Marketing metrics that matter — and the ones that don't.

Marketing dashboards overflow with numbers designed to make reports look impressive. Most of them are noise. Here's the signal.

The five that matter

Leads — calls, forms, chats, bookings; the raw count of people raising a hand. Cost per lead — spend divided by leads, per channel. Close rate — leads that became customers; it exposes follow-up problems marketing can't fix. Cost per customer — the number that decides whether to spend more. Revenue per channel — where the money actually came from.

The vanity gallery

Impressions, reach, likes, follower counts, even raw traffic — all can soar while the phone stays silent. They're diagnostics at best, decoration at worst. Never pay an invoice because impressions went up.

Make tracking honest

Call tracking numbers, form and chat capture, and asking every new customer "how did you find us?" cover most small businesses. Perfect attribution is a myth; directionally honest beats precisely wrong.

Review monthly, decide quarterly

Look monthly for anomalies, but judge channels on quarters — marketing compounds, and panicking at week three kills campaigns right before they pay.

The bottom line

Five numbers, tracked honestly, reviewed on a rhythm. It's exactly what our monthly reporting shows — leads and revenue, not decoration.