Insights
Attribution, for businesses that close offline.
What we have learned reconciling closed sales against lead sources — the methods, the failure modes, and the numbers that survive a finance review.
Display advertising attribution: how to tell if programmatic ads bring in sales
Prospecting display on Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk, StackAdapt or the Google Display Network reaches so many people that plenty of your customers will have seen an ad before buying, whether or not it did anything. Here is what impressions, clicks and view-through conversions can and cannot prove, how junk placements distort the numbers, how to track the phone leads display really produces, and when a geo holdout is the only honest answer.
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X (Twitter) Ads ROI: how to tell whether X ads produce sales that close by phone or in person
X will report conversions for a like, a follow or a one-day-old view, and none of them is a sale. For a business that closes by phone, at a desk or on a signed quote, the only honest ROI on X is leads it sent, matched to the sales they became. Here is what the X Pixel, the Conversions API, twclid and the attribution windows count, why the platform number runs high, and how to run a fair test.
What is a good ROAS? How to work out break-even and target ROAS from your margins
There is no universal good ROAS, because the same return makes money at a 60% margin and loses it at 12%. Here is how to work out your own: break-even ROAS from gross margin, a target that also pays for overhead and profit, why platform-reported ROAS is not ROAS on closed sales, and how repeat business and lifetime value move the line, with four businesses worked through.
Lead conversion rate by source: how to measure which channels' leads become customers
The channel with the cheapest leads is often the one whose leads almost never buy. Lead conversion rate by source divides the new customers each channel produced by the real, deduplicated leads it sent, counted by the month the lead arrived. Here is the formula, what to take out of the denominator, why small counts lie, how revenue per lead and cost per customer follow from it, and a five-channel worked example.
How to allocate marketing budget across channels when sales close by phone or in person
The channel with the best return on your report is usually the one that can least use more money. Allocating a marketing budget well means starting from the sales each channel actually produced, judging the next dollar rather than the average one, keeping a test budget, and moving money in steps small enough to read. Here is how, with a five-channel worked example in which the obvious move loses money.
Marketing attribution report: a monthly template and what to include
Most monthly marketing reports describe activity: clicks, leads, impressions. An attribution report has a narrower job: say where this month's revenue came from, and how much of it nobody can trace. Here is the template, column by column, with a complete example that adds up, how to show what is still under review, which periods to compare, the notes that explain a change, what to leave out, and how to walk an owner or a client through it in five minutes.
Customer acquisition cost by channel: how to calculate it from closed sales
The cheapest leads you buy can turn into your most expensive customers. Customer acquisition cost by channel divides what a channel cost by the new customers it actually produced, and for a business that closes by phone or in person those customers live in the sales records, not the ad dashboard. Here is the formula, which customers to count, fully loaded against paid-media CAC, blended against per-channel, untraced customers, payback and time lag, with a worked example where cost per lead and CAC rank four channels in different orders.
Lead source tracking: how to record where every call, form and walk-in came from
Every revenue-by-channel report is a sum grouped by one field: the lead source. If that field is free text, half the revenue lands on lines like "Phone", "Website", "Other" and blank, and the channels that bring customers in by phone look like they lose money. Here is how to set the field up as a short fixed list, who fills it in and when, how tracking numbers, hidden form fields and booking links fill it automatically, how to settle conflicting sources, and how to audit it every month.
How to calculate marketing ROI when your sales close by phone or in person
The marketing ROI formula is one line of arithmetic. The hard part is the number at the top of it: the revenue your marketing actually brought in, when the sale closed on a phone call or at a kitchen table. Here is how to get that number from your own sales, which costs belong underneath it, why ROI on margin ranks channels differently from ROI on revenue, and what to do about time lag and the sales nobody can trace.
Marketing attribution for small business: how to see which marketing brings in sales
A small business that closes by phone or in person cannot get its answer from ad dashboards or Google Analytics, because none of them sees the sale. What it needs is smaller than it sounds: one lead list with a phone or email and a source, one sales export, and a match once a month. Here is the setup, a worked example across five channels, what to do with the sales nobody can trace, a report an owner can read in five minutes, and when not to buy anything more.
Customer lifetime value by channel: which marketing brings customers who come back
A channel judged on its first invoice is judged on the wrong customer. For a business that sees the same households again, the channel that sends loyal customers can look expensive and the one that sends deal hunters can look brilliant. Here is how to compute revenue per customer by acquisition channel at 12 and 24 months from a sales export, read cohorts honestly, switch to margin, and set what you can afford to pay for a customer.
QR code tracking: how to tell which placements bring in sales
A QR code dashboard counts phones that opened a link. It does not count people, it does not count the customers who saw the code and phoned instead, and it says nothing about sales. Here is how to set codes up so a scan can become a lead with a phone number or email, and how to judge every truck, sign, flyer and mailer by the sales it closed.
Your slow season is not a verdict on your marketing
In a seasonal business, last month against this month mostly measures the weather, the tax calendar or the school year. Leads arrive in one month and close in the next, so the revenue report lags every turn of the season. Here is how to read channel revenue through peaks and troughs: same season year over year, cohorts by lead month, and each channel's share rather than its raw total.
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