---
title: "Marketing attribution"
description: "Trace every sale back to the marketing that caused it, and stop guessing which channels actually make you money."
canonical: "https://grey-wolf.co.za/marketing-attribution/"
published: "2026-07-14"
cluster: "marketing-attribution"
hub: true
tokens: 617
---

Most marketing reports answer the wrong question. They tell you what a click cost, what a lead cost, how many people opened an email. Useful numbers — but none of them is the number that pays your salaries. That number is cost per sale, and to see it you have to connect the ad at the top to the deal at the bottom.

That connection is attribution. Done properly it changes the questions you ask: not "how do we get cheaper leads?" but "which channels bring buyers?" The budget follows, and it follows evidence instead of the loudest dashboard.

The articles below take it one honest step at a time — why the flattering numbers mislead, how the plumbing actually works, and the boring habits that keep your data trustworthy once it does.

Start with [why cost per lead is lying to you](/marketing-attribution/cost-per-lead-is-lying-to-you/), then the habit that makes any of it measurable: [UTM discipline](/marketing-attribution/utm-discipline-the-boring-habit-worth-six-figures/).

## In this topic

- [Cost per lead is lying to you.](https://grey-wolf.co.za/marketing-attribution/cost-per-lead-is-lying-to-you/) — Two campaigns with the same cost per lead can cost four times as much per sale. Why CPL flatters your worst channel — and the one number to ask for instead.
- [Last-click is flattering your worst channel.](https://grey-wolf.co.za/marketing-attribution/last-click-is-flattering-your-worst-channel/) — Last-click attribution hands all the credit to the final touch, usually brand search. Why that punishes the channels that actually start your deals.
- [Connect your ads to your CRM without an engineer.](https://grey-wolf.co.za/marketing-attribution/connect-your-ads-to-your-crm-without-an-engineer/) — A step-by-step, no-code path to passing ad source data into your CRM so closed deals report back against the ad that started them.
- [UTM discipline: the boring habit worth six figures.](https://grey-wolf.co.za/marketing-attribution/utm-discipline-the-boring-habit-worth-six-figures/) — A simple, strict UTM naming convention that keeps your attribution data trustworthy. The boring habit that decides whether every other report is true.