Why Your Gut Feeling is Costing You Money
I was sitting down with a landscaper in Chermside a few months ago. He was working twelve-hour days, his phone was ringing, but at the end of the month, his bank account didn't look the way it should.
"I'm spending three grand a month on Google, another grand on Facebook, and I’ve got a bloke doing SEO for me," he said, leaning over a pile of invoices. "But I have no bloody idea which one is actually putting food on the table."
He’s not alone. Most Brisbane business owners I talk to feel like they’re throwing spaghetti at a wall. They know they need to "do marketing," but they don't know if the money they’re spending is an investment or just a donation to a tech giant in Silicon Valley.
If you don’t have a simple way to see where your customers are coming from, you’re flying blind. You wouldn't run your business without looking at your bank balance, so why run your marketing without looking at the results?
You don't need a degree in data science. You just need a simple "scoreboard"—a marketing dashboard—that tells you three things: What’s working, what’s wasting money, and what you should do next.
The "Scoreboard" Every Small Business Needs
Imagine you’re watching the Lions at the Gabba. If there was no scoreboard, you’d have a vague idea of who was winning based on the crowd noise, but you wouldn’t know for sure.
In business, your "scoreboard" shouldn't be filled with fancy graphs or technical terms like "bounce rates" or "attribution modeling." That’s just noise. For a local business—whether you’re a plumber in Coorparoo or a lawyer in the CBD—you only need to track a few critical numbers.
1. Where do your best leads come from?
Not all leads are created equal. You might get fifty enquiries from Facebook, but if they’re all tyre-kickers looking for the cheapest price, they’re a waste of your time. Meanwhile, you might get five calls from Google, but four of them turn into $5,000 jobs.
Your dashboard needs to show you the source of your money, not just the source of your traffic. When you see where customers come from, you can stop wasting time on the platforms that only bring you headaches.
2. How much does it cost to get a customer?
If you spend $1,000 on ads and get ten customers, each customer cost you $100. If that customer spends $2,000 with you, that’s a win. If they spend $50, you’re going broke. Most business owners can tell me their total spend, but they can’t tell me the cost per customer. Once you know this number, marketing stops being a "cost" and starts being a machine where you put $1 in and get $5 out.
3. Are people actually calling you?
For most local businesses, the website is just a tool to get the phone to ring or a form to be filled out. Your dashboard should track every single phone call generated by your marketing. If your "marketing guy" tells you that "brand awareness" is up but your phone is silent, he’s taking you for a ride.
The Three-Step Setup to Get Results Fast
You can set this up in a weekend, or have a professional do it for you in a few hours. Here is the practical path to getting a dashboard that actually helps you grow.
Step 1: Track the "Money Actions"
Stop looking at how many people visited your site. It doesn't matter. What matters is what they did when they got there. Did they click your phone number? Did they fill out your "Get a Quote" form? Did they message you on WhatsApp?
Setting up tracking for these specific actions is the single most important thing you can do. It allows you to track which clicks make money rather than just counting visitors who leave after five seconds.
Step 2: Use a Simple Visual Tool
Don't log into five different accounts (Google Ads, Facebook, your website, etc.) every morning. You’ve got a business to run. You need one single page that pulls all this data together.
We use a tool called Looker Studio for our Brisbane clients. It’s free, and it allows us to build a one-page report that looks like a car dashboard. Green means go, red means stop. If the "Cost Per Lead" goes up, it turns red. If the "Total Sales" go up, it turns green. Simple.
Step 3: Identify the "Leaks"
Once you have your dashboard, you’ll start seeing patterns. You might notice that people are clicking your ads, landing on your site, but then leaving immediately without calling.
This is a "leak" in your bucket. Instead of spending more on ads, you need to fix the website. When you can see why customers leave, you can fix the problem—maybe your site is too slow, or maybe your phone number is hard to find on a mobile.
Real World Example: The Morningside Electrician
I worked with an electrician out in Morningside who was spending $2,000 a month on Google Ads. He was getting plenty of clicks, but he felt like he wasn't getting enough big jobs—mostly just small repairs that weren't worth the drive.
We set up a simple dashboard for him. Within two weeks, we saw something interesting: almost all his "big job" enquiries (switchboard upgrades and full rewires) were coming from people searching between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM. The clicks he was getting during the day were mostly people in an emergency looking for a quick fix.
By looking at his dashboard, he made one simple change: he shifted his budget to show his ads more heavily in the evening. He didn't spend a cent more, but his profit doubled because he was getting the right kind of work. That’s the power of having the right numbers in front of you.
What’s a Waste of Your Money?
If you’re looking at a marketing report and it mentions any of the following, ignore it. It’s fluff designed to make the marketing agency look busy:
Impressions: This just means how many people "saw" your ad. Who cares? If a thousand people see your sign but nobody walks into your shop, you haven't made a cent. Engagement: Likes and comments don't pay the mortgage. Unless those likes turn into phone calls, they are a vanity project. Ranking for useless words: If you’re a plumber in Ascot, ranking #1 for "history of plumbing" is useless. You want to rank for "blocked drain Ascot."
Focus on Leads, Customers, and Cost. Everything else is just a distraction.
How Long Until You See Results?
This isn't a six-month project.
Day 1: Set up your tracking (calls and forms). Day 7: You’ll start seeing which ads are actually making the phone ring. Day 30: You’ll have enough data to make a big decision—like cutting a failing ad platform or doubling down on one that's working.
In my experience with local QLD businesses, most owners can save 20-30% of their marketing budget in the first month just by cutting out the stuff that clearly isn't working.
The "So What?" Factor
At the end of the day, a marketing dashboard isn't about the tech. It’s about freedom. It’s about knowing that when you spend money on marketing, you aren't gambling. You're buying customers.
When you know exactly where your money is going, you stop stressing. You can plan for the future, you can hire that new apprentice, and you can take a weekend off knowing that your marketing machine is humming along efficiently.
What Should You Do First?
If you’re ready to stop guessing, here is your checklist:
1. Audit your current "tracking": Go to your website on your phone. Click your phone number. Does that click get recorded anywhere? If not, you’re already losing data. 2. Ask for a "Source Report": If you have a marketing person, ask them: "How many phone calls did I get from Google Ads specifically last month?" If they can't give you a straight answer, you need a new setup. 3. Start simple: Don't try to track everything. Just track calls and emails.
At Local Marketing Group, we specialise in stripping away the jargon and showing Brisbane business owners exactly what’s working. We don't care about "likes"; we care about your phone ringing.
If you want to stop wondering where your marketing budget is going and start seeing a clear return on your investment, we can help you build a scoreboard that actually makes sense.
Ready to see which of your ads are actually getting you customers? Contact Local Marketing Group today.