Module 4: Attribution
Somebody buys. Which of your marketing gets the credit? Get this wrong and you'll starve the channels that started the sale while overfeeding the one that finished it. This module shows you what actually caused the sale.
The last-click lie
Here is a real customer journey: Monday, she Googles her problem and reads your blog post. Wednesday, your newsletter — which she joined from that post — lands in her inbox. Friday, she clicks your retargeting ad. Sunday, she types your URL directly and buys. Last-click attribution gives 100 percent of the credit to direct — the channel that did the least work. The blog post that started everything gets zero.
This is why businesses keep killing their best marketing. The report says direct and branded search drive all sales, so they cut the blog, the newsletter, the top-of-funnel content — and six months later the pipeline dries up and nobody knows why. They starved the top of the funnel because the attribution model couldn't see it.
GA4's default is data-driven attribution, which distributes credit across touchpoints based on modeled contribution — the blog post gets its share. You can compare models in Advertising > Attribution > Model comparison: put data-driven next to last click and watch credit move upstream to your content. If last click says your blog is worthless and data-driven says it starts a third of your sales, believe data-driven — and keep writing.
Build brief
Think of your last three customers. Can you trace even roughly how they first found you? Write what you know — and what you wish you knew about the journey before they bought.
Saved
UTMs: tag everything
UTM parameters are the five tags you add to links so analytics can tell exactly where a click came from: utm_source (who sent it — newsletter, instagram), utm_medium (the channel type — email, social, cpc), utm_campaign (the specific push — march-launch, spring-sale), utm_term (the keyword, for paid search), and utm_content (which version — banner-a vs banner-b, for testing). A link with UTMs tells GA4 its own story; a link without them shows up as direct or unassigned, and you learn nothing.
Tag every link you control: newsletter links, social bio links, guest post bylines, podcast show notes, QR codes on print. Build them with Google's Campaign URL Builder (search it — it's free) so the format stays consistent. Rules that keep your data clean: always lowercase, never spaces (use hyphens), and keep a running list of your campaign names so march-launch doesn't become March_Launch and MarchLaunch in three different reports.
One rule with no exceptions:
Build brief
Write UTMs for three links you actually use: your newsletter's main call-to-action, your Instagram bio link, and one guest post or directory listing. Use the format: source / medium / campaign.
Saved
Which content drives leads?
This is the money question, and most businesses never answer it because they look at traffic instead of leads. The report: Reports > Engagement > Landing page (under Pages and screens) — then add your generate_lead key event as a secondary column. Sort by key events. This table ranks every page by the leads it actually created, which is almost never the same ranking as views.
Read it like an investor. A blog post with 400 views and 12 leads is a better asset than a post with 8,000 views and 1 lead — the first one converts at 3 percent, the second at 0.01 percent. Your promotion budget, your internal links, and your update priority should all flow to the pages that convert, not the pages that merely rank.
For the journey view, open Explore > Path exploration: start from your generate_lead event and work backwards to see which pages people visited before converting. Patterns jump out — the pricing page before the contact form, the same case study appearing in half the paths. Those are your money pages; everything in the Goldmine workflow should be judged partly by whether it feeds them. Rank your content by leads created, not views earned — and promote accordingly.
Build brief
Open your landing page report with the key event column. What are your top 3 pages by leads created — and how does that ranking compare to your top 3 by views?
Saved
Two blog posts: Post A has 8,000 views and 1 lead. Post B has 400 views and 12 leads. You have budget to promote one. Which one?
In GA4, the default attribution model — the one that distributes credit across touchpoints instead of giving it all to the last click — is ___ attribution. .
Your turn: List every link you control that currently has no UTMs: newsletter, social bios, directories, guest posts, QR codes. Write the source/medium/campaign for each, following the lowercase-hyphen rules.
Saved.
Your next 24 hours
Add UTMs to your three highest-traffic external links (newsletter CTA, social bio, one directory). Then open Model comparison and put data-driven next to last click — screenshot the difference.
Steal this template
UTM NAMING CONVENTIONS
Format: ?utm_source=X&utm_medium=Y&utm_campaign=Z
Rules: always lowercase · hyphens not spaces · one running list of campaign names
Examples:
Newsletter CTA → source=newsletter · medium=email · campaign=march-launch
Instagram bio → source=instagram · medium=social · campaign=profile-bio
Guest post byline → source=partnerblog · medium=referral · campaign=guest-post
Never: UTMs on internal links. Ever.
Cheat sheet
- Last-click gives all credit to the final touch and starves the content that started the sale.
- Data-driven attribution (GA4's default) distributes credit by modeled contribution — compare it to last click in Model comparison.
- UTMs: source, medium, campaign (+ term, content). Tag every link you control.
- Lowercase, hyphens, one campaign-name list — or your reports split into duplicates.
- Never UTM internal links — it overwrites the true source.
- Rank content by leads created (landing page + key event column), not views. Promote the converters.