The invoice arrives every month. So does a report with charts on it. The charts go up and to the right, the words on them mean nothing to you, and the work in the diary feels about the same as last year. You are not qualified to judge the marketing, you think, so you keep paying. Here is the thing: you are exactly qualified. You judge suppliers all day. You just need the jargon translated and the right three numbers.

The translation table

The words that fill marketing reports, in plain English:

  • Impressions: how many times your ad or listing appeared on someone's screen. Appearing is not being noticed, and it is definitely not being rung. A thousand impressions can mean nothing.
  • Clicks: how many people tapped through to your website. Closer to useful, still not a customer.
  • CTR, click-through rate: the share of people who saw the ad and tapped it. A health check for the ad, not for your business.
  • Engagement: likes, shares and comments on social posts. For a plumber, this is applause, not work.
  • Ranking: where you appear when someone searches. Worth something, but only if the searches turn into calls.
  • Conversions: the one to care about. Someone did the thing that matters: called you, or filled in the enquiry form. If the report does not define what counts as a conversion, ask.

Nothing on that list is dishonest. But notice that a report can be genuinely full of good news, all of it true, without a single new job in it.

The only three numbers that judge the invoice

Everything above is activity. You are paying for outcomes. Three numbers connect the two:

1. Enquiries: how many people contacted you this month
   because of the marketing. Calls plus forms.

2. Jobs won: how many of those became paid work.

3. Cost per job won: everything you paid, invoice plus
   ad spend, divided by number 2.

An example, with made-up numbers. Swap in your own:

Say the invoice is £400 a month and ad spend is £600.
Say it brought 20 enquiries, and 6 became jobs.
Say your average job is £350.

Cost per job won: £1,000 / 6 = about £167.
Revenue from those jobs: 6 x £350 = £2,100.

In that example the marketing pays for itself twice over, and you should be pleased. Run the same sum and get a cost per job higher than the job itself, and no amount of impressions makes the invoice good value. Either way, you now know. That is the whole trick: the judgement is a sum, not a feeling.

One catch: you can only count enquiries if calls are being counted. Ask whether your marketing uses call tracking, a system that records how many calls came from the ads or the website. If nobody is counting calls for a business whose customers arrive by phone, that is the first thing to fix, before any other spending decision.

The questions to send, word for word

Copy these into an email to whoever does your marketing:

  • "How many enquiries did the marketing produce last month, calls and forms?"
  • "What is my cost per enquiry, and what would you say my cost per job won is?"
  • "Are we tracking phone calls? If not, can we?"
  • "Which half of the spend is working hardest, and what would you cut first if the budget dropped?"

A good agency answers these happily, because they are the questions they already manage by. Vague answers, or a fresh pile of impressions, tell you something too.

Then choose one of three roads

Keep them, with the new scoreboard. If the cost per job stacks up, stay put and stop worrying. Ask for the three numbers in every monthly report from now on. A supplier who is performing has nothing to hide.

Fix the measuring before you fire anyone. If nobody can answer because nothing is tracked, the marketing might be fine and the reporting broken. Give them a month to put call tracking in and report properly. Judging without the numbers is guessing in both directions.

Cut it and go simpler. If the numbers come back and the sums do not work, stop paying for activity. A filled-in Google Business Profile, review requests after every job, and answering the phone properly are free, and for many small plumbing firms they outperform a retainer.

We are a marketing supplier ourselves, so read this knowing that. It is also exactly the test we would ask you to hold us to.

Do this today

  • Send the four questions above to your marketing supplier. It takes two minutes.
  • Start a tally by the kettle or in the van: every new enquiry this month and where it came from. Thirty days of that beats any chart.
  • Dig out last month's invoice and ad spend, and have the numbers ready for when the answers come back.

If the answers come back and you cannot tell whether they are good, forward them to us with your invoice. We will read them with you, in plain English, and tell you honestly whether you are getting value, even if the honest answer is "your current agency is doing a good job, stay put".