Why Asking People How You Heard About Them is the Worst Way to Measure Your Advertising

You are standing at the front desk of a dentist’s office. You have a toothache, you’re late for a meeting, and the receptionist hands you a clipboard with a form that looks like it was photocopied in 1998.

You scribble your name, your address, and your insurance info. Then you get to the bottom line: "How did you hear about us?"

You pause. Was it the radio ad you heard three weeks ago? Was it the billboard you drive past every morning? Or did your neighbor Steve mention this place at the barbecue last month?

You check the box that says "Google." Why? Because you Googled the phone number five minutes ago to call them.

Congratulations. You just skewed their marketing data.

Key Takeaways

• Tracking beats guessing, every time. If you’re running advertising without tracking leads, sales, and revenue, you’re relying on gut feelings instead of facts. And feelings are expensive.
• All advertising is trackable if you’re intentional. Digital channels make tracking easier, but traditional and awareness-based advertising still leave measurable fingerprints, like increases in branded search, website traffic, calls, walk-ins, and revenue trends over time.
• Consistency matters more than perfection. You don’t need flawless attribution to see what’s working. When you consistently track leads, sales, and revenue month over month, patterns emerge that reveal what’s driving growth.
• Marketing should show up in your business data. If advertising is working, you should see it reflected across your business, not just in clicks. Website traffic, inbound demand, and sales activity should rise together.
• Transparency turns marketing into a growth strategy. Clear tracking, shared visibility, and honest conversations with your marketing partner are what separate scalable advertising from a perpetual guessing game.

For decades, businesses have relied on this single question to decide where to spend their advertising budget. And for decades, they have been getting bad intel. Relying on customer recall to measure your advertising effectiveness isn't just old-school; it is fundamentally flawed. It’s like asking a toddler to explain the plot of Inception - you might get an answer, but it probably won’t be accurate.

The "I Don't Know…The Internet?" Problem

Let's be real for a second, people are busy. When a customer fills out a form or answers a question from a receptionist, their goal isn't to provide you with high-quality marketing data. Their goal is to finish the transaction and get on with their life.

Human memory is notoriously unreliable. We are prone to something psychologists call "source amnesia." We might remember the information (that your pizza place has a 2-for-1 special), but we completely forget where we learned it.

So, when forced to choose, our brains take a shortcut. We pick the option that feels most familiar or most recent.

If you are running a killer radio campaign and a heavy Facebook ad strategy, but your intake form options are "Internet," "Friend," or "Drive-by," guess what? "Internet" is going to win every time. Not because your radio ads aren't working, but because "Internet" is the default answer for modern existence.

The Myth of the Single Touchpoint

Marketing isn't a first date; it's a courtship. It rarely happens in a single moment. The journey from "stranger" to "customer" is a messy, winding road filled with potholes and distractions.

Here is what a typical customer journey actually looks like:

1. Day 1: They hear your ad on the radio while stuck in traffic. (Brand awareness planted).
2. Day 3: They see your Connected TV (CTV) ad while binge-watching a show. (Familiarity builds).
3. Day 10: They scroll past your sponsored post on Instagram. (Reminded of need).
4. Day 12: Their sink breaks. They go to Google and search "plumber near me." They see your name—which they now recognize—and click.

If you ask this customer, "How did you hear about us?", they will say, "Google."

If you listen to that data, you might fire your radio rep and cut your social media budget to dump everything into SEO. Six months later, you’ll wonder why your Google search traffic has dried up.

The answer? You cut off the fuel (awareness) that was driving the engine (search). The "How did you hear about us?" question only credits the goalkeeper for the goal, ignoring the five passes that got the ball down the field.

Why Tracking ROI Can’t Be Optional

Tracking ROI doesn’t require a PhD in analytics, but it does require intention. If you’re running advertising and not tracking anything, you’re essentially driving with your eyes closed and hoping you end up somewhere good. The truth is, most businesses feel like their marketing is working, but they can’t actually prove it. And when budgets tighten or tough questions get asked, feelings won’t save your strategy. Numbers will.

The Power of Writing the Numbers Down

This is where basic, old-school tracking becomes powerful. Write the numbers down. 

• How many leads came in this month? 
• How many turned into sales? 
• What was the total revenue? 
• What’s your average order value? 

You don’t need perfection, you need consistency. When you track these numbers month over month, patterns emerge. You’ll see whether advertising activity correlates with increased demand, stronger close rates, and revenue growth over time versus periods when you pull back or go dark.

At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to track everything perfectly. The goal is to track something reliably. 

For example, website traffic is another underrated truth teller. Your Google Analytics should mirror your marketing efforts. When advertising is active and consistent, site traffic should rise. Brand awareness shows up after people hear or see your ads. They later search your business name, visit your site directly, check your Google Business Profile, click to call, and pull up directions. Those actions don’t happen in a vacuum; they happen because your advertising is doing its job in the background. While digital advertising is data-rich and makes tracking easy (more about that below), don’t forget the power of even a simple spreadsheet that tracks key activities. 

Transparency with your marketing partner, clear visibility into leads and sales, and willingness to look at trends over time are what turn marketing from a guessing game into a growth strategy. Because when you stop guessing, you stop wasting money… and that’s when advertising actually starts to work for you, not against you.

Data Doesn't Lie (People Do, Sometimes)

We live in the golden age of data, and with digital advertising, we have technology that can track a user across devices and platforms with terrifying precision. Instead of relying on a clipboard survey, smart businesses use attribution models.

Digital tools allow us to track the "customer footprint." We can see that a user watched 80% of a video ad, clicked a display banner three days later, and finally converted via a direct email link. This is called Multi-Touch Attribution, and it gives credit where credit is due.

By using tools like pixel tracking, unique promo codes, vanity URLs, and advanced analytics platforms (like the ones we use at fuze32), we can connect the dots between offline behavior and online action.

Better Ways to Measure the Magic

So, if you toss the clipboard survey in the trash, what should you use instead?

1. Unique Tracking Numbers and URLs

Give your radio ad a specific phone number or a vanity URL (like yourbusiness.com/radio). If someone calls that number or visits that specific page, you know exactly where they came from—no memory required.

2. Correlation Analysis

Look at your website traffic spikes and overlay them with your media schedule. Did your direct traffic jump 20% the week your TV spots started airing? That’s not a coincidence; that’s correlation.

3. Geofencing and Conversion Zones

If you are running mobile ads, you can set up a "conversion zone" around your physical store. We can track if a person saw your ad on their phone and then physically walked into your building. It’s like magic, but with satellites.

Stop Guessing, Start Knowing

Asking "How did you hear about us?" is a security blanket. It makes you feel like you are tracking things, but it often leads to decisions based on bad data.

Your customers aren't lying to you on purpose; they just don't know the answer. And frankly, it's not their job to know. It's yours.

At fuze32, we move beyond the guessing game. We implement tracking and attribution strategies that tell you exactly which half of your marketing is working (and fix the half that isn't). We look at the full picture, from the first hello to the final handshake.

FAQ: Measuring Advertising Effectiveness

Q: Should I stop asking "How did you hear about us" completely?
A: Not necessarily. It can still provide anecdotal evidence or catch outliers (like "My cousin Vinnie told me"). Just don't use it as your primary source of truth for budget allocation. Treat it as "nice to know," not "need to know."

Q: Can offline media like radio or billboards really be tracked digitally?
A: Yes! Through methods like lift analysis (measuring spikes in web traffic when offline ads run) and vanity URLs, we can get a very clear picture of how offline ads drive online behavior.

Q: What is "Last Click" attribution?
A: Last Click attribution gives 100% of the credit to the very last thing a customer clicked before buying (usually Google or a direct visit). It is the easiest to measure but the least accurate for understanding brand growth.

Q: How does fuze32 handle tracking?
A: We use a full-funnel approach to tracking ROI. Along with digital attribution and reporting dashboards, we build a custom tracking spreadsheet that lets you see how all of your advertising is performing over time, not just digital. By tracking leads, sales, revenue, and trends alongside your campaigns, you gain clear visibility into what’s working, what’s driving growth, and where your marketing dollars are actually paying off.