Over a hundred years ago, the retailer John Wanamaker famously said that half of his advertising works and the other half does not, the trouble is working out which half. If that sounds familiar in your business, this episode from Marco Soares is for you.
The Marketing Conversation That Revealed a Common Mistake
Marco recently had a conversation with a business owner who was spending an absolute mountain of money on marketing. The question was simple: what is working and what is not?
The answer was very interesting. When asked for the details, the business owner explained that a certain percentage of enquiries were coming through the phone, another through website contact forms, and another through email.
On the surface, that might sound like a reasonable answer, but it fundamentally misunderstands what you are actually trying to achieve when measuring marketing effectiveness. Measuring the method of communication, whether people are phoning in, emailing, walking in, or using contact forms, does not actually help you understand where to focus your time, energy, and money. It is measuring the wrong thing entirely.
The Marketing Pyramid: Three Levels You Must Understand
To make sense of this, think about your marketing in the context of a pyramid. There are three distinct levels, and each one tells you something very different.
| Pyramid Level | Focus Element | Business Insights & Value |
|---|---|---|
| Top Level | Marketing Campaigns | Specific initiatives with specific objectives and timelines. Measures if offers, messaging, and target audiences are actually working. This provides core strategic intelligence. |
| Middle Level | Marketing Channels | The broader methods used to broadcast campaigns (e.g., SEO, events, social media, email). Identifies which avenues yield qualified leads and provide the highest return on investment (ROI). |
| Bottom Level | Method of Contact | How prospects choose to communicate (e.g., phone, email, contact forms). Helps optimize sales team resources and communication technology, but does NOT measure marketing ROI or effectiveness. |
The Top of the Pyramid: Marketing Campaigns
At the top of the pyramid sit your marketing campaigns. Campaigns are specific initiatives with specific objectives, aimed at specific people. You might have launched a new product and built a campaign around raising awareness and driving enquiries. You might have a specific offer aimed at a specific audience, running for a specific period of time, with a specific target number of leads. Or you might have a customer reactivation campaign with a clear objective and timeline.
In reality, you will have a number of campaigns running at any one time, and this is really what marketing is about. It is about understanding whether the offers you have constructed, the messaging around those offers, and the audience you are targeting are actually working. That is the intelligence that sits at the top of the pyramid.
The Middle of the Pyramid: Marketing Channels
In the middle of the pyramid you have your marketing channels, the methods you use to speak to your customers. That might include SEO, events, direct mail, newspapers, email marketing, social media, or whatever is relevant to your business. You will likely be using a number of different channels simultaneously.
When you run a campaign, you will typically broadcast it across multiple channels. A new product launch might be communicated through email marketing, pushed via social media, and supported by a blog that drives SEO. You use multiple channels to spread the word. That is why you need to understand which channels are generating qualified leads and which are not, so you can make better decisions about where to focus your money, which channels are giving you the biggest return, and which ones are resonating most with your prospects.
The Bottom of the Pyramid: Method of Contact
Finally, at the bottom of the pyramid you have the method of contact, how customers choose to get in touch with you. This is their preferred method of communication, and it is useful. It matters. However, it does not help you understand your return on investment.
Knowing that someone called rather than emailed does not tell you which campaign prompted them to reach out, nor which channel brought them to you. The communication piece might help you allocate sales resources, invest in the right technology, or think about what your sales function needs to look like, but it is not telling you which campaigns are working or which channels customers prefer. This connects directly to the broader question of how to maximise marketing ROI, a topic worth exploring further if you want to get more out of every pound you spend.
How Strong Is Your Lead Source Reporting?
Think about your own business. Think about the level of detail you have around your lead source reporting. If someone asked you what is working and what is not, could you answer that question properly, at campaign level and channel level? If you cannot, you need to go back to basics and put some proper infrastructure in place so that you can record and analyse the right data. If you want to grow your business, this is not negotiable.
It is also worth noting that without this clarity, you will not be able to make confident decisions about how much to invest in marketing. As discussed in Don’t Gamble on Marketing, spending without understanding is a fast route to wasted budget and constrained growth.
Why Getting This Right Unlocks Business Growth
The goal is to be able to spend as much money as possible on marketing, confidently, and with a clear understanding of what is generating a return. Without proper visibility over your campaigns and channels, you will not be able to confidently ramp up your marketing spend. And if you cannot do that, you will not grow your business to the extent that you could with proper insight in place. Understand what to invest in, what to change, and what to ignore. That is how you grow.
For more practical business insight like this, explore the full Mind Your Own Business series or subscribe to the Marco Soares YouTube channel where new episodes are published regularly.
