Strategy
When we relaunched this client’s paid campaigns, the results looked strange in HubSpot. Lead volume held steady while spend dropped 68%, but most new contacts were landing as “direct traffic”, which meant HubSpot had no idea where they came from. The giveaway was a sharp spike in direct traffic the moment the ads switched on.
Those contacts were first landing on the exact pages our campaigns were driving traffic to, like the case studies and demo pages. They were paid leads filed under the wrong source. We built UTM tracking across Google and LinkedIn, forcing HubSpot to record where each lead actually came from.
The fix showed up immediately. Misattributed direct traffic dropped by more than half the following month, correctly credited paid leads jumped from 2 to 11, and three deals worth $20,000 in closed and open pipeline could be traced back to first touches on campaign pages.
With clean attribution in place, budget now shifts to where intent is strongest: retargeting warm visitors, branded search, and comparison content.