Can you tell which marketing is working?

Does this sound familiar?

• Your reports are full of clicks, opens and followers, but no one can say what brought in customers.

• You keep paying for some things because you always have.

• Someone asks "Is the marketing worth it?" and there's a pause.

• Your tools don't share data, and the numbers never match.

The short answer

Most businesses don't have a marketing problem so much as a measuring problem. HubSpot (2024) found only 36% of marketers can accurately measure the return on their marketing. You don't need new software. Keep the few numbers that change decisions, trace each channel to actual sales, set a starting point before you spend more, and fix the one broken link that hides your results.

Do it yourself

1. Test every number. Ask: "If this doubled tomorrow, would we change budget, a channel or a message?" Keep the 5 to 7 that pass.

2. Track three numbers weekly. Qualified leads (people who fit and showed real interest), how many become a real conversation, and sales you can trace back to marketing.

3. Do a 90-minute spend check. List the last three months of spending by channel. For each, ask: can I trace a sale to it? What would we lose if it stopped? When did we last question it? Sort each into Keep, Investigate or Pause.

4. Label your links and ask the question. Add tracking tags (UTM tags: short labels on a link that tell your analytics which campaign sent the visitor). Ask every new customer how they heard about you.

5. Set a starting point before your next campaign. Write down today's three numbers and what you expect at 30, 60 and 90 days.

6. Map how a lead moves through your tools. Note every manual export and sync that breaks. Fix the one that hides the most sales first.

7. Report on one page. Show each number with one sentence on what it means, a green, yellow or red mark against agreed targets, and what you'll do next and why.

How you'll know it's working

• You can answer "What brought in last month's customers?" in a minute.

• You track fewer numbers and make more decisions.

• Money moves out of the channels you marked Pause.

• Each campaign is reported against its starting point.

• Fewer records are missing where the lead came from.

Go deeper

• 3 Marketing Measurement Quick Wins: Stop Tracking Vanity, Start Tracking Value The decision test and the three numbers.

• 4 Marketing Measurement Quick Wins: Report Results That Leadership Actually Cares About The one-page report.

• You're Spending $5K a Month on Marketing. Do You Know Which Half Is Wasted? The 90-minute spend check.

• 3 Marketing Integration Quick Wins: Stop Running Disconnected Campaigns Getting channels to work together.

• 4 Marketing Integration Quick Wins: Connect Your Tools Without a 6-Month IT Project Mapping and fixing broken links between tools.

• Marketing Measurement Toolkit. Free. A one-page scorecard template, number worksheets and starting-point framework. Get it just below.

Want help getting this done?

You can do all of this yourself. If you'd rather move faster, or you know it needs doing but don't have the time or in-house skills, we can build the plan with you and hand it off, so a local or lower-cost team can run it.

• One Practical Fix a Week. A free weekly email with one practical idea. Sign up at the bottom of this page.

• Marketing Reality Check (free version available). The outside view: how buyers see you when they look you up.

• Marketing ROI Diagnostic ($897, 3 business days). The inside view: where your budget is wasted, channel by channel, in dollars. Best for businesses spending $3,000 or more a month.

• Market Readiness Score ($750, 3 business days). If your numbers look fine but sales stay flat: is the market ready to buy?

• Free consultation. 30 minutes on your situation.