How Do You Know Which Ad Signed the Case? Tracking From Click to Signed Retainer

Ask an injury firm how marketing went last month. You will usually hear about leads: how many came in, what they cost, maybe which channel sent the most.

Then ask which ads brought in the cases that actually signed. The room goes quiet.

That gap costs a lot. Without it, every choice about where to spend is a guess. The channel with the cheapest leads gets more money, even if those leads never sign. The ad quietly bringing in the best cases gets cut because its leads look expensive. And when the agency says it was a great month but intake says the leads were junk, no one can prove who is right.

Closing that gap is the core of what we do for injury firms. Here is how it works.

Why can't most injury firms tell which ad signed a case?

Because the facts sit in three places that do not talk to each other:

• Google and Facebook know who clicked.
• Your website and phone system know who got in touch.
• Your case management system knows who signed.

Unless something carries the source of each lead all the way through, the link is lost.

Case management software is built to run cases, not to measure ads. In most firms, the "referral source" box is filled in from memory, if at all. Google Analytics is not much better. It can count form fills, but it does not know who signed three days later.

So the fix is a simple process. Save where each lead came from when it arrives, and keep it attached until the case signs or does not. You do not need new software.

What should you save for every lead?

Phone calls need tracking too. Call tracking shows a different phone number to people from each channel. So a call from someone who clicked a Facebook ad gets logged as Facebook. Google has free call tracking for calls from its ads, but those calls do not land in your lead list. Most firms need a call tracking tool that does.

Which channel gets credit for a lead?

People rarely go in a straight line. Someone might see your Facebook video, Google your firm a week later, then call the number on your website. Who gets the credit?

My view: give the credit to the first thing that brought them in. In that example, the Facebook video gets it. You can note Google as a helper in a separate column if you want.

Splitting credit across several channels sounds smart. But it makes the numbers harder to act on, and it usually shortchanges the channels that create demand in the first place.

Three habits make it much more accurate:

1. Track it automatically with link tags, click IDs and call tracking. Do not rely on memory.
2. Ask every client how they first heard about you. Write it next to the tracked source. When they do not match, you learn something.
3. Give each ad its own page and phone number, so people from each campaign can only arrive one way.

It will never be perfect, and expecting perfect tracking just leads to frustration. The goal is numbers good enough to make confident choices. That is far better than what most firms have now.

How do you tell Google and Facebook which leads signed?

This is where tracking starts to make your ads better.

Google and Facebook try to find more of whatever you call a "result." If the only result you give them is a form fill, they find more people who fill in forms, including people who will never be clients. If you tell them which leads signed, they start finding more people like your real clients.

Two tips:

• Google and Facebook need enough signed cases to learn from. If you only sign a few a month from a channel, also send "good case" as an earlier signal.
• Be careful what you send. Send results and values only. Never send details about anyone's injuries or health. Have your setup checked for privacy.

What should the monthly report show?

One page, built from your lead list, with one row for each channel.

Here is how to read it:

• Lots of leads but few good cases? The ad or who it reaches needs work.
• Good cases but few signing? Look at how fast you call and who signs clients.
• Low "called in 5 min"? Fix that before you touch the ads.
• Cost per signed case tells you where the next dollar should go.

Do you need a CRM, or will a spreadsheet do?

A spreadsheet you keep up to date beats a fancy system no one updates. Most law firm systems we see are either case management tools with no ad data, or marketing tools that stop at the lead and never find out what happened next.

What matters is that one place holds every lead, where it came from and what happened. Intake updates it the same day. Someone checks it against signed retainers every month. Once that habit is in place, you can automate it. Before then, software just makes the gaps look neater.

Where should you start?

If you are starting from scratch, do it in this order:

1. Add tags to every ad link, and hidden fields to every form for the source, campaign, ad and click IDs.
2. Set up call tracking that saves where every call came from, in the same place as your forms.
3. Make your lead list with the details above. Updating it becomes part of intake's daily routine.
4. Record what happened to every lead: good case, signed, and rough value.
5. Run the monthly report and make one budget decision from it.
6. Send signed cases back to Google and Facebook once your data is solid.

Our guides to what a personal injury lead costs and running PI intake cover the numbers this gives you and the process behind it. And if you want this set up for your firm, from the ads to the signed case report, that is exactly what our US personal injury marketing does.