How to capture lead source in Zoho CRM (without coding)

Leads are being generated and sent to Zoho CRM, but there's no way to track their originating channels.

When a lead becomes a customer, It's impossible to connect a converted customer to the specific channel or ad that generated the lead.

Without tracking, you’re unable to measure your marketing effectiveness, leaving you uncertain about which sources drive leads, sales, and revenue. Consequently, you allocate marketing budgets without knowing their true effect on your bottom line.

Luckily, it’s easy to track leads and sales back to their original acquisition channels.

We’ll walk through the process, step by step!

How to track the source of leads in Zoho CRM

Step 1: Add Leadsources in your website

Leadsources provides a simple solution for tracking lead sources. Once implemented on your site, it captures up to 7 data points about where your leads come from:

• Channel
• Source
• Campaign
• Term
• Content
• Landing page
• Landing page subfolder

➡️ Sign up to Leadsources.io for free
➡️ Add the Leadsources tracking code to your site

Step 2: Add the hidden fields in your form

A hidden field is a non-visible form field designed to capture and submit additional information with the form.

By using hidden fields, Leadsources captures lead source data and, upon form submission, Leadsources ensures the fields are populated accurately.

➡️ How to add hidden fields to your form

Step 3: Send lead source data to Zoho CRM

Your form builder is capable of sending lead source data directly to Zoho CRM.

Zoho CRM allows you to monitor the origin of your leads, sales, and revenue with ease.

This enables you to link your marketing activities with your sales outcomes.

➡️ Send lead source data to Zoho CRM

How does Leadsources work?

As soon as a visitor arrives on your website, Leadsources gathers the lead source data and populates the hidden fields in your form. When the form is submitted, this data, along with lead details like name and email, is sent directly to Zoho CRM.

Leadsources records the lead source data for each individual lead:

Even when UTM parameters are not applicable—like with organic sources such as Google search or website mentions in articles—Leadsources continues to track the relevant lead source data:

✅Channel
✅Source
✅Campaign
✅Landing page
✅Landing page subfolder

Leadsources stands apart from other tools by tracking lead sources from all marketing channels, whether organic or paid.

Pick a channel to check the lead source data that Leadsources inserts into your form.

SEO

SEM

Social

Meta

Referral

Emailing

Direct

SEO

SEM

Social

Meta

Referral

Emailing

Direct

Performance reports: Lead, sales, and revenue by source

Tracking lead source data in Zoho CRM allows you to create reports on performance, such as:

• Leads, sales, and revenue by channel
• Leads, sales, and revenue by source
• Leads, sales, and revenue by campaign
• Leads, sales, and revenue by term (e.g. keyword or adset)
• Leads, sales, and revenue by content (e.g. ad)
• Leads, sales, and revenue by landing page
• Leads, sales, and revenue by landing page subfolder

With this information, you can optimize your marketing budget by focusing on the channels, sources, campaigns, terms, and content that drive the highest leads, sales, and revenue.

Now, let’s dive into the various reports you can create.

1. Lead source reports

Produce performance reports that highlight the number of leads created by:

• Channel
• Source
• Campaign
• Term (e.g. keyword or adset)
• Content (e.g. ad)
• Landing page
• Landing page subfolder

Example #1: Leads by channel

With this report, you can identify the channel responsible for generating the most leads.

Example #2: Leads by campaign

Now, you can focus on a specific lead source (like Google Ads) and track how many leads each campaign generates.

Example #3: Leads by keyword and ad

After determining the campaign that produces the most leads, you can analyze the specific keyword ad responsible for those results.

2. Sales and revenue source reports

With the lead sources, campaigns, and content identified, the next step is to determine whether these leads are translating into sales and revenue.

To achieve this, forward your leads to Zoho CRM. This allows you to track sales and revenue from different sources, campaigns, channels, terms, content, and landing page subfolders.

Using this data, you can modify your marketing approach to concentrate on the channels, sources, campaigns, keywords, and ads that deliver the highest sales and revenue.

It’s possible to create a variety of sales and revenue reports, such as:

• Sales and revenue by channel
• Sales and revenue by source
• Sales and revenue by campaign
• Sales and revenue by term (e.g. Keywords)
• Sales and revenue by content (e.g. Ads)
• Sales and revenue by landing page
• Sales and revenue by landing page subfolder

To provide an example, let’s consider the following scenario:

After running campaigns on Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager, the first "Leads by Channel" report indicated that Facebook's Social Paid ads outperformed Google's Search Paid ads in lead generation.

Upon reviewing sales and revenue data in Zoho CRM, you noticed that the Search Paid channel generated higher revenue despite having fewer leads compared to the Social Paid channel. As a result, the marketing budget was adjusted to allocate more to the Search Paid channel.