- Track leads by source first, because every other number depends on it.
- Cost per lead lets you compare channels on equal terms.
- Close rate shows whether leads are lost in the marketing or at the front desk.
- Cost per new customer is the real price of winning a job.
- Compare that cost with what a customer is worth over time.
Start with numbers you can bank
A lot of marketing reports are full of numbers that look busy: impressions, clicks, followers, rankings, time on site. Those can help diagnose a problem, but none of them pays a bill. An owner needs to know something simpler. Is marketing bringing in customers, and what is each one costing?
The five numbers below answer that. You can track them in a spreadsheet. The hard part isn't the math. It's recording where every lead came from and what happened to it afterward.
Number one: leads, by source
A lead is a real person who contacted you about work: a phone call, a form fill, a booking, a text or a message. Count them every week, and record where each one came from, such as Google Ads, your Business Profile, organic search, Facebook, referrals or repeat customers.
Clean this number up before you trust it. Spam calls, sales pitches, existing customers calling about a bill, and wrong numbers aren't leads. Call tracking helps here, because it records which source each call came from, and listening to recordings lets you tell a new customer from a vendor.
Leads by source is the base for everything else on this list. If you only track one number, track this one.
Number two: cost per lead
Cost per lead is what you spent on a channel divided by the leads it produced in the same period. Include everything you spend on that channel: ad budget, management fees and software. If you pay $499 a month to have Google Ads managed, plus the ad budget you pay Google, add both before you divide.
This number lets you compare channels on equal terms. It also shows trouble early. If cost per lead climbs several weeks in a row, something changed: more competition, a broken form, a landing page that stopped loading, or ads showing for the wrong searches.
For SEO and your Business Profile, cost per lead takes longer to settle, because the work builds over months. Judge those over a longer window than ads.
Number three: close rate
Close rate is how many leads turn into paying customers. Divide new customers by leads, by source if you can. This is where marketing and the front office meet.
A low close rate isn't always a marketing problem. Missed calls, slow callbacks, voicemail during business hours and quotes nobody follows up can all lose good leads. Before you blame the ads, listen to a sample of calls and check how fast your forms get answered.
It can be a marketing problem too. If one source brings plenty of leads that never buy, it may be reaching the wrong people: bargain hunters, people outside your area, or people looking for a service you don't offer. Fix who you're reaching, not just how many.
Number four: cost per new customer
Cost per new customer is what you spent on a channel divided by the new customers it brought in. You can also get it by dividing cost per lead by close rate. This is the number that tells you what it really costs to win a job.
It often surprises people. A channel with cheap leads and a poor close rate can cost more per customer than one with expensive leads that nearly always book. Compare channels on this number, not on cost per lead alone.
Watch it over time as well as across channels. A rising cost per customer, while leads hold steady, usually points back to close rate: something changed in how calls are answered or quotes are followed up.
Number five: revenue per customer
The last number is what a new customer is worth. Start with the average first job. Then, if you can, look at what a customer spends with you over time: repeat visits, maintenance plans, add-on work and the referrals they send.
Now compare. If a new customer costs less to win than they bring in, after the cost of doing the work, that channel is paying for itself. If it costs more, you need to cut costs, raise your close rate, or move the money somewhere else. A customer who comes back for years can justify a higher cost to win than a one-time job can.
Use gross profit rather than revenue if you know it. A job that brings in a lot but spends most of it on parts and labor is worth less than the top line suggests.
Mistakes that distort the numbers
Even good tracking can mislead you if the numbers are counted the wrong way. Watch for these.
None of these is hard to fix. They just need someone to decide how each number is counted, write it down, and count it the same way every week.
- Counting repeat customers and existing jobs as new leads, which makes every channel look better than it is.
- Giving ads all the credit for calls from people who searched your business name and would have found you anyway.
- Leaving management fees, software or your own staff time out of cost per lead.
- Comparing a busy month with a slow one and calling the difference a marketing result.
- Judging SEO or a new ad campaign on its first few weeks, before it has had time to settle.
- Letting different people record lead sources in different ways, so the spreadsheet can't be trusted.
How to keep it simple
Set aside a little time each week to update the numbers, and look at the trend each month. One week is noise. Several weeks moving the same way is a signal.
Get tracking in place before you judge anything: call tracking on your website and ads, form and booking tracking, and a field in your customer system or spreadsheet that records the source. Ask every new customer how they found you, and write the answer down.
Every Northward plan comes with a live dashboard showing calls, form fills, bookings, website visits and ad results, and ad clients get a weekly report. Whoever tracks it, these five numbers are the ones to bring to every marketing conversation.
