Marketing has never been easier to measure.
We can track the ad someone clicked, the keyword they searched, the page they visited, the form they submitted and the phone number they called.
With the right marketing systems in place, we can follow that lead into a CRM and potentially connect it all the way to a closed sale.
That’s incredibly valuable information.
It’s also dangerously easy to mistake that information for the entire story.
Imagine you run an ad in a regional business magazine.
As part of the print advertising package, the publisher also features your company in an email newsletter, shares your content on Facebook and mentions you on its website.
A month later, someone searches your company name on Google, clicks a paid search ad and submits a form.
Google Ads may get credit for the conversion.
But did Google Ads create the customer?
Maybe.
Or maybe it scored the touchdown after everything else moved the ball down the field.
The Touchdown Gets the Credit. The Drive Won the Game.
Marketing attribution tends to favor the interactions we can see.
A prospect may encounter your company several times before ever visiting your website.
They see your magazine ad while drinking coffee. A week later, the publisher mentions your company on Facebook. They recognize your logo. A colleague mentions your company during a conversation. Eventually, they have a reason to investigate further.
So they Google you.
Now we have data.
Google Search Console records the search. Google Analytics records the website visit. If they clicked an ad, Google Ads records the click. Call tracking can record the phone call. Your CRM can record the opportunity and eventually the sale.
Those systems are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do.
The problem comes when we look at the data and conclude that the measurable interaction caused everything that followed.
Marketing never works that neatly.
Awareness and Direct Response Have Different Jobs
This becomes easier to understand when we distinguish between Awareness Campaigns and Direct Response Campaigns.
Awareness marketing introduces people to your company, builds familiarity and helps establish the associations you want people to have with your brand.
And awareness isn’t limited to traditional advertising.
Magazine ads, billboards, radio and sponsorships certainly qualify. But so can display advertising, online video, social media, connected TV, digital publications and other online campaigns.
A person can see your company dozens of times online without clicking anything.
That doesn’t mean those impressions had no value.
Direct response marketing is designed to produce a more immediate, measurable action.
Search marketing is the obvious example. Someone has a need, searches for a solution and clicks an organic or paid result.
That makes SEO and PPC particularly attractive to marketers because there is usually a visible trail between intent and action.
Search → Click → Visit → Call → Lead → Sale
That’s enormously useful, but search often enters the picture after something else has already happened.
The person had to become aware of the problem. They may have become familiar with your company. They may have developed some level of trust. They may even have decided they wanted to talk to you before they ever opened Google.
The search simply gave them a way to find you.
Awareness Can Make Direct Response Work Better
This is where channel-by-channel reporting starts to get messy.
Suppose two companies are bidding on the same Google Ads keyword.
One is completely unfamiliar to the person searching.
The other is a company they’ve seen in an industry publication, encountered on LinkedIn and heard mentioned by a colleague.
Both ads appear. Which one feels safer to click?
Brand awareness can influence the performance of direct response marketing even when the awareness campaign receives no attribution for the eventual conversion.
The same thing happens with organic search.
Someone who remembers your company name doesn’t search for “commercial plumber near me.” They search for your company.
That branded organic visit may eventually become a lead. Analytics can tell us where the website session came from.
It can’t necessarily tell us where the customer’s awareness came from.
So How Do You Measure a Magazine Ad?
You measure as much as you reasonably can.
A print advertisement can include a dedicated landing page, vanity URL, QR code, unique phone number or promotional offer. Those mechanisms create observable responses that can be associated with the campaign.
The publisher’s added-value digital promotion should be tracked as well.
If the publisher shares your company on Facebook, sends an email to subscribers and links to your website from an article, each of those links can use its own tracking parameters.
Now you can begin answering useful questions.
How many people visited the website? How many scanned the QR code? Did anyone call the tracking number? How much traffic came from the publisher’s Facebook promotion? Did branded searches increase during the campaign? Did direct traffic increase? Did leads increase from the geographic market or audience the publication reaches?
If your CRM and marketing systems preserve lead-source information through the sales process, you can go further.
Did those leads become qualified opportunities? Did any become customers? How much revenue did they produce?
This is why tracking matters.
Without it, you’re guessing.
But there’s another mistake waiting on the opposite side of the road.
Don’t Confuse What You Can Measure With Everything That Happened
Let’s say your magazine advertisement contains a QR code and 37 people scan it.
That tells you something useful.
It does not tell you that the advertisement reached only 37 meaningful prospects.
Someone can see the ad without scanning anything. They can remember your company name. They can visit your website later from another device. They can search for you three weeks later. They can mention your company to someone else.
None of those behaviors necessarily preserve a clean attribution trail back to the magazine.
This is where marketing data can create a false sense of certainty.
We have numbers, dashboards and reports, so the answer feels scientific.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes we’re simply looking at the portion of human behavior our technology was capable of observing.
Better Tracking Is Still Important
None of this is an argument against attribution. Quite the opposite.
Businesses should know where their leads come from. Otherwise, you are spending money without learning very much from it.
A good marketing system gives you considerably more evidence to work with. But evidence still requires interpretation.
If branded searches rise while an awareness campaign is running, that’s worth noticing. If direct traffic increases, that’s another signal. If paid search conversions improve at the same time, that deserves investigation.
None of those observations automatically proves causation. Together, however, they can help you understand what’s happening.
Marketing Is a Team Sport
Businesses understandably want to know which marketing channel generated a customer.
Sometimes the answer is straightforward.
Someone searches for a service, clicks a paid ad, calls the business and buys. PPC has a strong case for taking the credit.
Other customer journeys aren’t nearly as cooperative.
The magazine created awareness.
The Facebook post reinforced it.
A referral added credibility.
Google helped the customer find you.
Your website made the case.
Reviews reduced uncertainty.
A salesperson closed the deal.
So which one generated the customer?
Probably the wrong question.
The better question is whether you have enough visibility into the entire system to understand how your marketing is contributing to business growth.
Track what you can. Connect the systems. Follow leads through the sales process. Look for patterns across channels instead of judging every tactic in isolation.
And remember that the player carrying the ball into the end zone may be the easiest one to see.
The rest of the drive still mattered.
Need a Team that Tracks More than Touchdowns?
Divining Point connects your marketing, websites, analytics and sales systems to give you a clearer view of the entire customer journey.
From campaign tracking and call attribution to CRM integrations and lead-to-close reporting, we help you understand what is contributing to growth so you can make better decisions about where to invest next.
Contact us. We’re here to help.