The short answer
Measure what connects to money: enquiries or sales, what each one cost, and how many became customers — broken down by where they came from. Use platform metrics such as clicks and impressions to diagnose problems, not as proof of success. Accept that tracking is never complete, and judge the total picture over months as well as channel by channel.
In this guide
Marketing produces more numbers than any business needs. Most of them are useful for diagnosing problems. Only a few tell you whether marketing is paying for itself, and those are the ones to put in front of whoever decides the budget.
The numbers that connect to money
| Measure | What it tells you | Where it usually comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiries or sales, by source | What marketing produced, and from where | Forms, calls, bookings, your CRM or shop |
| Cost per enquiry | What each enquiry cost to generate | Spend divided by enquiries |
| Enquiry-to-customer rate | How many enquiries become customers | Your sales records or CRM |
| Cost per customer | What it cost to win each customer | Spend divided by new customers |
| Customer value | Gross profit per customer over time | Your accounts |
| Return on ad spend (ROAS) | Revenue for each unit of ad spend | Ad platforms, or your sales data |
Cost per customer is often called customer acquisition cost. If it’s comfortably below what a customer is worth, marketing is paying for itself. ROAS is useful for online shops that track sales directly, but it measures revenue, not profit — a high ROAS on low-margin products can still lose money.
The numbers that help you diagnose
Impressions, clicks, click-through rate, website visits and time on page don’t prove marketing works, but they tell you where it breaks. Lots of impressions and few clicks suggests an ad problem. Lots of visits and few enquiries suggests a website problem. See why your marketing isn’t bringing in enough enquiries for how to use them.
Set up tracking you can trust
- Conversion tracking. Record the actions that matter — form submissions, bookings, purchases, calls — in your analytics and ad platforms, usually with tags managed through a tool such as Google Tag Manager.
- Call tracking, if customers phone. Without it, phone-led businesses undercount their results badly.
- Tagged links. Add UTM parameters — short labels on the end of a web address — to links in emails, social posts and ads, so your analytics can tell where visits came from.
- Ask people. A “how did you hear about us?” question at enquiry or checkout catches what tracking misses, such as recommendations and offline advertising.
- Record the source in your CRM or sales records, so you can follow an enquiry through to a sale.
Test it: submit an enquiry yourself and check it appears everywhere it should.
Consent and privacy change what you can see
In the UK, Ireland and the rest of Europe, most analytics and advertising cookies need the visitor’s consent, and Google requires consent signals — consent mode (opens in a new tab) — for its measurement and personalisation features for visitors there. In the US, rules vary by state; Canada, Australia and New Zealand have their own privacy laws. Check the guidance for the markets you serve.
The practical effect is that analytics will undercount. Visitors who decline cookies may not appear at all. That’s why your own records — enquiries in your inbox, sales in your accounts — are the ground truth.
Why the numbers never agree
Google Ads, Meta, your analytics and your CRM will each report different numbers, because they count differently and see different parts of the journey. Each platform tends to give itself credit for sales it touched. None is simply wrong.
Two habits help:
- Watch the blended figure. Total marketing spend divided by total new customers, month by month. If that’s healthy and stable, the channel-level arguments matter less.
- Test changes, don’t just attribute. If you’re unsure whether a channel works, change its budget for a period and watch whether total enquiries move.
A simple monthly scorecard
| Measure | This month | Last month | Same month last year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total marketing spend | |||
| Enquiries (all sources) | |||
| Enquiries by main channel | |||
| New customers | |||
| Cost per enquiry | |||
| Cost per customer |
Fill it in from your own records, not only from platform dashboards. Ask any agency you work with to report against it — see how to tell if your agency is doing a good job.
What to do next
- List every way an enquiry or sale can reach you, and check each one is recorded.
- Add call tracking if customers phone, and tagged links on emails and social posts.
- Add a “how did you hear about us?” question and record the answer.
- Start a monthly scorecard from your own records, with a blended cost per customer.
Apply this to your business
Work out what to track for your business
Tell askBizly how customers reach you and what a sale looks like. It sets out what to measure, what’s likely missing from your tracking and what to fix first — as a prioritised action plan.
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