Clicks, enquiries, leads and customers: how to read a marketing report

Many marketing reports are full of large numbers that say little about sales. To judge your marketing, keep four things separate: clicks, enquiries, qualified leads and customers.

The four steps

1. Click. Someone taps your advertisement, post or search result. A click shows interest, nothing more.
2. Enquiry. Someone sends a WhatsApp message, calls or completes your form. Now a real person has contacted you.
3. Qualified lead. An enquiry that fits your service, your area and your price. Not every enquiry does.
4. Customer. A qualified lead who buys.

Each step is smaller than the one before it. That is normal. What matters is how many people move from one step to the next, and what each step costs.

The terms on a report

• Reach: how many different people saw your content.
• Impressions: how many times it was shown, including repeats.
• Engagement rate: the share of viewers who reacted, commented, shared or saved.
• CTR, click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions.
• CPC, cost per click: advertising spend divided by clicks.
• Cost per lead: advertising spend divided by qualified leads.
• Conversion rate: the share of people who take the step you wanted, such as sending an enquiry.

Which numbers matter most

Reach and impressions tell you whether people are seeing you. They do not tell you whether anyone wants to buy. For most businesses the numbers closest to money matter most: enquiries, qualified leads and cost per lead.

This only works if enquiries are tracked. Calls and WhatsApp messages from advertising should be counted, not guessed.

Estimates and results

Before a campaign starts, a planning estimate is useful for setting expectations. It is not a promise. After the campaign runs, judge it on what was actually measured, and expect the estimate to be adjusted.

Ask your agency one question each month: how many qualified leads did we get, and what did each one cost?