R7 — Treat events as reputation-witnessing infrastructure, not lead-generation; measure share-of-voice within defined in-group, not leads-attributed-to-event

Rule: Stop demanding leads-attributed-to-event KPIs from event presence. Start measuring share-of-voice within a defined in-group population — e.g., "Of the 40 GCs we identified as our peer-coached target persona in the WRHBA region, how many know Candid by name, and what associations do they make?"

Why: Events function as trust-witnessing infrastructure, not transactional venues ([[events-as-trust-witnessing-not-lead-generation-infrastructure]]). The mechanism is Goffmanian — public ratification by the in-group, generating incoming referrals months later from peers who saw Candid at the event and remembered the brand when an opportunity arose. Leads-attributed measurement systematically under-counts this effect.

How to apply:

• Define the target in-group population explicitly (e.g., named list of 40-60 GCs across WRHBA / BILD / target peer-coach cohorts).
• Survey or proxy-measure name recognition + brand associations across that population on a recurring basis (quarterly or semi-annually). This is the operative metric for event ROI.
• Event spend is justified by share-of-voice movement, not by booked discovery calls in the week following.
• Patience: the lag from event presence to incoming referral is months to years, consistent with the low-frequency vendor-selection cycle ([[why-in-group-dominates-three-compounding-mechanisms]]).