Capturing Source of Leads for Website Visitors

[Anonymous]

I'm interested in hearing the community's feedback on the topic below:

We recently launched our new corporate website and the strategy is to use it as much as possible to promote assets, events, etc.  During a team discussion yesterday, the question came up of how to appropriately capture source of leads who fill out a form for an asset that is part of a MKTO program but was generated from the website.

If a visitor to our website fills out the form on our website for this asset, and is then marked as a net new lead in the program within MKTO b/c the form is local to the program, is best practice to:

Assign lead source to the website or the type of channel for the acquisition program?

Thank you!

[SanfordWhiteman]

... source of leads who fill out a form for an asset that is part of a MKTO program but was generated from the website.

I'm not sure what you're asking.  Are these leads doing an "end around" the intended program channel in some way?  If not, I would use the website as the lead source.

[Jessica_Kao3 · Accepted solution]

HI Christine,

I would do both because lead source and acquisition program are actually two different things that answer slightly different questions. 

For lead source, i assign globally how they got into your database.  So if a person exists in your db and you are putting them into a mkto program to drive people to the website to download an asset, the lead source of that person happened before that campaign, did you purchase a list, did sales people put them in etc.  That's the lead source. And if they are already in your data base they should best practices already have an acquisition program because something already brought them into the database.  Therefore they can become members in your program but that program is not the source nor did they acquire them. 

Case #2:  a new person net new lead to your database (not program) comes to your website and downloads the asset. 

The acquisition program should be that mkto program with the asset as that is how they entered in  (this counts towards FT attribution) 

For lead source is a separate list, my standard lead sources are:

Online Advertisement

Organic Search

Referral

Sales Generated

Content Syndication

List Purchase

Telemarketing

Organic Social

Webinar

Event Partner

Tradeshow

Website Direct

Website Referral

So if the person came into the website, I want to know more than just this person came to my website,  I want to know how did they get to my website.  I have global programs that automatically assign:

Organic search, website direct, website referral, ppc/Online advertisment, etc.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Jessica!  This is what I was hoping to hear and the reporting process I wanted to propose.

[Josh_Hill13]

Please see my articles on Channel Offer method.

Webinar is not a lead source.

If they are on your site and you can't figure out if they came in Organic, SEM, or Direct, then assign Direct or Walk On.