Ad attribution: which ads bring paying clients

What is marketing attribution in a CRM?

Marketing attribution links an ad source to an outcome. Not "how many clicks did the campaign get", but "how many people from it became patients and how much they pay". Your ad account sees the click and the form fill, but it doesn't know if the person showed up and paid. The CRM knows both, so it's the better place to measure ad ROI. The full approach is in our guide to end-to-end analytics for clinics.

How 95sales identifies the lead source

The lead source is captured when the person first arrives and kept until payment.

1. A person visits your site. The 95sales tracking code remembers which ad brought them: UTM tags, a Google Ads or Meta click, and the landing page. An ad click counts as paid even without UTM tags, so it doesn't end up as organic.
2. They submit an inquiry: a website form, a quiz, a lead form or a callback request. The source goes into the lead card with the inquiry. How forms connect is covered in web form lead capture.
3. They call. A lead from a call gets the source "Call", while a request through the Binotel callback widget carries the site and page tags. Binotel is a Ukrainian telephony provider. See call tracking integration.
4. They are admitted or buy. When a lead becomes a patient or client, the attribution moves to their record, and charges start counting toward that source.

Referrers — hospitals and doctors who send you patients — are tracked separately. Each has its own card with the number of patients and revenue they brought.

Why the first source matters

The first touch is the source a person first came to your site from, and that's what the CRM counts as the lead source. In healthcare and care services, decisions take time. A relative reads about rehab, comes back from search two weeks later, and only then calls. With last-touch attribution, everything ends up as "organic" or "direct", and the ad that actually brought the person looks like it doesn't work.

That's why the tracking code keeps the original source even if the person submits the form later. Repeat visits don't overwrite it, and an inquiry sent a month later is still tied to the original campaign. For leads without tags — calls to the number on a business card, word of mouth, hospital referrals — staff pick the source from a list manually.

The Sources section: what you see on screen

The Sources section turns technical tags into readable names: facebook / cpc becomes "Facebook · ads", and google / organic becomes "Google · organic". Each platform has its real logo and traffic type: ads, organic, social, referral, email, direct.

You switch the view between site, source, channel, campaign and keyword. So you see not just "Google works", but which campaign and which search query bring paying clients.

Attribution across businesses and websites

If a company runs several websites or businesses (brands), reports filter by business, site and manager, and each business is set by its site and phone line. The lead's city is detected too, and Sources has a report by city. Leads are counted by the landing page domain, and sales by the site of the lead with the same phone number. This helps groups that run separate landing pages for different services or cities. More on groups in multi-location and holding.

Who it's for and what it solves

To calculate acquisition cost you also need your ad spend. How to account for it is covered in the guide to patient acquisition cost (CAC). Other metrics — average order value, LTV, revenue per patient — are in analytics.

How to set up ad attribution

1. Add the 95sales tracking code to your site with one line or through Google Tag Manager.
2. Add UTM tags to all ad campaigns; Google and Meta add their click IDs on their own.
3. Connect forms, quizzes and telephony so all inquiries go to the CRM, not to email.
4. Convert leads into patients or clients inside the CRM, so the tag reaches the money.
5. Once a week, check Sources in the Campaign view.