Marketing maths for trades, on paper

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Marketing ROI review

An ROI review is the free marketing ROI worksheet completed with your actual records. You find out, in dollars of gross profit, which of last year's marketing paid for itself.

Written by Ali Sedighi, MBALast updated:

A marketing ROI review takes the ROI worksheet from this site and fills it in with your real numbers. At the end you have one table: each marketing channel, what it cost, how many paid jobs it produced, the gross profit on those jobs, and the return. Most owners have never seen their marketing laid out this way, and the table usually settles arguments that have gone on for years.

What the review is

It is an accounting exercise for your marketing, done in plain arithmetic. We gather every marketing cost from the past year, from Google Ads and directory listings to the truck wrap and the hockey-team sponsorship. Then we match each paid job to the channel that brought it in, wherever the records allow.

The core formula is the same one printed on the worksheet:

Return = (gross profit from jobs the channel produced − what the channel cost) ÷ what the channel cost

A return of 1.0 means every dollar spent came back as two dollars of gross profit: the dollar you spent plus one more. A return below zero means the channel cost more than it earned.

Who it is for

The review is most useful for owners who:

  • spend at least a few thousand dollars a year across two or more channels
  • have a feeling that one channel is "the good one" but no proof
  • pay an agency and receive reports full of clicks and impressions but no jobs
  • are about to cut the budget and want to cut the right line

It is less useful in a business's first year, before there are enough jobs to see a pattern. In that case the job value analysis is the better starting point.

What is included

  1. Cost collection. Every marketing cost for 12 months, including the ones owners forget: annual directory renewals, the website host, promotional items, the share of the office manager's time spent on social posts.
  2. Job matching. Each completed job tied to a source using call tracking data, CRM notes, invoice comments or, where nothing else exists, the customer's own answer to "how did you hear about us?"
  3. Gross profit per job. Revenue minus materials and direct labour, taken from your job costing or estimated with you by job type.
  4. The ROI table. One line per channel with cost, jobs, gross profit and return.
  5. A written read-out. What the table means, which figures are solid and which are estimates, and three to five specific changes ranked by likely effect.
  6. A walkthrough call to go over it line by line.

Timeline

Week one is gathering records and access. Week two is matching jobs to sources, which is where most of the effort goes. Week three is the table, the read-out and the walkthrough. If tracking has never been in place, the review may recommend setting up tracking and repeating the exercise after three months of clean data.

How we measure whether it worked

The review itself is a measurement, so its success is whether you act on it and whether the next review looks better. We suggest re-running the same worksheet each quarter. The figures to watch are the share of jobs with a known source, which should rise toward nine in ten, and the return on your largest channel. Those two numbers tell you whether decisions are getting better.

Mistakes to avoid when you do this yourself

You can absolutely do this review on your own with the free worksheet. Watch for these traps:

  • Counting revenue as return. Use gross profit. A $20,000 renovation with a $15,000 cost base gives you $5,000 to compare against marketing, not $20,000.
  • Ignoring repeat customers. A channel that wins a customer who calls you back three times over five years earned more than one job. Count the first job in the review, and note the repeat value separately.
  • Crediting the last click only. Many customers see the truck, search your name, then click an ad. Branded search ads often get credit that belongs to the wrap or a referral.
  • Leaving out fixed costs. Monthly software, listing fees and the website itself are marketing costs too.
  • Judging on one month. A seasonal trade needs a full year, or at least a full season, before a channel is cut.

If the review shows you are short on jobs rather than wasting money, the next step is ad budget planning. If you would like us to run it, call, text or email and we will start with a free consultation. We review marketing; we are not a contractor and do not do any trade work ourselves.

Frequently asked questions

What records do you need for an ROI review?

Twelve months of marketing invoices and ad account access, your job list with invoice totals, and whatever you have on where each customer came from. If the source data is thin, we say so in the report and mark those figures as estimates.

How long does the review take?

Usually two to three weeks from receiving the records. Most of the time goes into matching jobs to sources, not into the arithmetic.

Why do you use gross profit instead of revenue?

Because materials and direct labour are not yours to spend on marketing. A channel that brings in large, low-margin jobs can look strong on revenue and still lose money once costs come out.

What if the review says my agency is losing money?

Then you will have the numbers to take back to them. We show the working, so you or they can check every line. Sometimes the fix is a change in targeting, not a change of agency.