THE SHORT ANSWER
Use a fixed source list, never free text, and record it on every enquiry at the moment it arrives. Add a self-reported how did you hear about us field to your form, because it catches the paths analytics never sees. Then measure each source on cost per signed job rather than cost per enquiry, and allow ninety days before judging anything. Most attribution problems are recording habits rather than technology gaps.
Ask a contractor which marketing works and the answer is usually a story about a memorable job. Ask for the numbers and you get a shrug, or a report from an advertising platform claiming credit for work it may have had little to do with. Both are unreliable in the same direction: they overweight what is visible and vivid.
Proper tracking is not complicated but it is unglamorous. It is a fixed list, one field, filled in every time, plus the patience to wait a quarter before drawing conclusions. Businesses that do this can reallocate budget with confidence. Businesses that do not are guessing with real money, and the gap between the two is a habit rather than a licence fee.
The numbers, at a glance
Source field format: a fixed dropdown list, because free text produces a dozen spellings of the same source within a month
Self-reported capture rate: modelled at 60 to 80 percent completion when the question is optional and placed after the contact details
The metric that matters: cost per signed job, not cost per enquiry, because sources differ sharply in how well they convert
Minimum judgement window: ninety days, since planned home-improvement work routinely takes that long to close
Three different things get called source
Channel. The broad category: paid search, social, referral, purchased leads, directory, van signage, repeat customer.
Source. The specific origin within it: a named platform, a named supplier, a named partner.
Campaign. The particular activity: an autumn insulation push, a specific advertisement set, a local sponsorship.
Collapsing these into one field is why so many reports are unusable. You need to answer both what type of marketing works and which specific thing to renew, and one column cannot do both. Three short dropdowns take no longer to complete than one free-text box and remain sortable a year later.
The self-reported field earns its keep
Digital attribution misses a great deal in home improvement. Somebody sees a van, searches your name three weeks later, arrives as direct traffic and is recorded as unattributed. Somebody is recommended by a neighbour, checks your reviews, then clicks an advertisement out of convenience, and the advertisement takes credit for a referral it did not create.
A plain question on the form corrects both, imperfectly but usefully. Keep it optional, place it after the contact details so it does not obstruct submission, and offer a short list with one other option. Then treat it as a cross-check against the analytics rather than as the truth: where the two disagree consistently, the disagreement itself is the finding.
Measure cost per signed job, not cost per lead
Cheap enquiries that do not convert are expensive. A source producing leads at half the price of another but converting at a third of the rate is costing you more per job, and any report ranked by cost per lead will recommend exactly the wrong reallocation.
The calculation is simple once source is recorded consistently: total spend on that source over the period, divided by jobs signed that carry it. Do it quarterly, per source, and include your own time where it is significant, because a referral network that costs nothing in cash may consume several evenings a month. Ranked this way, the order of your marketing channels frequently reverses.
The ninety-day lag, and the mistake it causes
Home-improvement decisions on planned work take weeks. An enquiry generated in March may sign in June, which means a source assessed after thirty days looks far worse than it is. The characteristic error follows: a campaign is switched off in week five, the jobs it generated arrive in week eleven and get attributed to whatever is running then, and the wrong activity gets the credit and the budget.
Two habits prevent it. Report by the month the enquiry arrived rather than the month the job signed, so revenue lands against the period that actually produced it. And leave any new source running for a full quarter before judging, unless something is obviously broken. Both are unnatural under pressure and both are worth enforcing.
Getting attribution to a state you can act on
Replace free-text source entry with three fixed dropdowns for channel, source and campaign.
Add an optional self-reported question to your enquiry form, placed after the contact fields.
Record source at the moment of arrival, never retrospectively from memory.
Report revenue against the month the enquiry arrived, not the month it signed.
Rank every source quarterly by cost per signed job and reallocate on that ranking alone.
How Flock Leads prices this
Because purchased leads carry a known cost and a known count, they are the easiest source to hold against a cost-per-job calculation.
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
Book a 15-minute fit check | See lead package pricing
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Do I need analytics software for this?
No. The source field on your own enquiry record does most of the work, and it is the only place where marketing data meets job outcomes. Analytics tells you about traffic; your own records tell you about revenue, and only the second one supports a budget decision.
What if customers give inaccurate answers?
They frequently do, particularly across long consideration periods where several touchpoints blur together. Accept it. Self-reported source is a directional cross-check, not a ledger, and used alongside platform data it still catches the offline paths nothing else can see. Imperfect coverage of the invisible beats perfect coverage of the visible.
How should purchased leads be recorded?
As their own source, separate from your own advertising, with the supplier named. Blending bought and self-generated volume in one bucket makes both unmeasurable, and the whole point of buying is to know precisely what a signed job costs through that route.
What about repeat customers and referrals?
Track them as sources in their own right and give them a value. They are usually the cheapest work in the business and the easiest to neglect, precisely because no invoice arrives to remind you they exist. Seeing their cost per job next to paid channels tends to change how much effort they get.
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