Marketing strategy
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Oct 1, 2025
How to know if your marketing is actually working
Learn the strategies and tactics we use every day to drive real results for our clients. Fresh tips, trends, and how-to guides delivered straight from our team.
You're spending money on marketing every month, but you can't confidently say if it's working. Your agency sends reports full of numbers—page views, impressions, followers—but you have no idea if those numbers mean your business is actually growing. The truth is, most businesses are tracking the wrong things. They're focused on vanity metrics that look impressive but don't connect to revenue.
Vanity Metrics vs. What Actually Matters
Not all numbers are created equal. Here's the difference:
Vanity metrics make you feel good but don't drive business:
Page views and website traffic
Social media followers
Email open rates
Impressions and reach
Real metrics show if you're making money:
Cost per lead
Conversion rate
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Return on ad spend (ROAS)
Revenue generated
The key difference? Vanity metrics show activity. Real metrics show results.
The 5 Numbers You Must Track
These are the only metrics that truly matter for your business:
1. Cost Per Lead
How much you pay to get someone interested in your business. Calculate it by dividing your marketing spend by the number of leads generated. If you spent $1,000 and got 50 leads, that's $20 per lead. This tells you if your marketing is efficient.
2. Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors or leads who become paying customers. If 100 people visit your site and 3 buy, that's a 3% conversion rate. This shows whether your messaging and website actually convince people to take action.
3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Your total marketing spend divided by new customers acquired. If you spent $5,000 to get 25 customers, your CAC is $200. You need to know this number to ensure you're profitable—it should be significantly less than what a customer pays you.
4. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
For every dollar spent on ads, how much revenue comes back. Spend $1,000 and make $4,000? That's a 4:1 ROAS. This directly shows if your advertising is profitable or burning money.
5. Revenue Generated
The ultimate metric. How much actual money did your marketing bring in? Everything else is supporting data—this is what keeps your business alive.
