Can every lead be traced back to its source?
Marketing communications operates as a complex system, making measurement possible but attribution far less precise.
Can you put a price on a lead?
Of course you can. The more difficult question is whether you can accurately determine which communication activity created it.
We have occasionally been asked whether Xpresso Communications could quote its services on a pay-per-lead basis. We understand the attraction. It sounds beautifully measurable: communications activity goes in, leads come out, and a predefined value is attached to each result.
Our hesitation is not an unwillingness to be measured or held accountable. Quite the opposite. The problem is that calculating the value of communications on a per-lead basis would require us to present as precise something that is, by its very nature, full of known and unknown variables.
Not every reflection can be traced to a single ray of light. Not every lead can be traced to a single communication.
When Cause and Effect Refuse to Follow a Straight Line
Marketing communications behaves much more like what physics defines as a complex system than a simple linear process.
In a complex system, multiple elements interact with each other, feedback loops emerge and relatively small actions can contribute to outcomes that cannot be attributed to one isolated input. Cause and effect exist, but the relationship between them is not always linear or directly observable.
That sounds remarkably familiar to communications.
A potential customer may first encounter a company through an article. Months later, they see a LinkedIn post. They meet somebody from the company at a trade show, read a case study, notice a partner announcement, hear the company mentioned by a colleague and eventually visit its website.
Then, perhaps six months later, they contact a salesperson.
Which activity generated the lead?
Inside the Cage: Where Visibility Ends
This is where we started thinking about another concept from physics: the Faraday cage.
A Faraday cage shields its interior from electromagnetic fields. For us, it provides an interesting metaphor for the point at which the communications signal enters an environment we can no longer fully observe.
We can create stories. We can secure visibility. We can explain why a technology matters. We can build familiarity with a company and its people. We can make complex propositions understandable, establish credibility and ensure that a brand continues to appear in the places where its market is looking.
Then the signal enters the cage.
Inside are conversations between colleagues, previous experiences with the company, recommendations, procurement processes, budgets, internal politics, competitor relationships, timing, personal preferences and dozens of other variables. Some are known. Many are not. Most sit outside the communications agency’s control and often outside its visibility.
Eventually, something may emerge from that cage: a website enquiry, a meeting request, a conversation at an exhibition or a direct call to the sales team.
Calling that a lead generated by one particular communications activity may provide a reassuringly neat number. It does not necessarily provide an accurate explanation of what happened.
There is also another complication: good communication does not simply generate individual signals because over time it helps create the field surrounding a brand.
Reputation, recognition, authority and trust accumulate. A journalist understands what a company stands for. A potential customer starts recognising a brand. A technology partner sees an opportunity for collaboration. A prospect who is not ready to buy today remembers the company when circumstances change a year later.
None of those outcomes necessarily arrives carrying a label saying which press release, article, case study, LinkedIn post, event or conversation created it.
Measuring Signals Is Not the Same as Tracing Their Influence
This does not mean communications cannot or should not be measured. Website traffic, engagement, media coverage, share of voice, content performance, enquiries, event interactions and ultimately commercial opportunities can all tell us something important.
But measurement and attribution are not the same thing. And not every form of marketing communications presents the same measurement challenge.
The calculation can look very different when we are talking about sponsored content or an advertising campaign. In a controlled digital environment, many of the variables are known. We can measure impressions and clicks, see how long somebody spends on the linked or embedded page and follow at least part of the journey towards a defined conversion. The signal remains relatively close to the source, making attribution considerably more precise.
Editorial communications are different.
Once an article, interview, case study or piece of earned media is published by a third party, its consumption can spread far beyond the proximity of the original output. It may be read on the publisher’s website, shared through social media, forwarded internally, discussed between colleagues, referenced by another publication or remembered months later when a purchasing decision arises.
Its full measurement therefore depends partly on third parties and partly on interactions that neither the communications agency nor the client can observe. We can measure the original output and some of the ripples around it, but not every place the signal travels or every conversation it triggers.
That distinction matters. Sponsored content and advertising generally provide a more contained environment in which the distance between exposure, interaction and conversion can be tracked. Editorial communications enter a much larger ecosystem. Their influence can travel further precisely because they are no longer confined to the channel that originally carried them.
In other words, the further the signal travels, the harder attribution becomes.
That does not make the signal less valuable. It simply makes pretending we can attach every resulting lead to a single communications activity an increasingly imprecise calculation.
Pay-per-lead works best when there is a sufficiently direct and observable path between an action and a conversion. Marketing communications rarely offers such a beautifully isolated laboratory.
It is a complex system of interacting signals, people, channels, timing and context. So, when we hesitate to attach a simple per-lead price to communications, it is not because we do not want to put a value on what we do. It is because we do not want to put false precision on something far more interesting.
We can measure many of the signals we send and many of the outcomes we observe.
What happens inside the cage is where things get complicated.
