misses.
How turgo helps
turgo captures Lead Source from both tracking parameters and self-reported fields, then ties source through the full Golden Record lifecycle so attribution reporting is consistent.
See turgo in action →
