Your Marketing Data Is Lying to You (Here's How to Fix It)

The Problem Every Marketing Team Faces

You know that moment when your CEO asks "Which campaigns are actually working?" and you realize your data is scattered across Salesforce, HubSpot, and three different Excel sheets - all showing different numbers?

Yeah, that's the attribution nightmare Jordan Nelson and I unpacked in this episode. Jordan's been in the Salesforce trenches for 7+ years, working with everyone from Walmart E-commerce to tech startups, and he's seen this problem kill more marketing strategies than bad creative.

The Foundation That Most Teams Miss

Here's what Jordan hammered home: Salesforce needs to be your single source of truth. Not one of several sources. THE source.

"I always like to look at it as the crystal ball," Jordan explained. "If we can get all of these nitty gritty details inside of Salesforce for marketing, that's where you're actually gonna figure out what's working through patterns."

The mistake? Most teams silo their data. Marketing attribution lives in HubSpot. Campaign performance is tracked in Facebook Ads Manager. Lead scoring happens in yet another tool.

Result: You pull a report in Salesforce that says Facebook is crushing it. HubSpot says it's LinkedIn. Your Excel sheet says both are terrible.

You end up second-guessing every decision instead of making confident bets on what's working.

Campaign Structure That Actually Makes Sense

The big question I had: How granular should you get with campaigns in Salesforce?

Jordan's answer surprised me: "Channel level, but go as detailed as you think you need to make smart decisions."

Here's what that looks like in practice:

Basic Level: Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Organic Social, Email

Advanced Level: Facebook - Video Ad - Above Fold CTA, Facebook - Carousel - Case Study Focus, LinkedIn - Thought Leadership - CEO Content

The more UTM parameters you capture, the better. Jordan shared an example where they tracked different CTA buttons on the same webpage - top, middle, and bottom. Turns out 99% of conversions came from above the fold. That's a $50K budget reallocation right there.

Lead Source vs. Campaign Tracking (Finally Explained)

This trips up everyone, including me. Here's how Jordan breaks it down:

Lead Source: Manual categories like "web," "referral," "cold call" - basic stuff

Campaign Tracking: Multi-touch, dynamic system that shows the full journey

Lead source tells you Facebook brought them in. Campaign tracking tells you it was specifically the August 16th video campaign about case studies, and that they also engaged with your LinkedIn content and downloaded two whitepapers before converting.

For attribution, Jordan recommends starting simple: "If you're a smaller company, I would go with lead source first. As you swing more towards enterprise, that becomes a healthy conversation about multi-touch attribution."

The Attribution Reality Check

Here's the truth bomb from our conversation: The perfect attribution system doesn't exist.

I used to believe we were on the cusp of solving attribution mathematically. Then iOS updates, cookie deprecation, and privacy changes flipped everything upside down.

Jordan nailed it: "There's so many variables in marketing. What did you wear in that video? What did you say? What was the call to action? The more of that you can capture in Salesforce, the better."

The goal isn't perfect attribution. It's getting enough data to make confident decisions faster.

What This Means for Your 2025 Strategy

The old playbooks aren't working. Linear customer journeys are a myth. But that doesn't mean you throw up your hands and guess.

Jordan's approach: Capture everything you can in one place, then look for patterns over time. Maybe your "top of funnel" content about running doesn't convert immediately, but you notice people who engage with it have higher lifetime value 12 months later.

You won't catch this if your data is scattered across five different tools.

The AI Factor

Jordan's fully embracing AI in his Salesforce consulting business. He's building agents that can audit a client's Salesforce setup and provide optimization recommendations without manual work.

"It used to seem like whatever I would talk about, nobody had any idea. Now the common CEO has a pretty good understanding," Jordan said. "It's raising the bar. You can't get away with much BS anymore."

His prediction: AI will handle the maintenance tasks (creating fields, basic configurations) but increase demand for strategic thinking about how to structure systems for business growth.

Your Next Steps

1. Audit your data sources - How many different tools are you using to track marketing performance?
   
   

2. Pick ONE source of truth - Usually Salesforce for B2B companies
   
   

3. Start granular - Capture more UTM parameters than you think you need
   
   

4. Begin with lead source - Add campaign influence later as you scale
   
   

5. Look for patterns over time - Attribution isn't about perfect tracking, it's about making better decisions
   
   

The companies winning right now aren't the ones with perfect attribution. They're the ones making decisions faster based on good-enough data in one place.

Want to connect with Jordan Nelson? Find him on LinkedIn. He's been incredibly helpful to our team at Fractional Demand and knows Salesforce inside and out.

New episodes of "Teach Me in 10" drop every week. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts for more tactical marketing insights you can implement today.