More website visits can look encouraging while the sales inbox tells a different story. Some requests may be spam, outside your service area or for something the business does not offer.
A useful marketing review connects website activity to the conversations your team can actually progress. Start by agreeing what a suitable enquiry means, then decide how to record it consistently.
Define a useful enquiry before counting it
Choose a small number of criteria connected to the service. A suitable request might concern an offer you provide, a location you cover and a realistic timescale.
Keep “suitable enquiry” separate from “sale”. Someone can be a good match without buying, and a contact form submission can be genuine without being commercially relevant.
Write the definition down and test it against recent examples. If staff disagree about the same request, refine the definition before comparing channels.
Record a few clear stages
A simple enquiry record can distinguish received, reviewed, suitable, proposal sent and won or lost. Adapt those stages to the actual process rather than adding steps nobody maintains.
Record why an enquiry is unsuitable using a short, consistent set of reasons. That can reveal a targeting problem, a misleading page or a service boundary that needs clearer wording.
Keep access to these records appropriate to the people doing the work, and follow the business’s retention and privacy process.
Check what the website measurement represents
A button click, a successful form submission and a confirmed booking are different events. Name them clearly so a report does not imply that clicking “contact” means an enquiry arrived.
Google Analytics describes a key event as an event measuring an action important to the business. Select events that reflect meaningful steps, and test how they fire before relying on the totals.
Ask the person implementing measurement to check repeated submissions, thank-you page reloads and incomplete forms. A neat dashboard is only useful when the underlying event is understood.
Use one consistent reporting period
For each channel, record the period, relevant spend where known, enquiries received and enquiries judged suitable. Keep the definition and dates consistent.
For illustration, a campaign costing £600 that produces 30 enquiries has a cost of £20 per enquiry. If 12 are suitable under the agreed definition, the cost per suitable enquiry is £50. These are fictional figures demonstrating two different calculations.
Record which costs are included. Advertising spend alone and a total including management or production are different measures and should be labelled accordingly.
Allow for time and uncertainty
A request received this week may not become a booking for several weeks. Review enquiry activity and later sales outcomes separately, linking them where your process allows.
Do not force every customer into a precise marketing source. A person may have encountered the business through several routes, and tracking may be incomplete. Record uncertainty rather than making the figures look more exact than they are.
Small totals also need care. A difference of one or two suitable requests is a reason to investigate, not automatically a reliable basis for moving an entire budget.
Use the review to make a decision
Finish the report with one action: clarify the offer, adjust a campaign, improve follow-up or gather more evidence. State the reason and when it will be reviewed.
Share relevant findings with the people answering enquiries. Their notes can explain why a channel’s apparent volume is not translating into useful work.
Our digital marketing training includes meaningful conversion tracking. A productive starting point is your actual enquiry process, the definitions used in reports and the questions you need those reports to answer.