Which Half of Your Marketing Actually Works?
It’s been famously said that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Most often attributed to John Wanamaker, this old adage still rings true for many small business owners today. They invest in digital ads, content marketing, paid search campaigns—yet at the end of the month, they’re left scratching their heads, wondering which efforts led to actual sales and which ones merely looked good on paper. The good news is you don’t have to live in the dark. By focusing on the right metrics at each stage of your customer’s journey, you’ll see—sometimes for the first time—where your marketing truly works and where it falls short.
For service-based businesses targeting a local market, the stakes are high. You’re not just competing with others in your industry; you’re also competing for prime visibility in your specific geographic area. How can you be sure your marketing investments genuinely drive new customers? It begins by understanding your customer journey, from the moment they discover you online to the point they become loyal clients.
Driving Traffic
Many small businesses make the mistake of looking only at raw website traffic or ad impressions. Yet it’s more insightful to see where these visitors are coming from and why they decided to visit you in the first place. Are they finding you through organic search, paid ads, or local directories? Look closer. If most of your traffic is coming through a keyword that isn’t quite relevant to your services, you could be funneling people who have no real intent to buy. Conversely, if certain local keywords or ad campaigns are driving consistent, high-quality visitors, that’s your sign to double down.
Focus on Keyword Intent
In practical terms, imagine you’re a plumbing service in Austin. One of your primary organic keywords might be “emergency plumber in Austin.” If you notice a significant spike in traffic coming from that search term, compare that spike with your leads and bookings. You might find that these visitors are more likely to convert into paying customers. On the other hand, if you’re showing up for a vague term like “fix a leak,” you might draw in do-it-yourselfers who just want quick tips rather than professional service.
Capturing Leads
Once you’re bringing in relevant traffic, it’s time to turn those interested visitors into qualified leads. Your lead capture metrics should go beyond simple form fills. If you’re offering a free consultation or a downloadable guide, measure both how many people take advantage of that offer and how many of those leads express genuine interest afterward. In other words, you should be keeping track of how many leads are attracted to each offer. Not only that, you need to understand if there is a difference in the quality of the leads that you are getting from each of your sources of traffic.
Understanding Conversion Rates
Let’s say you’ve set up a Google Ads campaign specifically for your seasonal air conditioner maintenance service. You notice 100 clicks one week, and 10 people fill out your “schedule a free inspection” form. That’s a 10% conversion rate from ad click to lead. But don’t stop there: find out how many of those 10 scheduled appointments actually happen. You’ll get even more clarity if you track how many eventually turned into paid jobs.
If your conversion rates from lead to sale aren’t as high as you want them to be, one of the main issues could be the time you take to follow up.
Time to Contact Leads
There’s a misconception that as soon as someone fills out a form or leaves a voicemail, it’s okay to get back to them within a day or two. In many service industries, your competition is just a browser tab away. If you’re not following up quickly—usually within 15 to 30 minutes—the likelihood of winning that customer plummets.
Why Speed Matters
Think of it this way: your potential client is actively seeking a solution, and they’re probably checking out several service providers. If you’re the first one to respond, you have a considerable edge. Make note of how quickly you or your team is reaching out to new leads. If you discover it takes hours (or worse, days), that might be why your leads go silent.
Closing Rates
Generating leads is essential, but leads won’t pay the bills. That’s why your closing rate—the ratio of leads who ultimately become paying customers—is a powerful indicator of how effective (and consistent) your marketing and sales efforts are. Closing sales is part process and part skill. If you act fast and make it easy for your prospects to answer their questions and book your services, you will be well ahead of most of your competitors.
Outside of skill and process, the most important thing you can do to close more leads is be fast! Don’t keep your leads waiting.
Spotting Patterns in Sales
For instance, if you discover that 50% of the people you talk to on the phone end up scheduling a service call, that’s a strong performance. But if you dig deeper and discover that the closing rate drops to 20% whenever it’s a weekend lead, you might want to consider making adjustments to staffing during that period or refining your weekend ad strategy. Small improvements in your closing rate (like refining your pitch or better training for your front-desk team) can make a big difference. The data will show you where it makes sense to spend resources.
If you don’t have an admin or receptionist, consider hiring an assistant to handle inbound messages and calls. They will give you back more time to work on your business instead of handling every single email and call that comes in personally.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
CAC is how much it costs you to secure one paying customer. To find it, take your total marketing and sales expenses within a period, then divide by the number of new customers in that same timeframe. It’s easy to overlook some of the “hidden” costs: the design fees for ads, the subscription for marketing tools, or the salaries of team members responsible for lead follow-up.
Evaluating Profitability
By keeping a clear-eyed view of your acquisition cost, you know exactly when a campaign is profitable. If you spend $1,000 on your latest Google Ads campaign and land five new clients, your CAC is $200 per client. If your service averages $500 in profit per client, you’ll likely be happy with that ratio and might invest more in that campaign. If not, you need to explore a different angle—maybe pivot to local SEO tactics, test new ad copy, or target a different set of keywords.
Retention and Lifetime Value
While attracting new customers is vital, it’s easy to forget that retaining existing customers often proves more cost-effective. You might be running top-notch advertising campaigns and capturing leads at a reasonable cost, but if no one comes back for repeat business or refers you to friends, you’re in a constant chase for new clients.
Turning Customers into Advocates
By tracking metrics such as how often clients return for additional services and how many of your leads come from referrals, you’ll gain insight into where word-of-mouth momentum kicks in. For example, a landscaping company might notice that 30% of new leads come from existing customer referrals. That’s a strong indicator that their level of service resonates well enough that people are recommending them to neighbors or local Facebook groups.
Putting It All Together
When you measure these key metrics, you can see not just whether your marketing is working, but how well it’s working and which parts of it might need a tweak or two. Perhaps your ads are fantastic at generating awareness, but your time-to-contact is lagging behind. Or you might be quick on the follow-up, but your closing rates are lackluster, hinting that your phone script or consultative approach could use improvement.
Marketing is hardly a one-size-fits-all formula. It’s more like a living experiment. You try something, measure the results, then make educated decisions based on actual data rather than hunches. In that sense, the marketing quote from John Wanamaker isn’t so much a lament as it is a call to action. When you know which half of your marketing is pulling its weight, you can drop—or revamp—the half that isn’t, eventually eliminating a lot of unnecessary guesswork.
In today’s competitive digital landscape, there’s no reason to stay in the dark about what’s working. By diligently tracking the journey your prospects take, from that first click on your website all the way to becoming happy, paying customers (and loyal advocates), you’ll know exactly where to invest for the biggest return. And that’s precisely how you bring clarity to the age-old mystery of which half of your marketing dollars is money well spent.=
