Find Big Fish in 3 Clicks: Using Custom Fields to Isolate Winners

Most marketers already capture important lead details—project size, budget range, service type, decision timeline.

But when it comes time to review campaign performance, all of that detail disappears.

Reports roll everything up into a single “qualified lead” count, treating five $50,000 projects and forty sub-$1K jobs as if they’re the same outcome.

The insight is there. It just never shows up in the reports that drive budget and optimization decisions.

This article shows how to turn that hidden lead-level data into campaign-level success views—so you can evaluate, compare, and optimize campaigns based on the leads that actually grow revenue, not just the ones that inflate volume.

The Problem: Captured Data That Doesn't Report

In theory, custom field data should give marketers clarity. In reality, it usually stays locked inside individual leads—useful for sales follow-up, but invisible at the campaign level.

So when you pull a report, you see things like:

• Leads by campaign
• Qualified vs. unqualified
• Cost per lead

What you don’t see is:

• Which campaigns drove large projects
• Which campaigns attracted fast-moving buyers
• Which campaigns consistently produced leads that actually match the business you want to grow

The data exists. You captured it. You just can't use it to make decisions because it lives in lead records, not campaign reports.

The Shift: From Lead Labels to Campaign Success Views

The breakthrough comes when custom fields stop being treated as annotations and start being treated as reporting dimensions.

Instead of asking “Which campaign drove the most qualified leads?”

You can ask:

• Which campaign drove projects over $25,000?
• Which campaign brought in buyers with a 30-day timeline?
• Which campaign consistently delivered commercial (not residential) work?

Each question represents a different success lens. And each one can tell a very different story about what’s actually working.

Example: One Account, Three Views of “Success”

Consider a commercial services advertiser running three paid campaigns. At a surface level, the reporting looks straightforward:

• Campaign A: high lead volume, strong qualification rate
• Campaign B: moderate volume, moderate qualification
• Campaign C: lower volume, fewer total leads

If you stop there, Campaign A looks like the obvious winner.

Now apply a custom field filter for project size over $20,000.

Suddenly:

• Campaign C produces the majority of high-value opportunities
• Campaign A’s leads skew smaller, despite higher volume
• Campaign B barely registers at this threshold

That’s one success view.

Next, switch the lens to decision timeline ≤ 30 days.

Now the picture changes again:

• Campaign B drives the most near-term opportunities
• Campaign C’s deals are larger, but slower
• Campaign A continues to generate volume without urgency

Same campaigns, same leads, three completely different optimization stories that all depend on how success is defined.

Without custom-field filtering, all three campaigns would have been judged by the same blunt metric. With it, marketers can decide which version of success they want to optimize for right now.

How Campaign Success Views Change the Game

Once campaign performance can be evaluated through custom-field filters like project size or decision timeline, optimization stops being a debate and starts becoming a set of clear tradeoffs.

Instead of asking which campaign “performed best” in the abstract, marketers can answer specific questions tied to business priorities:

• If the goal is near-term revenue this month, which campaign produces the most buyers with a ≤30-day decision timeline? In the example above, that’s Campaign B, even though it doesn’t win on volume or CPL.
• If the goal is larger deals, even at lower volume, which campaign consistently attracts $25k+ opportunities? Campaign C becomes the obvious candidate for increased investment.
• If the goal is to identify and cut budget to ineffective campaigns, which campaign looks efficient but doesn’t support business priorities? Campaign A, despite its low CPL, produces relatively few large or fast-moving opportunities.

These decisions aren’t based on intuition or averages. They’re based on explicit success definitions applied consistently across campaigns.

Optimization Adapts as Business Priorities Change

Most reporting systems lock marketers into a single definition of success. Once a campaign is labeled “good” or “bad,” that label rarely changes.

Campaign success views make performance evaluation flexible.

The same campaigns can be re-evaluated depending on:

• Revenue timing
• Deal size targets
• Capacity constraints
• Strategic focus

Nothing about the campaigns has to change—just the success lens.

That’s the difference between reporting that explains the past and reporting that actively guides what to do next.

From Reporting to Direction

When campaign performance is evaluated only by totals and averages, reporting becomes retrospective. It explains what happened — often too late to change anything.

Campaign success views make reporting directional.

They help marketers:

• Anticipate which campaigns will support upcoming revenue goals
• Justify budget shifts before performance drops
• Align spend with capacity, timing, and deal mix

Instead of reacting to performance, teams can shape it.

Ready to see how to build campaign success views that reflect what actually matters to your business?