Marketing KPIs for small business
Seven marketing KPIs a small business owner can check in 20 minutes a month: what each one tells you, where to find it, and what to do when it goes the wrong way.
The marketing KPIs a small business owner should check every month are: number of leads, cost per lead, lead-to-customer rate, number of new customers, customer acquisition cost, revenue from new customers, and return on ad spend or marketing ROI. Together they answer the only question that matters: is marketing bringing paying customers at a price the business can afford? Everything else, such as impressions, likes and page views, is useful for the person running campaigns, but rarely for the owner.
Checking these seven numbers takes about 20 minutes a month once tracking is set up. Here is what each one means, where to find it, and how to react when it changes.
1. Leads
What it is: the number of real enquiries in the month: calls, form submissions, booking requests, messages, emails.
Where to find it: GA4 conversions, your call tracking, your CRM or simply your inbox and phone log. Count them by source, so you know how many came from Google Ads, Google Maps, Meta ads, referrals and so on.
What to watch: the trend over several months, not one month alone. A drop in one channel while others stay flat points to a problem in that channel.
2. Cost per lead
What it is: marketing spend divided by the number of leads, ideally per channel. Include ad spend and management fees.
Where to find it: ad platforms report cost per conversion, but only if conversions are tracked correctly. Check it against your own count of real enquiries.
What to watch: sudden jumps. If cost per lead doubles, look at whether ad costs rose, the landing page broke, or tracking stopped working. Broken tracking is surprisingly common.
3. Lead-to-customer rate
What it is: the share of leads that became paying customers.
Where to find it: your CRM or a simple spreadsheet where every lead is marked as won, lost or pending.
What to watch: this number tells you whether the problem is marketing or sales. If leads are fine but few become customers, look at response speed, quoting and follow-up before you spend more on ads. My guide to a simple sales funnel shows where leads usually get lost.
4. New customers
What it is: how many new paying customers you won this month, ideally with where they came from.
Where to find it: your invoices, booking system or CRM. Ask every new customer how they found you and record the answer.
What to watch: whether you are on track for the number your plan needs. If your goal is 15 new customers a month and you are at 9, you know early in the quarter.
5. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
What it is: total marketing spend divided by new customers. This is the real price you pay to win one customer.
Where to find it: combine numbers 2 and 3, or simply divide the month's marketing costs by new customers.
What to watch: compare it with what a customer is worth to you. If CAC creeps above what you can afford, something has to change. I explain the calculation in detail in how to calculate customer acquisition cost.
6. Revenue from new customers
What it is: the revenue those new customers brought in. For businesses with repeat customers, also track how much existing customers spent.
Where to find it: your accounting software or CRM, filtered by customer start date.
What to watch: whether average order or job value from marketing-sourced customers holds up. Sometimes a channel brings plenty of customers, but small, low-value ones.
7. Return on ad spend or marketing ROI
What it is: revenue (or better, gross profit) from marketing divided by marketing cost. Return on ad spend (ROAS) uses ad spend only; marketing ROI includes fees and other costs.
Where to find it: for online stores, the ad platforms and GA4 report revenue directly. For service businesses, you will usually calculate it from your CRM and invoices.
What to watch: the trend, and whether the number covers your margins. My article on measuring marketing ROI explains how to handle long sales cycles and repeat customers.
A simple monthly dashboard
You do not need a complex tool. A spreadsheet with one row per month and these columns is enough:
| Month | Leads | Cost per lead | Lead-to-customer | New customers | CAC | New revenue | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September | |||||||
| October |
Fill it in on the same day each month. After three months, patterns appear. After a year, you have the data to plan next year's budget with confidence.
If you prefer an automatic dashboard, a Looker Studio dashboard can pull data from Google Ads, GA4 and other sources into one view.
Numbers that look good but say little
- Impressions and reach: how many times an ad was shown. Useful for the specialist, not a business result.
- Clicks and website traffic: more visitors are only good if more of them enquire.
- Followers and likes: pleasant, rarely connected to revenue for local services.
- Average position or "ranking for 500 keywords": what matters is whether those rankings bring enquiries.
If your monthly report is mostly these numbers, ask for the seven above instead. A good marketer will be glad to report them.
A 20-minute monthly routine
Pick a fixed date, for example the third business day of each month, and follow the same order every time. Fill in the seven numbers first, without interpreting them. Then compare with last month and with the same month last year, because many Canadian businesses swing with the seasons. Circle anything that moved by more than a quarter in either direction and write one sentence on why you think it happened. Finally, choose one action for the coming month. One action you actually take beats a list of ten you forget by Friday.
Make sure the tracking is right
All seven numbers depend on correct tracking. Before you trust them, check that form submissions and calls are recorded as conversions in GA4 and in your ad platforms, that each enquiry can be traced to a source, and that your cookie consent setup still lets you measure what you are legally allowed to measure. Setting up GA4, Google Tag Manager and ad pixels costs $650 with me, and it is often the first thing I fix for new clients. With monthly reporting, these numbers come to you instead of you hunting for them.
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12+ years in online marketing, 100+ clients. I build websites, Google Ads and Meta ads campaigns, CRMs and automations for small and mid-sized businesses. About me →
Marketing numbers:
questions owners ask
Which single marketing number matters most for a small business?
If I had to pick one, customer acquisition cost compared with what a customer is worth to you. It combines spend, lead quality and sales performance in one figure. But it is only reliable if leads and customers are tracked properly, so in practice you need at least leads, new customers and total spend to calculate it.
How often should I check my marketing KPIs?
Monthly is the right rhythm for an owner. Weekly numbers fluctuate too much to act on, especially for smaller businesses, and quarterly is too slow to catch problems. Whoever runs your ads should look more often; I review campaigns every two weeks and send a monthly report with these numbers.
What if my numbers are different in Google Ads, GA4 and my CRM?
That is normal to a degree, because each tool counts differently and some visitors decline cookies. Large gaps, though, usually mean a tracking error. Treat your CRM or your own count of real enquiries and sales as the source of truth, and use the platforms to compare channels and trends.
Can't find these
seven numbers?
Often the tracking is the problem, not the marketing. Tell me what you use now and I'll reply within one business day with what is missing.