Budget season. Don’t you shudder a little just reading it?

We get it, especially after reading this Forbes article which stated, “74% of marketers can’t measure or report how their efforts impact their business.”

Creating a new budget when you can’t prove what is working and what isn’t is not an easy task.

However, if you are using lead source attribution to create your marketing reports, it’s not that bad.

We created an easy-to-follow guide to help multifamily marketers get the most out of lead source attribution.

The first step is to correctly track your sources. We pay careful attention to the four areas along the prospect’s journey where lead tracking often fails.

   1. Web sources are not properly tagged

   2. Phone sources do not have unique numbers

   3. Phone sources do not have Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI

   4. Web sources do not have Dynamic Source Insertion (DSI)

   5. Sources are changed when reported in Lead-to-Lease

Once you are confident your sources are being tracked correctly, you can start analyzing the data. We will discuss how to convert your data into useful insights. Additionally, we will address the main issue most multifamily marketers face when analyzing their data.

   6. Multifamily companies struggle to consolidate their data.

By taking the leases per source data from your CRM and combining it with your cost per source data from your budget, you can perform a cost analysis (calculate the cost per lease) for your sources.

Creating a cost analysis based on the cost per lease metric will enable you to see which sources are most cost-effective and allocate your resources accordingly.

Not only will lead source reports takes some of the guesswork out of making your next marketing budget. Justifying your marketing spending just got easier. The numbers can do the talking in your budget proposal.

So, what’s stopping you?

The Excuse Catalog

Let’s consider each of these reasons to NOT track your leads (or fix your lead source attribution).

Excuse 1: “My dog ate it”

This one is really losing its credibility since the digital revolution.

Excuses 2-4: “I don’t have the time” / “I’ll get to it later” / “I have more important things to do”

What is more important than learning more about your prospects’ behavior and preferences? Yeah, we couldn’t think of anything either.

Excuses 5-7: “That’s not my job” / “I’m bad with technology” / “Source tracking requires a programmer”

These are founded on the misconception that lead source attribution is a technical task, it’s actually really easy.

Jim Rohn said it best. “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

If you are serious about making a cost-effective marketing budget, there isn’t one excuse on this list that should stop you from tracking your lead sources.

Conclusion

I know lead source attribution sounds like a complex process that requires assistance from the Big Bang Theory characters to implement.

As cool as it would be to have Sheldon Cooper set up your tracking, it is unnecessary.

You don’t need to be a programmer, know code, or even be tech-savvy to start tracking your sources.

Setting up source tracking only takes a few hours. If you spend 30 minutes a day working on source tracking, you will be tracking sources within the week.

Considering the amount of time and money you save using source tracking correctly, lead source attribution deserves top billing on your to-do list.

Inaccurate reporting has become the standard, and we want to change that. We have put together a step-by-step guide to attribute lead sources correctly.

We get it. Lead source attribution sounds like a total snooze-fest.

However, we encourage you to pour yourself a strong cup of coffee and resist the temptation. The longer you wait to start tracking, the harder it will be once budgeting season rolls around. Let’s get started!