What a captured lead source actually looks like.
A lead source example is the full record captured when someone submits a form: the channel and campaign that brought them, the page they landed on, and the pages they read before they converted. Not the word “Web”. The whole story. Below are five, one per channel, as sample records. For the definition itself, see what a lead source is.
A Google Ads lead.
Someone searches, clicks an ad, and fills in your form. The native CRM field would say “Paid Search” at best. Here is the rest.
An organic Google lead.
No ad spend behind this one. The value is knowing which query and which page did the work.
A LinkedIn lead.
A sponsored post does the introducing. The record keeps the campaign name a finance review can actually use.
A referral lead.
A partner site sends a visitor your way. The referring domain is the part the CRM usually drops.
An email campaign lead.
A campaign send brings someone back. The record ties the lead to the exact email.
Three parts, every time.
Different channels, same shape. Each record carries the same three facts, which is what makes them comparable across campaigns and across your CRM.
- 01Source. The channel and the campaign in plain language, not a raw UTM string and not a bare “Web”.
- 02Landing page. Where the channel handed off to your site. Two leads from the same campaign can land on different pages.
- 03Page journey. Every page they read before submitting, ending on the page that converted them. Source tells you which channel to fund; the converting page tells you which content to build more of.
To see how each CRM stores all this, read the CRM lead source pillar or compare them on the compatibility matrix. Once you can see where each lead came from, the next question is how fast you reply to each of these.
Some industries lean on this harder than most: see lead source tracking for insurance agencies and for law firms.
Questions, answered.
What is an example of a lead source?
A lead source is the channel, campaign, or referrer that brought a prospect in. A concrete example: a lead from Google Ads on the campaign Conveyancing quotes, who landed on /quote and read /fees before submitting the contact form. The channel is Paid Search; the source is the specific campaign and the page journey behind it.
What is the difference between a lead source and a UTM?
A UTM is a tag you add to a link so a tool can read the campaign and source from the URL. A lead source is the resulting record: the channel, campaign, landing page, and journey tied to the person who submitted. UTMs are one input; the lead source is the captured outcome, and it still works when no UTM was set.
Are these real customer records?
No. Every example here is clearly labelled sample data, built to show the shape of a captured record. Real records carry the same fields: source and campaign, landing page, page journey, and the CRM field the source is written to.
See your own captured records.
One line of code captures the source, landing page, and journey on every form.
Track your lead sources free →Free to start · no card