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Read Time: 9 Minutes
Billion-dollar startups use this. Fortune 500 companies use it too.
The system is simple: track lead source with UTMs and store that data in Salesforce so your marketing team can pull one report and answer a question that always comes up:
Which channels are actually driving leads?
If you are in MarketingOps, this is one of the highest leverage setups you can implement early, especially once you are at roughly $3M+ in revenue and trying to scale with paid and organic channels in motion.
This post will walk you through:
A UTM is a small set of tags added to a URL so you can track where a visitor came from.
Example UTM fields you will see most often:
When someone clicks a tagged link, those UTMs travel with them into your website session. If they fill out a form, you can capture those UTM values and pass them into Salesforce on the lead record.
That is the whole game: carry attribution from the click into the CRM.
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This setup supports three business outcomes that MarketingOps is often measured on:
Without clean attribution, teams argue about numbers across:
When UTMs land in Salesforce consistently, you can build one set of reports that everyone trusts. Less debate. More execution.
If you cannot answer “where do our leads come from,” you cannot turn growth into a repeatable formula.
The goal is to get to a place where you can say:
When we spend X, we can predict Y leads and Z pipeline.
It is hard to get there without reliable source tracking.
When you know which channels produce leads that convert, you stop wasting budget on the wrong places.
That frees money for the things companies always want to fund: hiring, raises, better tooling, infrastructure, and experiments that actually matter.
Here is the simple lifecycle:
Traffic comes from everywhere:
At this stage, platform reporting is mostly aggregated and often anonymized. You can see clicks and impressions, but you cannot reliably tie an individual person to a source inside your CRM.
To capture a lead, you give value in exchange for their info. Common options:
This happens via a form, either directly on the platform (like LinkedIn lead forms) or on your site (landing page with a form).
Your links must include UTMs so the visit can be attributed.
A large company example you can recognize is when you click an ad and the URL contains utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign. That is the standard practice. Some companies make the URL look cleaner, but the concept is the same.
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The form should capture:
Important MarketingOps note: the more fields you ask for, the higher intent the lead usually is, but volume typically drops. Fewer fields increase volume, but you often get lower quality leads. Choose based on your funnel and sales motion.
Once a form is submitted, the data must be mapped into Salesforce.
There are three common ways to do this.
Salesforce can generate an embedded form you place on your website. When someone submits it, Salesforce creates the lead automatically.
This is great when:
Before buying middleware, check whether your landing page tool or platform has a native Salesforce integration via AppExchange.
Common examples:
Native connectors reduce failure points and usually require less maintenance.
If you need flexibility, or you have many tools, middleware works well. The key is not the tool. The key is the mapping discipline.
MarketingOps rule: do not pass UTMs “somewhere.” Pass them into specific Salesforce fields with consistent naming and definitions.
Once leads are in Salesforce, you want the UTM values stored in a clean, standardized way.
I recommend a dedicated section on the Lead page layout called:
Marketing Information
In that section, store:
You can keep the fields hidden from most users if you want. The main point is that they exist and can be reported on reliably.
This is where MarketingOps teams become dangerous in a good way.
First touch means: the first time this person ever discovered you.
You capture it once and never overwrite it.
This answers:
Last touch means: the most recent marketing interaction before conversion.
This is useful for understanding:
MarketingOps takeaway:
First touch helps you scale awareness and top of funnel.
Last touch helps you understand conversion influence.
If you only track one, start with first touch. If you want a foundation that scales, implement both.
Once UTMs are consistently captured, you can build a single source of truth inside Salesforce.
Start with these:
This shows which sources drive lead volume and how it changes month over month.
Great for separating paid social vs email vs organic vs referral.
This is where creative and campaign performance becomes obvious.
Once the sales cycle data is clean, you can connect UTMs to:
This is how MarketingOps turns attribution into budget leverage.
If you want faster decisions, more reliable growth, and smarter spend, MarketingOps needs one thing:
A consistent way to track lead source from the click into Salesforce.
UTMs are the simplest, most proven way to do it. Set them up on your links, capture them on your forms, map them into Salesforce, and report from one place.
If you already have this partially implemented, the win is usually in tightening the standards, adding first touch and last touch, and making your Salesforce reporting actually usable.
We recorded a free youtube video with visuals on how to do this here
If you want us to do it for you, you can hire us here.
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In just a 30-minute call, we’ll show you how to turn Salesforce into a growth engine for your business.
