VertexNova 10 August 2026 · VertexNova Team
Is your digital marketing actually working? Five numbers to check
Likes and reach feel good but rarely pay the bills. Here are five numbers that tell you whether your marketing is bringing in real customers.
Start with enquiries, not impressions
If you can't say how many calls, messages, or form submissions your marketing brought in last month, that's the first thing to fix — before spending another naira on ads. Reach and impressions describe an audience size; they don't tell you if anyone acted.
Cost per enquiry, not cost per click
A cheap click that never turns into a customer is expensive marketing. Divide what you spent in a month by the number of genuine enquiries it produced — that single number, tracked over time, tells you more than almost any other metric.
Where enquiries actually come from
Ask every new enquiry how they found you, even informally. If you can't answer this after a month of running ads, your tracking — not your marketing — is the problem, and it's worth fixing before changing anything else.
Repeat customers vs. one-off contacts
Marketing that only ever brings in one-time enquiries is doing half the job. Check whether people who found you through a campaign come back, refer others, or just disappear after one interaction.
Time to first reply
A great campaign that gets a slow response loses customers to whoever replies first. If enquiries sit unanswered for a day or more, that's often a bigger leak than anything wrong with the marketing itself.
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