How We Define a Lead — and What We Do Not Count
This page explains what we mean by the word lead. It is the same definition on every campaign we run, for every client, in every trade.
The definition
A lead is a person who contacts your business wanting to buy something you sell, who is not already your customer, who did not come to you through a referral, who is inside the area you serve, who can actually be reached, and whose enquiry is backed by a call recording or a stored form submission that you and we can both open.
Everything below explains that sentence, states what we leave out, and shows you how to check any of it against your own records.
Why this page decides what you pay
You are not buying leads from us. Nobody hands you a list. We build and run your own marketing — your website, your ad account, your phone number — and every enquiry that comes out of it is yours, including the ones this page says we do not count.
What the definition affects is the ceiling on your bill.
Your agreement caps what you pay at a cost per lead agreed before the work starts. Cost per lead is a division: what was spent, divided by how many leads that spending produced. Anything above the cap we absorb.
This page is the bottom half of that division. A loose definition makes the bottom number bigger, which makes the cost per lead look smaller, which lets us bill you more before hitting the cap. That is precisely why the definition has to be written down, applied the same way every month, and shown to you with the records sitting behind it. A number you cannot check is not a cap.
A conversion is not a lead
These two words get used as though they mean the same thing. They do not, and the gap between them is where most reporting goes wrong.
A conversion is any action a tracking system has been set up to record. It is an event. It can be a form submission, a button click, a page view, a price-list download, or a phone call that lasted ten seconds.
A lead is a person asking about the work you actually do.
Every lead shows up as a conversion. Most conversions are not leads.
A tracking system counts exactly what somebody told it to count, and it has no opinion about whether that was a sensible instruction. So a report saying “45 conversions” is not yet a statement about leads. It is a statement about recorded events, and only some of those events were people who want to buy something.
When we report a lead count to you, we have already done the work of separating the two. If you ever see a number from us and want to know what is inside it, ask — the records are there.
The seven things we check
An enquiry has to pass all seven to be counted. They are written so that you can apply them yourself to any single record and get the same answer we did.
1. There is real buying intent
The person is asking to buy something: a quote, an estimate, an appointment, a consultation, or a question about a specific project. Your trade does not change this one — a roofer, a dentist and a mortgage broker all apply it the same way.
2. We don’t count your existing customers
Somebody who has bought from you before and is booking again is repeat business. You earned that, not the marketing.
3. We don’t count referrals
Somebody sent by a friend, a neighbour or a past customer was going to contact you anyway. Your reputation produced that enquiry, not marketing.
4. We only count what you sell
A roofer gets asked where to buy roofing tiles. It happens often, and it is not a lead — roofers install and repair materials, they do not sell them over the counter. That person wants a supplier, not a contractor.
5. They are inside the area you serve
Somebody three hours away asking for a same-day visit is not a job you can take, whatever their intent.
6. There is a record you can open
Every counted lead has a call recording or a form submission behind it. No record, no count — a judgement you cannot check is only an assertion.
7. We only count people you can actually reach
A form arrives asking for a kitchen quote. Real intent, right service, right city — but the phone number is a digit short and the email bounces. It passes everything above and is worth nothing to you, so a lead needs at least one way of reaching the person that works.
How we know
The same few sources answer most of those seven, so here they are once rather than seven times.
Your enquiry form asks two questions. How they heard about you, and whether they are a new or returning client. That settles the referral check and the existing-customer check before anybody picks up the phone.
Every call is recorded. People volunteer far more on the phone than any form captures — who sent them, that they were in a couple of years ago, what they actually want. Every caller hears a short automated notice before the call connects — the same one you get from a bank or a utility. That notice is how consent is handled: Canada requires one party to the call to agree, some US states require everybody on it, and announcing it upfront covers both.
We compare each enquiry against your customer list. Connect your CRM, or send us an export, and we match on name, phone number and email address.
We try the contact details. Every new enquiry gets an attempt and the attempt is logged, so “we could not reach them” is something you can check rather than something you take on trust.
Your proposal holds the rest. Your service list and your service area are written down at the start — named cities, postal or ZIP codes, or a distance from an address, never a phrase like “the Lower Mainland” that means something different to everybody who reads it. That is what checks four and five are counted against. If enquiries for things you do not sell start arriving steadily, we tell you, because it usually means the campaign is aimed slightly wide.
Other things that never count
These reach your business and are yours to deal with. None of them go into the number your bill is measured against.
- People applying for a job
- People selling you something — SEO offers, software demos, printer toner
- Suppliers, subcontractors, and existing accounts calling about an order
- Automated form spam and forms filled by bots
- Wrong numbers
- General questions with no job behind them — free advice, school projects
- Anything that fails one of the seven checks above
Niche cases to be aware of
The seven checks handle the clear records. These two are where counting usually gets argued over, so we settle them before the work starts rather than after an invoice.
Same person (not existing customer) coming back
Somebody fills in your form on Tuesday morning, hears nothing by lunchtime, and phones you. That is one person, one job, and two records.
One job is one lead, however many times they contact you about it. The follow-up call, the chase a fortnight later, the rescheduled appointment — all the same lead, however long it drags on.
A different job later is a new lead, as long as they still have not bought from you. Somebody who asked for a quote eight months ago, did not go ahead, and is now back wanting something else counts again, because your marketing reached them a second time. There is no time limit on this — eight months or three years, the answer is the same.
Once they do buy, they are your customer, and nothing after that counts.
Missed calls
A missed call is not a lead. Not because the person was not real, but because there is no way to know — a missed call from an unknown number could be a customer, a wrong number, a robocall, or a supplier ringing back, and nothing in the record says which.
We do not count missed calls. If someone follows up and it becomes a real enquiry — they call back, or you reach them and they ask for a quote — it counts from that point, because by then there is a record behind it.
This rule has a cost you should know about. In a month where a lot of calls went unanswered, your lead count will look low even though demand was fine. That is a staffing problem showing up in a marketing report, so we show you the missed-call count next to the lead count and you can tell the two apart.
Why we count
There is no claims process here, and nothing for you to file. We are not selling you leads by the piece, so there is no per-record transaction to argue about.
For service-based businesses, lead volume is the only measure that shows the marketing is working. Traffic, rankings and impressions do not put work in front of your crew. Enquiries from people who can buy do.
