Marketing ROI: What to Measure (and What to Ignore) - Issue 283

Hey there,

You’re spending time, money, and energy on marketing.

But the real question is:

Is it actually working?

Not feeling good. Not getting likes.

Working, as in: delivering profitable, scalable results.

This week, we’re diving into real ROI:

✔️ What to track

✔️ What to ignore

✔️ And how to connect the dots across every channel - PPC, SEO, email, social, and beyond.

Let’s make sure your marketing isn’t just busy… it’s profitable.

🚨 The Problem: Everyone’s “Measuring” - But Few Are Measuring What Matters

Here’s what we see all the time:

❌ Facebook likes called success

❌ PPC CTR bragged about - with no conversions

❌ SEO traffic growing, but zero leads

❌ Email open rates celebrated like they pay the bills

The result?

🎯 Teams focus on tactical outputs, not business outcomes

📉 You can’t double down on what works

💸 You keep spending, guessing, and hoping

✅ The Fix: Measure the Metrics That Actually Show ROI

It’s not about tracking everything.

It’s about tracking the right things - across the whole journey:

→ Awareness

→ Engagement

→ Conversion

→ Retention

→ Revenue

This week, we’re showing you how to measure across channels, prioritise the right KPIs, and build a simple ROI dashboard that tells the real story.

A SaaS company was spending big on Google Ads and content.

They tracked CTR, impressions, and traffic - and thought things looked great.

But churn was rising. CAC was spiking.

Revenue? Flat.

We rebuilt their measurement model to focus on:

✔️ Lead quality, not just quantity

✔️ Time to conversion

✔️ Lifetime value by channel

✔️ CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost

✔️ Marketing-sourced revenue

The new clarity helped them cut ad spend by 22% - while increasing ROI by 40% in 90 days.

🎯 It wasn’t about doing more marketing. It was about measuring better — and optimising faster.

📊 The 5 KPIs That Actually Drive Marketing ROI

1️⃣ CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost

Why it matters: Tells you how efficient your spend is.

💡 Tip: Don’t just measure ad costs - factor in salaries, tools, content production.

🎯 Formula:

2️⃣ LTV: Lifetime Value

Why it matters: ROI is about long-term value, not just first purchase.

💡 Tip: Segment by channel. Which traffic source produces your most profitable customers?

🎯 Formula:

3️⃣ ROAS: Return on Ad Spend

Why it matters: Shows how efficiently your paid ads are converting to revenue.

💡 Tip: Track by campaign - don’t lump everything together.

🎯 Formula:

4️⃣ Marketing-Sourced Revenue

Why it matters: What % of total revenue is directly driven by marketing?

💡 Tip: Tie specific campaigns to pipeline via UTM tracking or CRM attribution.

🎯 Metric to track:

5️⃣ Time to Revenue (TTR)

Why it matters: Tells you how long your funnel takes to turn investment into profit.

💡 Tip: Useful for PPC and SEO comparison - PPC = fast, SEO = long-tail payoff.

🎯 Metric to track:

🛠️ Pro Tip: Build a Simple ROI Dashboard

Use tools like:

• Google Looker Studio (free)

• HubSpot Reports

• GA4 + custom dimensions

• Databox or Tableau (for advanced tracking)

Break it down by:

• Channel (SEO, PPC, Email, Social, etc.)

• Campaign

• Funnel stage

• Cost vs. value

You’ll make better decisions in half the time.

✅ This Week’s To-Do List

📌 Audit your current metrics — what are you actually tracking?

📉 Kill vanity metrics: likes, followers, raw traffic

📈 Focus on:

→ CAC

→ LTV

→ Marketing-sourced revenue

→ Channel-specific ROAS

📊 Build a basic ROI dashboard

Set up weekly/monthly ROI reviews - don’t just measure, optimise!

🎯 Bottom Line:

You can’t scale what you can’t measure.

And you definitely can’t fix what you’re not tracking properly.

This week, tighten up your ROI strategy and start making marketing decisions based on data that drives profit, not just noise.

Let’s make your next dollar work harder than your last.

Talk soon,