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Free Guide · 14 Pages

The 5 Numbers That Tell You
If Your Advertising Works

Your ad platforms each report a different number, none of them is revenue, and the one your accountant cares about appears on no dashboard at all. Here are the five that settle it — where each one lives, and what to do when they disagree.

Five Numbers, One Answer

Written for the person who signs off on the spend, not for a marketing team. No jargon that isn't defined on the page it appears, and every number comes with where to find it in the accounts you already have.

  • 1
    Cost per lead — and why yours can't be benchmarked

    Four things have to match before two cost-per-lead figures can be compared at all. They never do. Here's the metric to use once you accept that.

  • 2
    Lead-to-sale rate, split by source

    The channel with your cheapest leads is very often the one with your worst close rate. One number in aggregate hides that completely.

  • 3
    Revenue per lead, not per conversion

    A "conversion" in an ad platform is a form fill. Revenue per lead is the only version of that number your bank account recognises.

  • 4
    True ROAS, including the calls

    For most service businesses the phone is the biggest channel and the least measured one. Leaving calls out doesn't lower ROAS evenly — it lowers it most for the campaigns that work.

  • 5
    Payback period

    The number that decides whether you can afford to scale a campaign that is genuinely profitable. Most businesses never calculate it and scale on gut instead.

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