Your marketing is working if it brings in customers for less than they are worth to you, and that gap keeps growing. Everything else, from impressions to followers, is useful only if it leads there. These are the numbers worth watching, and how to set up tracking you can trust.
Key takeaways
- Track cost per customer, not just cost per click or cost per lead.
- Customer lifetime value tells you how much you can afford to spend to win one.
- Conversion rate is often the cheapest lever to pull.
- Privacy changes broke old tracking, so most businesses need to rebuild it.
The five numbers that matter most
- Revenue or leads by channel. Where your sales and enquiries actually come from.
- Cost per acquisition (CPA). Total marketing cost for a channel divided by the new customers it produced.
- Customer lifetime value (LTV). Average order or contract value, times how often customers buy, times how long they stay.
- Conversion rate. The share of visitors who buy, book or enquire. Small improvements here multiply every other channel.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) or marketing efficiency. Revenue from marketing divided by what you spent on it. Use profit if you can.
A quick health check: if your LTV is at least three times your CPA, you can usually afford to grow faster. If it is close to one, fix conversion, pricing or retention before you spend more.
Numbers to watch but not obsess over
- Traffic and impressions: useful as early signals, misleading on their own.
- Followers and likes: only valuable if the audience is real and relevant. Bought followers make every other metric worse.
- Open rates: distorted by privacy features in Apple Mail and others. Track clicks and revenue per email instead.
- Rankings: helpful, but a top position for a search nobody makes is worth nothing.
How to set up tracking you can trust
- Google Analytics 4 with key events for purchases, calls, form fills and bookings.
- Conversion tracking on every ad platform, ideally with enhanced conversions or a server-side setup.
- Call tracking for businesses that win work by phone.
- UTM tags on every link in emails, social posts and partner sites.
- CRM connection, so you can see which leads became paying customers.
- A consent banner that works with Google Consent Mode where privacy laws require it, so you stay compliant and keep modeled data.
A simple monthly review
- What did each channel cost, and how many customers did it bring?
- Which channel has the lowest cost per customer, and can it scale?
- Did conversion rate move, and why?
- What will we stop, start and test next month?
Our growth calculator shows what a lift in conversion rate, rankings, audience or email list could be worth to you. Our CRO and analytics service sets up tracking and live dashboards connected to your own data.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I give a marketing channel before judging it?
Paid channels usually need four to eight weeks of data. SEO, AI search and content need three to six months. Agree what early signals to expect before you start.
What is a good ROAS?
It depends on your margins. A brand with 30% gross margin needs a ROAS above about 3.3 just to break even on ad spend, before other costs.
Can I trust platform-reported results?
Treat them as one view. Each platform tends to take credit for sales other channels also influenced. Compare with your own analytics and actual sales.