What’s a lead worth before it closes? Most lead-gen marketers never put a number on it, so they optimize toward whatever form gets filled most. Zeke Camusio, founder of Data Speaks, gave me the two-number formula he uses, plus the double-counting trap that quietly breaks it. You can watch the full episode here or listen on Castos.
Expected value per lead takes two numbers
Zeke’s point is that you have to optimize your media today, but you won’t know what a lead is actually worth until later. So you estimate.
“So you need to know two things. One is what is the average closing rate and two is what is the average deal value. And with that, you could essentially figure out how much each lead is worth and update that as you go along.”
Here’s what that looks like with made-up numbers (mine, not Zeke’s). If 1 in 10 quote requests closes and the average deal is $8,000, each quote request is worth $800 the day it comes in. That’s the number you hand your ad platform and your SEO report, not “leads: 42.”
You don’t have to get it perfect. Zeke was clear that the value changes as you change your media mix and your messaging, so “you have to go with the best data you have right now and then optimize that as you go along.”
Give every conversion action its own value
Not every form fill is the same lead. Zeke’s ranking: a quote request is worth more than a webinar signup, and a webinar signup is worth more than a PDF download. Each action gets its own expected value, built the same way: how often that action turns into a customer, times what the customer is worth.
Here’s a quick way to set it up:
- List every conversion action on the site: quote form, demo request, webinar, PDF, newsletter.
- Pull 6 to 12 months of closed deals from the CRM and note which action each customer took first.
- Calculate a closing rate per action, then multiply by your average deal value.
- Load those values into your analytics and ad platforms in place of a flat “1 conversion.”
- Recheck the numbers every quarter, because your mix will shift them.
If your referral sources are part of the picture, the same logic applies by channel. I walk through that in auditing referral quality by source.
Don’t count the same person twice
This is the trap. Somebody downloads the PDF, signs up for the webinar, then requests a quote. If you count all three, your report says three leads and your top of funnel looks amazing.
“So if half of the people signing up for the webinar, then request a [quote], you don’t want to count those people twice. So you have to understand the overlap and calculate that accordingly.”
The fix is to deduplicate by person, not by form. Keep the person’s highest-value action, or split the value across their steps, but don’t add the full value of every step on top of each other. Otherwise every downstream conversion rate looks worse than it is, and you’ll cut the very content that’s feeding your quote form.
Why platform numbers won’t add up
Expected values only help if the conversion counts underneath them are honest, and Zeke doesn’t trust pixel counts. In his numbers, 42% of conversions are blocked by browsers and ad blockers, 53% are claimed by more than one platform, and 58% fall outside the attribution window. So the totals in Google Ads, Meta and TikTok will add up to more than your actual sales, while still missing some of them.
That’s why lead-gen needs user-level attribution more than ecommerce does. With lower volume, Zeke said, “it becomes more important to know who the individuals are,” because your salesperson wants to know this person saw the pricing page before calling them. Ecommerce brands with enough volume can lean on media mix modeling instead, which reads spend against revenue in aggregate. For the organic side of the same gap, see dark clicks in Google Search Console.
Make the numbers readable
Zeke’s company uses AI at both ends of the process: to learn about your business up front, and to explain the output at the end. A model that tells you how much revenue came from each channel, campaign and creative, and what to invest more or less in, can be “a little overwhelming to the average marketer,” as Zeke put it. If you report to clients, that’s where a dashboard built around the decision earns its keep: lead value by action, by channel, deduplicated.
And if your buyers mostly come by referral, the right answer may not be more measurement at all. Ann Carden made that case in when SEO is the wrong channel.
The full episode recap, including Zeke’s take on first-party tracking and AI ads, is on Unscripted SEO. So what is a quote request on your site worth today? If you can’t answer in one number, start with the two Zeke gave you.