How to track which marketing actually books jobs in RealGreen

Three moves: clean up your marketing source codes (12–15, not 60), wire call tracking numbers to those codes so attribution happens automatically instead of by CSR memory, and run one monthly report that joins spend per channel to sold programs per source code. That's the whole system. RealGreen already has the fields. Most companies just fill them with guesses. Here's how to fill them with facts.

Why is lead tracking broken at most RealGreen companies?

Open a typical instance and you'll find 40–80 source codes accumulated over a decade: "Google," "Google Ads," "Internet," "Website?," a radio station that went off the air in 2019. New customers get coded by whichever guess the CSR makes while juggling a phone call, or coded "Referral" because it's first in the dropdown. Then renewal season arrives, someone runs the lead source report, nobody believes it, and budget decisions get made on gut feel. The tragedy is that RealGreen's source-code system is genuinely good; it's the inputs that are garbage. Fix the inputs and the reports start telling the truth.

How should you set up marketing source codes?

Prune to one code per channel you actually fund, for most companies that's 12–15: Google Ads, LSA, organic/website, GBP, Facebook ads, direct mail (per campaign type if you're ambitious), door hangers, truck/yard signs, referral, repeat/win-back, and a genuine "other." Use a naming convention the whole office can read at a glance, retire everything else (deactivate, don't delete: history matters), and lock the list: new codes get created by one person, on purpose, not invented mid-phone-call. This is a two-hour cleanup that pays for itself the first time you kill an underperforming channel with confidence.

How does call tracking connect calls to RealGreen records?

Give every channel its own tracking phone number: one on your Google Ads, one on LSA, one on the website (with dynamic insertion), one per mail campaign. Now the number dialed identifies the source before anyone says hello. The CSR just confirms the pre-known code instead of interrogating the caller. Modern call tracking adds recordings, transcriptions, and AI summaries, which buys you the second prize: auditing lead quality per channel, not just volume. A channel that produces 40 calls of tire-kickers loses to one producing 15 calls of ready-to-buy homeowners, and only recordings tell you which is which.

Two channels need special handling. Local Services Ads route calls through Google's own numbers, so give LSA its own source code and reconcile against the Lead Center rather than a tracking pool. And your Google Business Profile drives calls that are neither ads nor "website". Give organic GBP its own tracked number too, or your best free channel gets silently credited to someone else.

How do you track form fills and online quotes?

Same principle, digital plumbing: your website forms and instant quote flow should carry UTM parameters and a hidden source field, so a lead that arrives from a Facebook ad lands in RealGreen already coded: no human judgment involved. If your website vendor can't pass a source through to the lead record, that's a real gap; it means every web lead enters as "Internet" and your best-performing digital channel is invisible. (This pass-through is standard in our RealGreen integration, for exactly this reason.)

How do you close the loop from ad click to sold program?

Monthly, in one table: spend per channel (from the ad platforms) next to sold programs per source code (from RealGreen). Divide. Now you have cost per sold program (not cost per click, not cost per lead) per channel. Illustrative example for a spring month:

Channel	Spend	Sold programs	Cost per sold program
Google Ads	$4,000	26	$154
LSA	$1,800	14	$129
Facebook ads	$1,500	5	$300
Direct mail drop	$3,200	9	$356
"Internet" (uncoded)	N/A	22	Unknown, the hole in the boat

Illustrative numbers. The last row is the point: uncoded leads are usually your biggest "channel."

Two notes on reading it. First, weigh channels by program lifetime value, not first-year revenue: a $500 program that renews four years is a $2,000 customer, which forgives a higher acquisition cost. Second, mind the windows: LSA and Google Ads behave differently by season, so judge trends over a quarter, not a single month. If assembling this table by hand sounds like a job, it is: automating the join between ad platforms, call tracking, and RealGreen sold data is exactly what our reporting dashboard does for RealGreen companies.

The takeaway: 12–15 locked source codes, tracking numbers that make attribution automatic, UTMs that pre-code web leads, and one monthly spend-vs-sold table. Four pieces of plumbing, and "which marketing works?" stops being a debate.

The setup checklist, in order

1. Prune source codes to 12–15; deactivate the graveyard; lock the list.
2. Assign a tracking number to every funded channel; map each to its code.
3. Pass UTM/source data through web forms and quote flows into the lead record.
4. Print unique numbers + QR codes on every mail piece and door hanger.
5. Run the monthly spend-vs-sold-programs table and reallocate one budget line each quarter.