Lead Sources - B2B

[CUtcke]

Hi HubSpot Community,

I am trying to put together a comprehensive list of lead sources for our CRM without going too deep or missing something critical. We sell in a B2B setting and we currently have these lead sources:

• Trade Show
• Website
• Existing Customer
• Referral
• Webinar
• Cold Calling
• Incoming call/email

Is there any value in expanding these or narrowing them down? Sure, "website" could be narrowed down to SEM, Email Marketing or even the individual campaign but that level of detail is already available in HubSpot's marketing platform and may not be necessary in our CRM (Salesforce). How do you guys track lead sources in your CRM?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @CUtcke,

HubSpot already has a field for this: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/understand-source-properties

A lot of users find that these options don't quite match their reality, so an additional custom property can help. However, keep in mind that this default property is maintained automatically and referenced by many tools (including default reports).

If you want to create your own additional custom property, you need to be aware of the fact that it has to be maintained manually or by workflow. Not all scenarios can however be maintained automatically. This introduces a level of human error. Whenever I've encountered one of these setups, there were always cases of workflows accidentally overwriting previous values or generally missing values. This is not to say that it's a bad idea, it simply requires a very good documentation, training, and monitoring.

Because of that, a shorter list is better than a longer list. I reduces ambiguity and risk of error.

Hope this helps!

[DavidVoigt · Accepted solution]

This is great and I would build a source drilldown resembling HubSpot's own source fields. There's original source and last source with the same options.

Source: Trade Show (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the trade show (text)

Website: This is already covered by HubSpot's own source field

Existing Customer: I don't see how this is exactly a source. They're an existing customer, but from where?

Source: Referral (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the referrer (text)

Source: Webinar (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the webinar
(although not sure how webinar is a source. People don't randomly pop up at a webinar, they have to come to the webinar from somewhere.)

Source: Cold Calling (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the cold caller

Source: Incoming call (dropdown option)
Source drill down: maybe extension, department, or centrale

Source: Incoming email (dropdown option)
Source drill down: to which address

[DavidVoigt · Accepted solution]

This is great and I would build a source drilldown resembling HubSpot's own source fields. There's original source and last source with the same options.

Source: Trade Show (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the trade show (text)

Website: This is already covered by HubSpot's own source field

Existing Customer: I don't see how this is exactly a source. They're an existing customer, but from where?

Source: Referral (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the referrer (text)

Source: Webinar (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the webinar
(although not sure how webinar is a source. People don't randomly pop up at a webinar, they have to come to the webinar from somewhere.)

Source: Cold Calling (dropdown option)
Source drill down: Name of the cold caller

Source: Incoming call (dropdown option)
Source drill down: maybe extension, department, or centrale

Source: Incoming email (dropdown option)
Source drill down: to which address

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @CUtcke,

HubSpot already has a field for this: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/understand-source-properties

A lot of users find that these options don't quite match their reality, so an additional custom property can help. However, keep in mind that this default property is maintained automatically and referenced by many tools (including default reports).

If you want to create your own additional custom property, you need to be aware of the fact that it has to be maintained manually or by workflow. Not all scenarios can however be maintained automatically. This introduces a level of human error. Whenever I've encountered one of these setups, there were always cases of workflows accidentally overwriting previous values or generally missing values. This is not to say that it's a bad idea, it simply requires a very good documentation, training, and monitoring.

Because of that, a shorter list is better than a longer list. I reduces ambiguity and risk of error.

Hope this helps!

[CUtcke]

Thank you for the fast response, Karsten. 

I was more thinking about some "best practice" discussion for lead tracking within a CRM (we use Salesforce). How do other users slice the pie of leads? Which categories do companies track and how granular is the tracking? No doubt, Sales and Marketing have different objectives in their lead source tracking, so how do you agree on what is worth tracking and what isn't?

[CEdwin · Accepted solution]

Hi @CUtcke , 

I feel like this is something that's very specific to each company. It's useful to recognize the particular sources of leads for your company and use them in the "lead source" area. For example, if you do not use social media as a source IF your business isn't in e-commerce then you may want to exclude "social" and keep others. Just an example.

From my experience, it's always helpful to align marketing with sales and use the same sources as base categories. Deeper dive can be done for reports by each department themselves. Not sure if this helps.