Do you know which of your marketing efforts are moving the needle at your organization? It can be tough to track the true ROI of one specific marketing practice, but by looking at the numbers as a whole, you can begin to see the larger picture.
“It is hardly ever just one marketing effort that leads to a conversion,” says Katy Doss, founder and CEO of Script Marketing. “Everything works together. If you’re asking how clients found you, the client is typically going to say the final piece of the puzzle that led to a call – they may say, ‘I saw you on social media,’ but that’s not accounting for the digital ads and retargeting ads they saw that led up to that.”
Doss recommends looking at the data from all your marketing initiatives. If you notice consistent clicks and conversions as well as new business trending up, you can know your methods are working.
Jon Ganthier, director of growth for Mainely Grass, based in Bedford, New Hampshire, says they assess top-to-bottom funnel performance and highlight the areas that could use the most attention.
“We haven’t noticed one specific conversion trigger, but we continue to see that thoughtful, value-added engagement gives us the best opportunity to convert, no matter where the customer is in their journey,” Ganthier says. “Another major focus is removing unnecessary friction. We go to great lengths to make everything from requesting a quote to signing up for service as easy as possible.”
Tracking Your Marketing Methods
Ganthier says they use custom reporting to tie all their data together. He says it comes from a combination of HubSpot, their ERP, ad network data, and system reports. They also use UTMs to track where leads come from, as well as their middle and bottom-of-the-funnel behavior.
“For example, we might be able to drive a ton of quote volume from Bing, but if those leads convert at a markedly different rate than leads arriving from Google, then we need to factor that into our analysis, budgeting, and approach,” Ganthier says.
He says with data you can begin to make smarter decisions and pull on threads. They are constantly experimenting, refining, and looking to get just a little bit better.
“In paid channels, we start analysis with campaign performance, but also dive into the ad groups beneath those, and even the keywords beneath those,” Ganthier says. “Otherwise, outliers in those 2nd and 3rd layers can skew performance and obscure valuable insights. We see what works and lean in while identifying what doesn’t and pivoting.”
Doss recommends that every link you send out, whether it’s in an email, a social ad, or on a direct mail piece, should have a UTM code attached.
“You essentially add data to an existing URL that tells you where traffic is coming from,” Doss says. “So if you have an ad that’s leading people to your contact page, instead of looking at all the traffic to that page, you’re able to see who landed on that page from that specific ad link.”
Doss also recommends setting up landing pages for unique campaigns.
“Landing pages are like a snapshot of your business tailored to the target demographic of that particular ad, and they give the user all the information they need on one page, making it easy for them to contact you,” Doss says. “So you can track visits to each landing page to gauge efficacy.”
For offline marketing efforts, Doss encourages using QR codes with UTM links so you can measure usage.
Ganthier says while they love to keep score, they acknowledge offline marketing has fewer insights typically.
“One thing we do know is that phone leads convert to customers at a much higher rate than online leads,” Ganthier says. “Our calculated bet is that offline advertising will drive more phone calls, which have historically been a great source of new business. Even though we can’t perfectly track or attribute our offline efforts, we’ll be watching for a lift in inbound, which we expect to translate into a stronger blended customer win rate.”
Defining Success
So, once you have the data, how do you know whether it is telling a story of success or failure? Ganthier says you should pay attention to the customer acquisition cost, but he also cares about the expected margin versus the cost of acquisition.
“Now, different services have different margin profiles, so while willingness to pay might differ among our offered services, the underlying philosophy remains the same – expected margin from a given customer needs to exceed a certain threshold, relative to what we paid to acquire that customer,” he says.
Doss adds that you should look at your data year over year rather than month over month. Pay attention to patterns, peaks and valleys, and try to understand what’s causing them.
“How did February 2025 compare to February 2024?” she says. “If your data is trending up, that’s a sign that your marketing is working and your new business should be converting.”
If one platform has data that does not match the others, this is a sign the marketing isn’t performing well on that platform.
“You can only improve what’s measured,” Ganthier says. “It all comes back to measurement, analysis, and thoughtful iteration. For things that are harder to measure, like word-of-mouth, we just ask people. Our end-of-year survey, for example, is open text, specifically so we can hear from our customers in their own words. It might be harder to comb through, but the effort is rewarded with information that’s almost impossible to gather otherwise.”
Doss says you can easily tell when a marketing method is resonating if clients are commenting on a specific piece.
It’s important to avoid misinterpreting your marketing data. For instance, your website may have a lot of visits, which can seem positive, but if you also have a high bounce rate, this indicates that someone got to your site and it wasn’t what they were looking for so they left.
“You also have to look at your sales,” Doss says. “If you’ve been marketing on a variety of platforms for a while, and the ad data looks good on paper, but you’re not seeing an uptick in business, that indicates that something is off. Your messaging may not be resonating, or you may have an issue with your sales team and how they’re talking to clients once the client has called.”
For example, Ganthier says last year, aeration keywords struggled to drive new business near the end of the season.
“While our first instinct was to examine the ads, the real culprit was (since removed) restrictions around the aeration service itself,” he says.
Advice For Others
There is no single specific marketing tactic that will serve as your silver bullet. Rather, think of the customer journey holistically. Ganthier says they try to add as much value along the journey. When they do this, they see strong conversions from a site visitor to a quote request and from a quote request to a customer.
“In the landscaping business, clients aren’t choosing you on a whim,” Doss says. “Especially for design/build firms, it can be a lengthy process to move someone down the sales funnel. So give your marketing efforts time – it takes three months to really get Google Ads out of the learning phase. Patience and consistency, along with a multi-pronged marketing approach, are key.”
Ganthier says when you assess your funnel, start with a bottom up approach.
“The Holy Grail is customer retention, but even a higher win rate, for example, means you can afford to pay more for leads, whereas if you start by driving lead volume but can’t effectively close, then you may tread water, but you’ll struggle to gain much ground,” Ganthier says.
