Lead sources usually refer to the original location (web page) that the users have come from to the landing page that holds the form.
To make it simpler, here is an example: say you saw an ad on google and clicked on it, then on the landing page presented to you, you entered your information and created a lead. This lead source will be Google because Google referred you to the ad.
In order to track lead sources, Google created a set of parameters called UTM parameters, those parameters are used to identify not only the source, but also the campaign, search word and other related information.
There are 5 known UTM parameters stated as follows:
- utm_source
- utm_medium
- utm_campaign
- utm_term
- utm_content
You can read more about them here on the Google UTM Parameters page.
In addition to UTM parameters, Hover Lead supports two more custom parameters that are widely used by digital marketers, those are “ref” and “media” parameters.
Ref – should indicate the website name as the source (e.g.: Google or Facebook)
Media – should indicate the type of the ad that was used (e.g.: PPC, Text Link, Email)
When collecting leads from a landing page or a website, it is necessary to understand what was the source website that redirected the user to the ad.
This can be done by attaching a parameter with the name of the website as the value to the URL. Then, when the user submits his lead, the name of the website (where he came from) has been collected with the rest of the lead information. For instance: your_page.com/?ref=google and your_page.com/?ref=facebook may redirect you to the same page but with a different source (indicates where the user originally was coming from) and later can be viewed in Hover Lead’s leads panel.